Wow, this is awful. In many respects, it reminds me of Australia: it is clear Zhang Yimou (Hero) was expected to deliver an moving and spectacular international epic, a film for every audience and season, when hired to direct this lavish (and state-financed) China set World War II film. The end result is a strange beast with several heads and no heart. Zhang is a capable, at times top-notch director, but he lost control here. The film feels art directed within an inch of its life and is far too beholden to ideology and sentimentality.

Poor Christian Bale delivers what may be the worst performance of his career. He plays an enormous contrivance of a role: a hard-living, womanizing mortician caught in eastern China when war erupts who finds himself hiding among children and prostitutes in a church encircled by Japanese soldiers. He, of course, undergoes a spiritual transformation and becomes a grim, reluctant savior. The role is broad, and Bale never finds the right way to play it, opting for an almost comic style. The other characters are one-note, the most grating being the over-the-top vixen prostitute chorus. Again, broad; for a film depicting a notorious battle turned massacre, The Flowers of War tries very hard for laughs.

The film is a shade too patriotic. The last Chinese soldiers are portrayed in a manner almost religious, with the narrator reminding us more than once they could change into civilian clothing and flee, but, no, they fight on. It is so calculated, it ceases to be inspiring or touching. And the film's violence is absurd, with slow-motion bullets cutting through computer-generated flesh, followed by geysers of beautiful and choreographed blood.

D

I dunno, I liked it, although it does suffer from "heroic white man" syndrome.

I'd recommend City of Life and Death for a more realistic depiction of the event.

City of Life & Death is a very good movie. I haven't seen this one yet, I seem to be in the UK when it was on release in China and in China when it was on release in the UK, so I've missed it. Want to see it, though, because I really like Christian Bale.

I thought it was a wonderful, very touching movie with some pretty disturbing scenes.

Christian Bale carries the film and Ni Ni is excellent too in her first role. But the film suffers a bit from overt patriotisms on the Chinese soldiers part at the beginning of the film, as well as there being some acting that feels unappealing in a childish way. When looking past those things though, it has some gripping scenes and Yimou succeeds in making the film look good and bring some emotional heft at times as well.

B-