Too much of everything

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

An older man who spends long periods of time at sea visits Chongqing for the first time in 14 years after his son is killed by police in a hostage crisis. He seeks to know what happened and what his son was like, but his ex-wife shuns him and his late son's best friend won't tell him much. The movie is about the man's quest to find out what happened and what his son was like.The shots of Chongqing are nice but the plot seems a bit like films I've scene before. Though we find out what happened to the son in the end and his father gets a certain sense of closure, what isn't answered is why the man left his family in the first place and why he caused his family so much pain.There are people who say Chinese films assume the audience needs to be led throughout the film to know what happened, but this time, the film left out why the man left.At any rate, I didn't mind this film and it also made me interested in visiting China, which I haven't done since 1995.