In pre-unified China, the King of Qin sends his concubine to a rival kingdom to produce an assassin for a political plot, but as the king's cruelty mounts she finds her loyalty faltering.
Not far from Shanghai, in a country town stands the palatial home of the Pang family. Old Master Pang is an addict who brings up his beautiful daughter Ruyi on opium smoke. Her older ... See full summary »
A violin prodigy and his father travel to Beijing, where the father seeks the means to his son's success while the son struggles to accept the path laid before him.
To save the only child of the Zhao Family, whose entire clan was massacred at the hands of a nefarious minister, a doctor sacrifices his own son; after the Zhao child grows up, the doctor becomes intent on seeking his vengeance.
A pregnant peasant woman seeks redress from the Chinese bureaucracy after the village chief kicks her husband in the groin in this comedy of justice. As she is frustrated by each level of ... See full summary »
'Yellow Earth' focuses on the story of a communist soldier who is sent to the countryside to collect folk songs for the Communist Revolution. There he stays with a peasant family and learns... See full summary »
A blind man's master told him that after he has broken 1000 strings on his Banjo, he can open the Banjo to get a script for his eyes. After 60 years he broke the 1000th string...
A provincial boy related to a Shanghai crime family is recruited by his uncle into cosmopolitan Shanghai in the 1930s to be a servant to a ganglord's mistress.
In the 3rd Century BC, Ying Zheng, heir to the Kingdom of Qin, seeks to dominate the remaining six Chinese kingdoms. Ying's strategy is to seem invincible. Ying sends his concubine Zhao to the Han Kingdom as a spy, to enlist an assassin he can conquer. Zhao persuades Jing Ke, but falls in love.Written by
<ssrich@cityu.edu.hk>
At the time, this was the most expensive Chinese production ever. See more »
Alternate Versions
First cut was deemed regime-critic by chinese censors and therefore rejected. Approximately 30 minutes were cut to make a more regime-friendly version. See more »
This three-hour Chinese epic, set in 220 B.C., may ultimately amount to a familiar theme of an Emperor's idealistic dream of peace through unification mutating into corrupted isolation, and there's nothing inherently challenging about the film, but it's a compelling narrative, crammed with intrigue and passion and betrayal and epic events told in vivid strokes. Even for those not drawn to such historical spectacles for their own sake, it's an astonishing feast for the eyes: the scene depicting the coup attempt of the Marquis is one of the most staggering evocations of physical space and grandeur in memory, and the battle scenes are memorable both in their scope and their immediacy. The title sums up the film's use of compelling contrasts - huge plainland vistas set against intimate horrors; the noblest of motives set against the most degraded; hope turning to dust. If you've never seen a three-hour Chinese epic, this wouldn't be a bad place to start.
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This three-hour Chinese epic, set in 220 B.C., may ultimately amount to a familiar theme of an Emperor's idealistic dream of peace through unification mutating into corrupted isolation, and there's nothing inherently challenging about the film, but it's a compelling narrative, crammed with intrigue and passion and betrayal and epic events told in vivid strokes. Even for those not drawn to such historical spectacles for their own sake, it's an astonishing feast for the eyes: the scene depicting the coup attempt of the Marquis is one of the most staggering evocations of physical space and grandeur in memory, and the battle scenes are memorable both in their scope and their immediacy. The title sums up the film's use of compelling contrasts - huge plainland vistas set against intimate horrors; the noblest of motives set against the most degraded; hope turning to dust. If you've never seen a three-hour Chinese epic, this wouldn't be a bad place to start.