After all, a story of brotherly love

Rating: 10/10 (20 August 2005)

Great movie, if I were to quote someone "it's better than Saving Private Ryan". Not suffering greatly from the theatrical touch of the Asian cinematography, the twists and turns are stretched to the limit, one more and it would be annoying, the drama is just a bit too much, the realism of the war scenes is pretty much as it should be, except some scenes that tend to disappoint (see the Chinese reinforcements or the flag unit's attack) due to the theatrical display and behavior. As opposed to Hollywood, not only the hero survives, and that's nice to see, it's a good change. The movie has so few drawback's that his strong points do make the impression, at least on me. I find it very easy to follow the story, not predicting the next scene as in other cases. In the end, all the violence so directly shown simply fades away in face of the strong message that's being sent to the viewer, blood connections are impossible to break. Brotherly love never dies, there's never a too big sacrifice to make for your own family. In fact, a delicate story, about some very delicate feelings, mounted in a very rough frame, but such conceived that it doesn't alter the contents. Simple, efficient, not very complicated, thing that might bother a few, but simple things are beautiful and effective. See it, it's worth the time.