I'm gonna put in my two cents regardless if my opinions have already been stated by someone else = )
Regarding Zhang Yimo, I think his older films were directed towards a totally different audience. They were more expressions of what he was thinking at the time, and were targeted at a probably mainly chinese audience. Movies at that time probably covered similar subjects. These movies were also more 'artistic', in the sense that they used no special effects and only caught people's attention because the stories were well crafted, and captured emotional events well.
His more recent work like Hero and House of Flying Daggers, were probably produced with a international and/or western audience in mind. I.e. he used actors/actresses that are already pretty well known, like Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi. While those movies certainly had their strong points you have to admit the plot was never really as well written, and the main attention grabber was a tragic love story. Whereas his older movies were probably more focused on an entire group of people reflecting on larger scale very human issues.
I think the same can be said about this director, but having watched this movie it did seem pretty ridiculous hahaha. It is definitely not as well done as Hero or House of Flying Daggers, but very much in teh same vein. However, I think if you don't take it too seriously it can be a fairly enjoyable event.
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