The overall premise is a good one, filled with promise. However, as is, a number of serious flaws prevented it from excelling.
1. There was no reason given nor any could be surmised for the father to so single-mindedly believe that filming the village opera was what the son really wanted. As the entire plot hinges on this point, the entire movie is therefore contrived on a major false premise.
2. Another huge flaw is that there is no reason at all again, for the father to insist that the opera singer must be Mr Li. Other equally capable performers were available but he refused for no reason other than the director needing to create another major false premise to allow the plot to continue.
3. The central actor (the father) is one of those who think that having a blank face almost throughout is considered acting. His expressionless robotic demeanour and stifled speaking is downright irritating and unbelievable. The few occasions he did deliver somewhat was too few and far between. It is bewildering to have a main character actor that is overshadowed by every other secondary characters. Yang Yang the boy is especially natural and convincing.
4. Not having even a basic dictionary when travelling to a totally foreign country with no common language is again just outright contrivance simply to create numerous clumsy 'translation' scenes.
5. The prison warden is overly and unnecessarily friendly and obliging in a totally unbelievable way.
5. I normally hold Zhang Yimou's movies in high regard. However, in this one he too obviously try to pull at heart strings in a none too subtle Hallmark-ish icky manner, and this was another key element that brought the movie down. This movie is clearly far far from his other works.
Overall it is an average-y ok watch, but go for the other much better Zhang Yimou's outputs.
1. There was no reason given nor any could be surmised for the father to so single-mindedly believe that filming the village opera was what the son really wanted. As the entire plot hinges on this point, the entire movie is therefore contrived on a major false premise.
2. Another huge flaw is that there is no reason at all again, for the father to insist that the opera singer must be Mr Li. Other equally capable performers were available but he refused for no reason other than the director needing to create another major false premise to allow the plot to continue.
3. The central actor (the father) is one of those who think that having a blank face almost throughout is considered acting. His expressionless robotic demeanour and stifled speaking is downright irritating and unbelievable. The few occasions he did deliver somewhat was too few and far between. It is bewildering to have a main character actor that is overshadowed by every other secondary characters. Yang Yang the boy is especially natural and convincing.
4. Not having even a basic dictionary when travelling to a totally foreign country with no common language is again just outright contrivance simply to create numerous clumsy 'translation' scenes.
5. The prison warden is overly and unnecessarily friendly and obliging in a totally unbelievable way.
5. I normally hold Zhang Yimou's movies in high regard. However, in this one he too obviously try to pull at heart strings in a none too subtle Hallmark-ish icky manner, and this was another key element that brought the movie down. This movie is clearly far far from his other works.
Overall it is an average-y ok watch, but go for the other much better Zhang Yimou's outputs.