Load of rubbish!!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

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

First off this movie is supposed to be a compelling adventure about a few brave men protecting endangered antelopes from poachers. What they don't tell you is, in the course of shooting this movie they are actually shooting real antelope. Granted these aren't the "endangered" animals they are protecting in the plot but a similar antelope breed with fake antlers glued to it. With 6 views of antelopes being killed consistently and bleeding out made it hard for me to believe there message.Hypocritical doesn't begin to summarize this movie. If I was you I wouldn't waste my time or money.I mean real antelopes being killed in a movie about stopping people from killing them? These writers should feel ashamed.

There's a stark, haunting beauty within the land called Kekexili -- Tibetan for "Beautiful mountains, beautiful women" -- that threatens to smother the human drama being played out between the patrolmen risking their lives to preserve the antelope and the poachers who use their skins to create obscenely expensive scarves. No matter what the scene, be it a closeup of an action taking place in a river or a medium shot of vehicles traversing a barren, empty land, Kekexili is undoubtedly the main character in this gorgeous but bleak film, a hostile land that in one of the movie's most striking moments, swallows a lone patrolman whole when he makes the mistake of stepping over quicksand.As an action movie, only the first scene is really where the brutality ensues as antelope are systematically killed (right in front of the camera, which makes it a tad intense for anyone not used to these images) and the patrolman trying to protect them gets a bullet in his head. It gets quickly established from the get-go that these poachers are soulless individuals whose greed has led them to destroy the wildlife, which makes the plight of Ri Tai, a man whose life has been committed to the cause of the antelope, and Ga Yu, a reporter who gets involved in the case, more relevant even when everyone else gets blurred in the background and it seems that there will be no solution to this matter.KEKEXILI is a tricky movie to classify even when it's clearly grounded in thriller and action roots due to the overpowering nature of the place where it's set and its refusal to romanticize its two lead characters. If anything, it can be seen as a silent film, one that tells its story in mute yet powerful images, and in doing so, gets its message across.

This film returns to the topics and aesthetics of New Chinese cinemas of the Fifth Generation filmmakers. There are especially strong connections to Chen Kaige's first film "Yellow Earth" (1984). The harsh, unforgiving natural elements in Kekexili (and in Tibet more generally) are both beautiful and harrowing, similar to the landscape in "Yellow Earth". The outsider reporter/photographer Ga Yu from Beijing echoes "Yellow Earth" character Brother Gu, of the Eighth Route Army, who is a visitor to the impoverished peasant family in that earlier film. Unlike the early Fifth Generation works by Zhang Yimou such as "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern", "Kekexili" is set in very contemporary times and as such, the criticism of government policies and neglect is much stronger. In scenes of violence, the film's use of long shots and long takes is more powerful than the more common use of editing to extreme close ups.

I've been waiting for the screening of this movie for a very long time, and I guess I was really lucky that I was able to watch it at all, since there are only four copies being rotated in Germany. Considering the international approval of the movie, this seems quite ridiculous to me.Apart from that, I don't have to add much to the other users' comments, but it can't be said often enough how much energy this film gains, first from the not-telling-but-showing technique of the portrayal of its characters; and second, from the way nature is depicted as it breaks the will even of these strong characters. They become even more realistic because of the strong inner conflict which is aroused by the necessity of selling some of the confiscated antelope skins. All in all, the movie (re-)presents existential, universal questions at least as successful as the best westerns that I have seen.Adding to this, Kekexili is certainly also a must-see for anybody interested in the "Tibetan Question", as it shows life in the Tibetan highlands from a very uncommon angle: It's a Chinese view of "Shangri-La", torn between admiration of its spirituality and humanity and, on the other side, shocked amazement by its harshness and inhumanity. Generally, it's a universal approach independent of ideology, and that's never to be taken for granted whenever Tibet is involved (needless to say that this concerns the American or European image of Tibet as well).