The Taking of Tiger Mountain

Positive: Good CGI, enough to make it a barely believable background and action scenes, but not great. Loosely based (meaning embellished for entertainment purposes) on post WWII varying factions vying for power in China as Japanese occupiers were being driven out.

Neutral: Interesting tie in with contemporary descendant revisiting and re-imagining that period. Acting, dialogue, script, filming, all acceptable and pretty standard, straightforward, but nothing jumps out as being incredible. It almost felt as if it was a Communist Party sponsored politically correct promotional film. Rather than being a serious historical docudrama it seemed more like a lighthearted fantasy story.

Negative: If looking for historical accuracy, then other than someone infiltrating a gang to spy with some sort of positive outcome for his efforts, it came across as an imaginative fantasy which may be all that a viewer is interested in. Misleading cover art.

Epic adaptation of a classic from Chinese literature, then from Peking Opera Troupe of Shanghai, based on the real-life story of the Battle of Tiger Mountain in 1946.

The Taking of Tiger Mountain is an epic action movie directed by Tsui Hark and stars Zhang Hanyu, Lin Gengxin, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Yu Nan and Tong Liya.

I haven't read or heard about the incident on which the movie is made so i'll not get into the debate of how close the movie is to reality but will only review on the basis of watching a movie.

The movie is a decently entertaining movie and the movie has it's flaws as well as it's strength and overall the movie is good one time watch movie.

The acting in the movie is good and Zhang Hanyu had done a tremendous job and is the most shining among them all, Lin Gengxin was impressive, Tony Leung Ka-fai had a strong role of The Hawk and was effective. Rest of the support staff were either superb or decent.

Screenplay of the movie is fairly decent but the continuity pace is missing from the movie and sometimes the movie looks slow however it will not loose the grip from the viewers, the length of the movie could've been trimmed a little to make the movie more gripping. The movie is said to be a war movie but war scenes are very limited.

The fighting scenes of the movie is good but doesn't looks convincing and looked unnatural, the climax of the movie seems to be shot in a hurry as i was expecting some decent war but the movie ends quickly.

Some of the scenes were shot beautifully such as the fight with the tiger. Overall the movie is decently entertaining, the war movie lovers might be disappointed with limited war scenes, The movie is a decently one time watch movie.

I am not a fan of these oriental action films, it is hard to like an action film, when the script is not very interesting, it complicates a little more, totally discouraging ... Unfortunately, I didn't win ...

The best scene for me is the tiger attack, matches by the skills of Zhang. I rewatch it a few times, and begin to notice some 'unlikelihoods'. Even if the camara shots are breathtaking, the riffle of Zhang is a mechanism action, so you have to reload after each shot even if the chamber contains 5 cartridges (like a Muser use in WW2). During the tiger last jump, Zhang load a cartridge but fire 4 bullets, without using the action 'mechanism' ...like an automatic riffle. Zhang can go up and down the tree like an acrobat, sometimes, without even using his legs, but the tiger in unable to climb with his powerful claws. The size of the dead tiger lying on Zhang is quite exagerated... But this is OK from a cinematographic marketing. For the rest of the movie, it will be a lot greater if you keep it simple Mr Director, I mean without the theatricals and too much makeup :)