DVD Review: Beginning of the Great Revival

DVD Reviews, Film, Reviews

Beginning of the Great Revival tells the volatile story of China in the early 1900’s. Sadly, it does most of it in a bullet point fashion telling more of the story in text on screen than in the scenes. The subtitled dialogue aside, I read more in this movie than any other film I’ve ever seen. With text always telling the viewer where the scene is, what’s happening and introducing each and every character often two of the three at the same time you’re forced to look all over the screen to try and figure out what’s going on, thus preventing you from enjoying the scene that is going on behind it.

There are so many characters in this film with drastically varying amounts of screen time that it is really hard to keep track of who the focus is in each scene. The film doesn’t have a main character in the traditional sense, however Mao Zedong (Ye Liu) gets the most screen time as he and his fellow classmates fight to create the Chinese Communist Party.

The acting across the board is very good with great talents such as Daniel Wu, Chow Yun-Fat, John Woo and Andy Lau. Also, it is an extremely well shot with some interesting split-screen choices throughout; some of them work and some of them don’t. The battle sequences are all extremely well shot even when they borrow a page from the opening of Saving Private Ryan.

Beginning of the Great Revival really starts to gel about an hour in when it finally seems to find focus and allow the audience to spend more than a few minutes with a group of characters. The story starts to speak for itself for a little while and the text on screen is seen a whole lot less here. The emotional level of the film is raised here and you actually start to care about what’s happening.

Overall, this feels like a highlight reel from what should be about three or four films. There is a lot of story and history crammed in here and not all of it comes off as interesting. Perhaps someone with a better understanding of Chinese history would not find this film as confusing as I did.

The film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen and 5.1 Dolby Digital surround. This is a very good looking film that really feels like it captures the look and feel of China in the early 1900s. The sound it great as well. This is a very well produced film.


There are no special features.

With a recent personal interest in Chinese history I was really looking forward to watching this in hopes of getting a better idea of how the current political culture came to be, but sadly I found this film more confusing than anything. Still, the film was well shot and well acted and made even the most confusing parts pretty to look at.

China Lion presents Beginning of the Great Revival. Written Dong Zhe, Guo Junli and Huang Xin. Directed by: Han Sanpingand Huang Jianxin. Starring: Liu Ye, Daniel Wu, Chow Yun-Fat, John Woo and Andy Lau. Running time: 124 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Released on DVD: January 24, 2012. Available at Amazon.com.

Mike Noyes received his Masters Degree in Film from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. A few of his short films can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mikebnoyes. He recently published his first novel which you can buy here: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-Years-Mike-Noyes-ebook/dp/B07D48NT6B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528774538&sr=8-1&keywords=seven+days+seven+years