The Need of Bale

Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2012)

Despite the fact that I'm Chinese, I would only give my humble review on the Movie and leave its related history out of this.
Cons Without doubt, Christian Bale is one the greatest actors whilst his acting has been proved in movies such as The Fighter, American Psycho. However, as usual, a movie that has a great actor like him would allocate more weight/time for his performance. This being said, I wouldn't say this is the right call when this Movie is about the sacrifice of 12 prostitutes (plus one boy) for 12 innocent convent students. Zhang has mistakenly put too much emphasis on Bale and perhaps between Bale's character, Miller and the prostitute, Yu Mo. For this reason, Zhang failed to give the prostitutes and the convent student girls enough opportunities to make a real impact in this already draggy movie.
Due to the lack of Enough delivery of the emotional relationship between the prostitute and the little soldier (who died in the movie), and the convent girl. The moving scenes therefore did not give me the right amount of sentimental dosage for my tears.
Secondly, the acting of some of the juniors was somewhat disappointing; for an example, the boy (headed out with the prostitutes in the end) at his best, did not carry his character fully. The father (whose daughter is among the students) did not show enough concern of his daughter in some of the scenes.
Pros Zhang is indeed a master in scenes creation. I reckon the battle scene, Bale's spreading of the red cross scene, and the convent students suicide attempt scene have showed me great colour contrast selection, sensational motions capturing, and good angle and timing directing. Some of us should have experienced those in his older movies such as Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, etc..
To wrap up, the Flowers of War does show us that many great professionals have put in much hard work in its production, however film allocation of the characters fails to give viewers a supposedly tears running experience.