A work of art with many different angles.

Rating: 10/10 (6 September 2004)

For those of you who think this movie as a propaganda movie, it's really sad that you ignore the history and knowledge of propaganda. I am a Chinese and grow up in China. I have seen many propaganda movies but this one has nothing similar.
This movie is definitely operatic. For those of you get confused about the story, here is the plot. The story has been told three times. First time, Nameless make up a love triangle story but the King reveals that the story is not true. Then the King starts to tell a story from his own view. Of course, this is not true either. Eventually, Nameless told the true story. If you watch the three different versions of the story carefully, it tells you a lot about the characters' personalities. The fake story told by Nameless is a common love triangle story, which shows the limitation of Nameless' view of the "Tian Xia". The second story in the King's mind really shows his respect to Broken sword and Snow. The way he thinks how the story should be really touched Nameless' heart. The third story(the real one), really shows the love and passion of broken sword and snow.
Another confusion has been the fact that Broken sword has been killed for so many times in the movie. You have to watch it carefully that many killings in the movie are fake ones. Sometimes the story is fake and some other time the victims are just seriously wounded ( pretend to be killed to convince the king).
I can't believe some people, especially some Chinese people claim they saw propaganda in this movie. It sounds like they have never seen a propaganda movie and they already forget about Chinese history. The fact at that period of history is that 7 states were fighting with each other for a long period time. Every one of them wanted to conquer all the others. Qin was the strongest one during a particular time. There are no similarity of between what we saw in this movie and the current Taiwan-China, Bush-Iraq issues. The movie is trying to deliver a dream for peace of human kind. Unfortunately, different people have different views. It is true that the king of Qin becomes a brutal one after he unify China. But it's not going to be better if Nameless kill the king. The movie doesn't even particularly praise the king. All the main characters in the movie can be considered to be hero. If you are particularly interested in the King, it's your own view. Clearly, that's not the director's intention at least.
I love this movie and I love the style of the director. The most beautiful scene is when moon is dead after fighting with Snow in the fake story. It's simply beautiful and beyond imagination. Many people hate the part where the actors are flying around. If you watch more carefully, they flying around only in imagination and those fake stories. In the real story, none of them are actually flying around. To me, I have no problem to see those characters flying around so elegantly. It's just a fantasy and imagination. I enjoy this more than watching spiderman flying around.