Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

gaojingyu This film is a masterpiece. The first time I saw this film was in senior heigh's class when I was in China. And to those reviewers who know nothing about China, except the issue when the film first went public, this film is the representative work of Jiang Wen which is spoken highly by the Chinese audience. It never goes underground and now it is accessible everywhere on Chinese video website. One less thing to criticise us, what a pity.

ziggy-luo OK, it is obvious to Chinese people who "me" is: the Maoist, Communist resistance force: Communist Eighth Route Army (Ba Lu Jun).It is even more obvious "what" "me" is: an irresponsible, cowardly team of individuals who dumped the extremely dangerous load upon the innocent villagers, and bailed on them, never came back, and eventually led to the death of the entire village (who were so good-hearted that fed and bathed invader, save food for them..) There is so much to be said about this film, it is smartly made, has a message about every side involved in the conflict: Japanese Military, Chinese villagers, Chinese Communists, Chinese Nationalists... Messages that requires digesting to get..

Hunky Stud This is truly a masterpiece. I didn't plan to write a comment, but there are only 15 comments. Then I found out that it was banned by the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television due to its political incorrectness. So I am compelled to write a comment. This film was never released in mainland China. Is that government that afraid? Why do the Chinese filmmakers have no freedom? Those great Chinese directors, actors can not live on forever. When will the Chinese filmmakers have the freedom to make films that they want, so those films can be forever treasured by the generations forever.This film reminded me of the other film called "Life is beautiful." They are both funny and about world war II. So few people in the West knew about the Japanese invasion of China during world war II, and millions of Chinese were brutally killed. Who could have thought that this kind of war movie can be super funny and meaningful? If they can give Oscar to "Life is beautiful" and "Schindler's List", they should also give Oscar's Best Foreign Film of the year or maybe Best film of the year to this film. This is just a rare epic coming from China. I have seen quite a few so-called best foreign film of the year given by the Academy, they were not great at all.Most of the Chinese and Japanese actors were pretty good. However, David Wu as Major Gao did not perform well. When he first appeared, he actually was speaking Cantonese instead of the standard Mandarin Chinese. Then when he was delivering his speech, he also said a few words in Cantonese. Overall, he doesn't look like a Chinese nationalist army major at all.Comparing to "Life is Beautiful", this film lacks of the beautiful music. I can laugh and cry when I watch "Life is beautiful." I can only laugh and feel sad when I watch this one.

StephaneD This is a really beautiful movie. The picture is marvelous, the plot is great; it's amazingly funny, I surprised myself keeping laughing very often on jokes in Chinese language!!!...Black and White is a really justified choice. The story is of the japanese occupation of China during WWII is very new to westerners. Cruelty of the then Japanese occupants is sudden and devastating. The end is a terrible movie scene, one of the most stunning ends I've ever seen.I'm usually into us or european movies, and not at all into asian movies, but I think it's one of the greatest chinese movies I've ever seen, with hong-kong's "in the mood for love" and taiwanese "yi yi". But it's much easier to see : anyone could see it without getting bored.It's been acclaimed in France and Cannes Film Festival. It should have deserved an international acclaim. I keep recommending it around me in Paris. Hope it's played elsewhere in other western countries; and in Japan of course... 10/10