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50Introduces American audiences to Luo Yan, a charismatic Chinese-born actress now living in Los Angeles. She single-handedly nurtured this project to fruition, serving as producer, co-writer and star.
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50It saves its clunkiest scene for the finale. No fair telling, but the key words are "political," "propaganda," "outdoors" and "orphans."
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40So many romantic cliches it's laughable.
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40Has an awkwardness that defeats whatever emotional involvement it tries to achieve.
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30The locations and production design are breathtakingly beautiful. But though cast largely with Chinese actors, it was shot in English, which no doubt made business sense but almost certainly accounts for many truly awful performances.
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30Yim's film is kneecapped by its soundtrack twice over.
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30Can never rise above the melodrama of a past era, despite a splendid, impassioned portrayal by Willem Dafoe and an affecting one by Luo Yan.
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30It might have been a satisfying if not terribly original piece of historical melodrama, but its clumsiness turns it, against its best intentions, into half-baked operatic kitsch.
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A film that was made in China but has the soul of a '50s Hollywood melodrama.
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25It's loaded with -- scenery-chewing melodrama, cornball pidgin dialogue and syrupy music.
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25This version is a well-meant but corny distillation -- a whole lot of bombast and phony exaltation in the name of entertaining enrichment.
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20The backdrop of exotic pagodas and wartime woe isn't nearly potent enough to buoy the feeble drama that plays out in the foreground.
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20Fails to stir the emotions despite its heavily melodramatic drive.
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20Bland as a fortune cookie and as trite as the message inside.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 6
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Mixed: 0 out of 6
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Negative: 0 out of 6
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RitaF.8
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AiS9