Can Chinese people fly?

Rating: 2/10 (10 March 2013)

I was forced to watch this tripe for a film study paper at university. If you want to watch an "art" film and pay attention to elements of mise-en-scene then 2 stars might be an unfair rating. However if you want to watch a film with a story or perchance acting then 2 stars could even be generous. I opted for the average
Before the screening started the lecturer made sure we realised that the director had used as little CGI as possible. Every person seen in the film is a real person, on deployment from the Chinese Army. The glass still lakes are actually glass still and not CGIed, to the extent where a 4 minute scene on one took over 15 days to film as there was only 30minutes to 2hrs of glass stillness per day to film on. Another example is the scene in the forest with yellow leaves. The director used 100s of workers (probably from a local sweatshop) to collect and sort the leaves into different grades of yellow so that it looked perfect for this scene. Lots of Kudos for the director so far.
After all this lack of CGI you'd expect a film to the standard of Ghandi. Unfortunately in every fight scene the combatants were able to leap to extraordinary heights and if they ever came close to the ground they only needed a menial action such as a glancing high five to the still glass lake before reascending. Another example is the 5000 real soldiers firing 50 million CGIed arrows at Jet Li and some other woman who then block said millions of arrows with fancy sword work.
Thus all the Kudos gained by the director for not using CGI he lost for using CGI. Then he lost more through his film having no element of a plot. And terrible acting throughout. And considering all this it went on too long. Maybe if it was concentrated into a 30minute episode of anime it could appeal to Japanese youth but unfortunately in its current form it is nothing more than cinematic bilge.