User reviews

I don't think this movie is intended for non-Chinese, who weren't taught that history (1910-1949) in China. Here is the logic. The Qing Dynasty, a symbol of Feudalism, had already resigned. The Beiyang government was good at selling nation's interest and shooting at students. Sun Yat-sen was too fragile to lead China. KMP was totally corrupted and lead the whole country into disaster. So only CCP could represent Chinese people's interest and lead China. (Don't raise your hands. Recite them and we'll have tests tomorrow.) Such series(foundation of party/government) are just a film version of history books.

Just like the movie that came in about few years ago, propagating the government, and how they had established the "new China", this is a documentary film, trying to deliver the history at that time. I see that many of the reviews said that there were not a storyline throughout the film, and can't see the connections between them. However, as a historical documentary, I consider the film without a storyline, but rather, a timeline. The timeline went from 1909 (I think) to before WW2. I in fact do not consider this movie boring, and believe that it has its positive sides. Unlike some other government productions, this movie is rather subjective, with not too much intentions to propagate the govenment. Again, it was meant to go over the whole history of the communist govenment in this period of time. But some recommendations about the film, if you aren't Chinese, don't watch the movie, if you hate the govenment, I mean, by hate, don't watch it, if you do not know anything and don't want to know about the historical figures of China, don't watch the movie. I didn't find the film extremely interesting, but it briefly helped me go over the history of China.

Review: What an epic movie! This film certainly looked great and the costumes and scenery is superb but I didn't have a clue about what was going on. I didn't know who was who or what was where. The small captions on the bottom of the screen and the subtitles didn't help and the different story lines just made the whole movie hard to follow. Its a shame, because the acting is great and the I did feel a sense of intensity throughout the film but it's hard to keep up with the epic, political concept which changed China forever. The director over complicated the concept and he even added a love story, so there is way too many things going on at once. It reminded me a lot of the Founding Of The Republic, which was also extremely hard to follow and I personally gave up watching after a while. They could have easily split this film into 2 movies, so the director could have concentrated on different elements of he storyline. Anyway, although it looks great, the storyline is all over the place and I personally lost the plot. Disappointing!

Round-Up: After watching a few Oriental movies, I did recognise a few faces throughout this movie but I still found it hard to follow. The movie was directed by Sanping Han who also directed the confusing Founding Of The Republic with Jianxin Huang. Sanping Han has produced some top movies like Shaolin, Confucius, the great Let The Bullets Fly, the Karate Kid and Mission Impossible 3, so he's certainly got experience when it comes to big movies but he really did over complicate this one. I have to commend the directors on there efforts and the scale of this film, especially in terms the huge cast and the amazing cinematography but from an entertainment perspective, there is just too much to concentrate on.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their history/dramas starring Chow Yun- Fat, Angelababy, Daniel Wu, John Woo, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, Chao Deng, Xun Zhou and Kun Chen. 3/10

This movie was shot in China, still firmly controlled by Chinese Communist Party. Of course it will contain the story told by CCP. Undoubtedly it contains endless speeches to show how necessary and great CCP was. So please forget about that part. If you see the movie to look for art, drama, affection, of course you will be disappointed.

But what makes this movie different from the other Chinese propaganda movies is its huge cast. There are tons of famous Chinese, including Hong Kong and oversea Chinese, actors and actresses. You can never see so many stars in one movie, other than Jian Guo Da Ye, also produced by the same producer with an equally huge cast two years ago. The fun of watching this movie is to "count stars", instead of follow its boring and revisioned story.

On the plane, I looked back at this movie ten years ago. At that time, I went to the cinema just to count the stars. Now I see it again and find that it is really difficult to shoot. It is called "the great cause of the founding of the party", but ambition is to comb through the recordable modern history from the beginning, which is inevitable. However, it is not easy to balance commerciality and dedication. Although the theme of the whole film is unknown and no effective characters have been established, it is indeed the best work to balance the two characteristics mentioned above. In 1921, although the perspective is more concentrated and more "people-friendly", it has lost the opening and closing under the background of the great era and become more "small family spirit". When it comes to 110 years, we might as well follow the idea of the great cause of the founding of the party and make another concentrated attempt, which may have good results.

The BAD. A prequel to Founding Of A Republic, and merely an another attempt at glorifying The Communist Chinese Party for its part in bring China under one banner.Personally this film would be a peace of garbage if it wasn't for the Chinese Super Stars that starred in this film.

The GOOD I enjoy the action sequence when the First Civil War erupted during the warlord era. But right after that the film was more Politically Motivated at making the CCP,(Chinese Communist Party), look good and bashing others. Jackie Chan's 1911 was more easily enjoyable then this Communist Propaganda film. As soon as I see a name of one of China's worst leaders,(Man responsible for the failed Great Leap Forward), I just knew it was gonna go down hill really bad. In the End the film was good for battle scenes and for it's nostalgic imperial clothing and 1911 post clothing that people wore back then. Other than that, this film was a Communist film all the way.

In 1900's and 1911 and on wards China was a country that had a revolution movement that was a ticking time bomb just waiting to be lit and explode. The Chinese Civil War ended with one victor. The Communist won. And China is the way that is today.

Most of the countries with status and power in the world today are capitalist countries, and the only one that looks "different" is China, which is run by the Communist Party of China. In China, the people are the masters of the country and the true masters of the country. In the case of COVID-19, we can see that foreign capitalists are demanding the resumption of production and work for the sake of interests, regardless of the lives and health of workers, while accusing China of not being good at fighting the epidemic. In China, the epidemic has been completely controlled, which is the real democracy! This is real freedom! Most of the critics didn't understand the real ideas behind the movie -- Marxism and communism. People in capitalist countries are just like a mob of people, under the spell of capitalists, who think they are very "free" to live under their invisible iron hoof. They do not know that they have been sold by capitalists long ago, but they are still busy helping the capitalists to count their money.

THE GREAT REVIVAL is a lively retelling of early 20th century China, a tumultuous period where the old ways and the new ways collided and many factions seemed to continually war with each other in a bid for power. It's a complex and sometimes epic-feeling production, so I'm surprised to see it rated so low here on the IMDb.

I suspect the reason is that it's a blatant piece of propaganda, with Mao Zedong portrayed as a crusading hero; the story stops before the later troubles that surrounded his career. Now, I'm not bothered by watching propaganda films; I've seen plenty of North Korean efforts and, let's be honest, America makes their own share of flag-waving guff. Propaganda alone isn't a reason to rate a film down.

THE GREAT REVIVAL isn't a perfect film and anybody trying to keep track of all the main characters will soon be scratching their heads in puzzlement. Still, it's an expansive and expensive-looking production, and it's never boring even if some of the material seems extraneous or glossed over too quickly. The stuff with the students riots is particularly watchable, and spotting all of the familiar faces from Chow Yun-Fat to Daniel Wu, Fan Bingbing, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, and even John Woo, is a delight in itself.

This film starts with the 1911 xinhai revolution and quickly goes over the chaos of the early republic and its trouble with Yuan shi-kai. The May 4th movement is portrayed as the touchstone to the founding of the communist party (certainly a lot of the future leaders of the party started getting involved in politics at this time). This could have been a much longer film covering more in depth coverage of the personalities of this time and still have my interest because of my study of Chinese history. For a general audience this film may have too many characters they know nothing about and find confusing. Even more so if you are not Chinese or a student of this time in history. How many people know about the Japanese occupation of the Shandong peninsula and its impact on Chinese thinking about the west? If you do have some knowledge of the people and time in China during the years covered in this film you will enjoy this movie.

i note with sadness that every review here is from the USA and appears to be a political statement and nothing to do with the movie per se. statements such as "china is a military state" are pathetic when you consider the aggressiveness of Americans and their military state!

where are the comments on acting, cinematography, musical score, etc....i do not think in many cases a westerner can judge a foreign movie if you are going to be so biased about that countries' political system!

i do not see Americans lambasting their pathetic greedy monetary system that has enveloped the world in GFC in movies about some American hero in any movie about the stock exchange for example......go live in china for a year or more before you critisise!

not such a bad movie..... acting passable...story line is montage and example only for reminder to the people as to the origins of cpc.

I really loved this magnificent epic. As an avid reader of Chinese history, I was surprised by the historical accuracy of this film. Now I realize why the Chinese people love Mao-Zedong; most of the touching moments in the film involve his beloved Yang-Kaihui and him. As for the film being propagandistic, aren't most films made in Hollywood propagandistic? Delta Force, Rambo, Top Gun, just to mention a few. I guess some narrow-minded people might consider it propaganda if it shows the Chinese point of view instead of the Western perspective. I truly recommend this film to anybody who is interested in politics and Chinese history.

Great struggle! What an impressive movie with great casts. The actors and actresses have done well. The movie was filled with lots of suspense. Chow Yun Fatt and Andy Lau were superb. There were so many well known actors and actresses in this movie. All the casts have done well to illustrates the titanic struggle to unite the country. The peaceful protest,demonstrations and the nationalism portrayed were very realistic. I have watched it several times and some scenes reminded me of the OWS movement. The movie did awesomely in portraying how the conspiracy to divide China inspired the people to go against the corrupted officials. I highly recommended all to watch.

The way Chinese movies like this are themed are a focus on the thought and diplomacy behind great events. I think the West is too used to 90 minutes of jam packed action, guns and swords blazing. The depictions in this movie are accurate and moving. The May the 4th Movement protest gave me goosebumps as a Chinese student. The hardships and ambition of the founders of the CPC and the students of Beijing is shown very well too. Just a shame that afterwards (not in the movie but in real life) most the founders of the party would be killed or defect before 1949.