One of the finest the Chinese cinema has to offer

This is just such a great movie on so many levels. The acting is superb, the cast is wonderful, the screenplay is impeccable. But what's really striking about the movie is that it never takes the easy path, to tell an easy-cheesy hero melodrama story that seems almost guaranteed in such an "epic" setting nowadays: ancient China, blood oath of brotherhood, Kongfu and swordplay, etc. (sounds familiar?)

Instead, the movie keeps hitting you with one moral dilemma after another at every turn of the plot. It not only shows you the process of General Pang losing his last shred of humanity and becoming a monster, but at the same time presents the audience with the difficult choices that drive him through it, which makes the audience can't help but somehow empathize with him and question whether he is really that wrong? That is what makes this movie so emotionally powerful and intellectually tasteful.

To me personally, this is a movie of demagogues, an epitome of the Chinese politics of the last century. General Pang always reminds me of Chairman Mao. Both are great military leaders, yet greater demagogues who use war and trickery to satisfy their personal crave for powers, and masterfully manipulate people's longing for morality and prosperity and turn them into barbarians and monsters. Maybe it's just me, but as a Chinese, I can't help but suspect that Director Chen might have the same thing in mind.