Simply Perfect

Please don't spend money on this.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Tsui Hark movies are always a mixed bag for me. The Vietnamese New Wave director created visually stunning, profoundly philosophical and mostly historically inspired movies like the ''A Chinese Ghost Story'' and ''Once Upon a Time in China'' movie series in his early years that any movie fan should know. In recent years, he rather focused on commercially entertaining, effect-ridden and overall meaningless films such as ''Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame'' and ''The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate''. The latter movies weren't entirely bad but they weren't on the same artistic, authentic and intellectual level as his early classics. ''The Taking of Tiger Mountain'' is situated somewhere in between both categories but probably closer to the second group than to the first.On the positive side, the movie is partially historically inspired even though the film isn't devoid of a certain propagandistic approach that presents the People's Liberation Army in a much too positive way. The movie basically tells the story of a small group within this army that needs to outsmart a large group of bandits that are raiding villages in the northern parts of the fragile country. The settings of the movie are truly spectacular. The costumes, the villages and even the way the actors speak are truly accurate and trace your way back seventy years in time. Most of the story is set in elegant winter landscapes and one gets to see breathtaking valleys and mountains, simple but charming skiing exercises and even a couple of animals such as the tiger that attacks the protagonist halfway through the movie. In comparison with Tsui Hark's other recent movies, especially the first half of the film feels refreshingly authentic, natural and realistic and only a few effects are used in an efficient way. Towards the climax of the story, more and more special effects are used but they somehow add to the action and tension of the film and don't feel randomly inserted as in many of his other recent films. The action choreographies are stunning and the best example for these intense passages is the battle in the raided village which takes place towards the last third of the movie. While the acting itself is not outstanding, it definitely has more depth than characters in Tsui Hark's more recent films and one can feel some empathy with the smart and mysterious protagonist, the emotional and lonely child or the optimistic female combat medic.On the negative side, the main villain remains superficial and even ridiculous at certain moments. The short moments of humour when he speaks nonsense or exaggeration when he gestures in theatrical manner feel out of place and unnecessarily decrease the intensity of the movie. The special effects get a little bit exaggerated in the final twenty minutes or so of the movie and contrast the initially authentic magic of the movie that turns into something which isn't a far call from a meaningless Hollywood action flick. The story itself is also a little bit too simple, predictable and one-sided. Another element which I disliked is how the movie was forcedly connected to some random Chinese emigrant living in New York City who can't let go of his culture, family and past instead of trying to become accurately integrated in a foreign country. I feel that this connection to our contemporary world didn't add anything at all to the movie even if the director probably intended to prove that the value of this story based on Qu Bo's novel of the same name from 1957 has been firmly planted in the Chinese national consciousness for more than half a century.In the end, the numerous positive elements are much more impressive and present than the few negative facts which can be seen as secondary. Tsui Hark somewhat redeems himself after a series of rather shallow flicks that were only aiming for commercial success, modern special effects and simple entertainment. This movie has more depth concerning the characters, magic settings and at least some kind of moral at certain points in the story. This movie still isn't on the same level as Tsui Hark's earliest successes but fans of historically inspired contemporary Chinese action movies can't go wrong with this movie and should therefore give this film a chance.

Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy 3D directed by Tsui Hark has been released in mainland long ago, while it is going to be released in Hong Kong on May14th.Reproducing a model opera of the Cultural Revolution, the skilled are bold.The movie began with "New York 2015" and I supposed I had come to the wrong cinema. It turns out that it had something to do with Tsui Hark's affection, that he first got to know the Beijing opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy in New York, therefore, the movie is arranged with some foreign citizens of Chinese origin singing karaoke and the television mistakenly showed Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, on the screen a person asked contemptuously, "What's that?" Actually, the movie had been playing nice. If it comes into reality, the person must have yelled out loudly.Tsui Hark was very clear about this of course, so I was wondering how he would reverse negative impression of those people (exactly we audiences) on Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy—strong political complexion,old-fashion and out of date.Tsui Hark chose 3D.But 3D is not a panacea. Ring 3D in Japan suffered a crushing failure.Bullet passing through slowly and stop in a moment, then the scene circling back have been applied in Matrix in 1999. The 3D of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy would not make any better. When ravens were flying over indoors, I could not help laughing out, for it was too similar to the owls in Harry Porter series.By the way, I could not recognize Tony Leung who acted as a bandit "Hawk". But wearing a fake nose is actually again a copy from Nicole Kidman in The Hours.In the end, I found it was only my own wishful thinking that Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy 3D would make a breakthrough apart from 3D. I can accept the protagonist is National Liberation Army and the dialogues are full of northeast dialect, but I cannot accept the movie "sticks to the original" to consecrate characters to serve politics. On the side of the protagonist, even girls and little children were loyal and courageous, having excellent marksmanship and extraordinary skills. They could catch a bandit standing guard on high by throwing up a rope; and the protagonist could fly to a snow mountain of thousands meter high by a rope.It is really not worshiping and having blind faith in foreign things. James Bond has extraordinary skills, but he can manages to make the impossible possible, to make me believe, make me stop querying and engage to movie world. Furthermore, though he has extraordinary skills, James Bond has his weakness, which makes him more human.

At the first glance (at the movie poster), this is definitely not the usual film that many people would catch. However, before the film was aired in Singapore, I've seen many positive review circulating online. Thanks to Clover Films, I got to watch this film directed by Tsui Hark, the director who filmed most of my favourite childhood Wong Fei Hong films starring Vincent Zhao and Jet Li.While this film was adapted from a 1957 novel, a famous opera, as well as a real life story, I thought the story was a tad too dramatic, not that I didn't like it, Lin Gengxin was almost a Captain America in the film with his leadership quality, and Chen Xiao (the recent Yang Guo in the New Condor Hero) as one of the be-spectacled Harry Potter-lookalike Gao Bo was like Bucky Barnes, Steve Roger's best friend.What I like about this film was how they made use of many popular actors and dressed them up in a such a way where they were almost not recognizable, unless you are their super fans. Chen Xiao and Tony Leung as Lord Hawk was one of the many examples.While fans of these famous opera will love this adaptation, people who do not know about it might find the film over the top, with tanks, bombs and jet planes hidden in the Tiger Mountain. I had to admit that I enjoyed the 3D action, the excellent acting from...Read more: http://tiffanyyong.com/2015/01/07/taking-tiger-mountain-movie-review/

There used to have a very pop nostalgia song, named: where the \flowers\ GONE?IT'S to describe the girls ever took some good or bad past of the boy's love,and love..at the first place.But IN China, the NATION's name CHONG HUA(Beauty flowers) upon to describe the HEROES OF THE LAND. who ever lived. Fight.Smile.Blood.Die...IS IT beautiful ?I think so..Whatever Those /heroes/ fight for,die for..Come back to this Director XU's new stunt Movie, IT'S GOOD.IT'S a movie can hold your attention all the two hours. it's quite hard to do that now days. Especially for a Chinese movie..THAT'S ALL. for a movie. And for C.LEO's Review.