matthewleewhite

Ya pian zhan zheng (1997)

Surprisingly good with impressive acting

I stumbled upon this film by accident and decided to give it a go as I was interested in learning the history. Knowing it was a Chinese film sponsored by the government I was surprised to see that it had a lot of prominent British actors (at the time) playing the British characters. This is unusual for a Chinese film as they usually would employ Russians or Polish as cheaper fill ins. It's clear that the British actors and the British assistant director had a degree of artistic flexibility with the script, as the way the characters talk and the mannerisms are quite clearly written by an English native speaker. There are scenes in London with the queen, in parliament as the prospect of war is debated and voted on. I wanted to see more from the British side. Particularly the Opium dealer played by Bob Peck, his story arc finishes halfway. It left me wanting more to be honest. There is a big battle at the end, which is a little underwhelming by today's standards. Some modern CGI and grander battles would make this an amazing film. The Chinese parts are the main focus of the film of course, a lot of politics and dilemmas faced by the officials. I watched it in Chinese without subtitles, so it was hard to follow everything they were saying but I think there is a version online with English subtitles. Would be great to see a remake of this! Or even a TV show that explores the war in greater detail.