Beautifully shot silly story mixed with muddled politics I couldn't finish this film and perhaps, for that reason, you should take my review with a grain of salt. But I feel strongly enough about it to write something anyway.
The production values on this film are quite good - cinematography, acting, sets, action scenes, are all well done. The problem is that the story makes no sense and the politics are bizarre, to say the least.
A general gets up from the battlefield. He has survived a massacre by playing dead - a premise that is made less and less credible by his heroic performance later on. He joins a group of bandits, killing some poor prisoner whom he knows nothing about in order to prove his loyalty to the other chieftains. He convinces the bandits to join the Ching army to fight against the Taiping, who are in revolt against the government because they (the bandits) can get food and money that way. They ambush a Taiping supply convoy and then offers a deal to the government army. He will take a city for them from the Taiping if they give him half the spoils. So far, so good. A man with no morals joins the bandits and, with them, becomes a mercenary soldier for a corrupt government. He plans to take a city, sack it, loot it, and keep the profits. It doesn't fit the fairly decent image created for the hero, but at least it's consistent.
But then the film makers try to make this man into a genuine hero. He leads his forces selflessly into battle against Taiping soldiers - portrayed not as the ragtag peasant revolutionaries fighting with farm implements and having a religious motivation, as they actually were, but as a disciplined army with uniforms, officers, and rifles. He prepares to sacrifice his life to fight them.
By great heroics, he wins the battle, ignoring the spear that has thrust all the way through his chest, and takes the city. The spear has magically disappeared and our hero seems unaffected by the wound. Then, amazingly, he orders the execution of two soldiers in his own army for raping women in the city! He says he is serving a higher purpose and will not allow that kind of stuff to ever happen again.
Huh? Where did these scruples come from? He's just massacred an army for no reason other than pay. He's just fought for a corrupt government that is subservient to foreign interests and the interests of the rich landlords in the regions. He has just taken a city and, presumably, sacked it. He leaves the city with chests full of silver coins.
I don't know what the Chinese writers, directors, and censors were thinking when they made this film. One is tempted to conclude that, however coherent the story might have been when originally written, it was bowdlerized to support the government above all and pretend that supporting the government is a good thing for everyone, even if it's corrupt.
It was hard to take. I couldn't take it. Mao must be rolling over in his grave.