Well you don't necessarily have to be a sucker for historical accuracy in order to dislike this movie. I'm typically not very thrilled about John Woo, but in this movie he felt like a Chinese Michael Bay - stupid plot, stupid characters, big explosions.
The thing that bothered me the most, which is also discussed on another thread on this board, was the stupidity of the "bad" guys. Starting with that "labyrinth" war scene from the first movie, which is as believable and awe inspiring as a game of dominoes. I don't necessarily care about historical accuracy, but darn it man, unless it's meant to look like a puppet show or to be a parody, at least make the bread-and-butter of the movie - the fight scenes - look like fight scenes, and between sane people.
Then here, we have a good football player made an army captain, we have the leading bad guy kill his only navigation specialists without even thinking of what he's doing, we have him receiving the enemy's wife and not even thinking about questioning her on her husband's plans (not to mention torture her, rape her or at least hold her hostage). And of course, we have the generals relish a huge amount of arrow supply without even knowing what they were shooting at. Or wondering how come that the ships they had been shooting at were turning around and leaving, when everyone on board should have been dead.
Then the good guys. They see a huge pile of dead soldiers floating down the river - hey let's get their weapons! No way should we check the cause of death first! Ah wait that was in the first part, sorry. Now, we have two princesses going over to the bad guys' side, for various reasons, without ever thinking that they could provide the enemy with hostage material. One totally manages to infiltrate the enemy army and pass as a man, while making friends, spying and drawing maps. And the bloody wife, who has a spontaneous moment of idiocy and goes over to - stop the war? stall the battle? even though she was pregnant, and she even tells that to her husband before leaving - you know, for encouragement.
And finally, the same good guys in the end just - let the baddie escape, because they ruined his hair and the shame of it is gonna keep him from ever doing bad things. Because, you know, this war was supposed to be a moral lesson for everybody. For the good guys - stay united or else, and for the bad guy - stop doing bad things.
The first part did have some nice scenery (such as the fleet on Yangtze) and even a few good fights (like the intro), and some nice scenes - like the musical dialogue. Perhaps the main fault of this part was that it contained too little to distract one from the silly plot.
there's a highway that is curling up like smoke above her shoulder
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