Very Cool!!!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Directed by Zhang Yimou as in many of his films, stars Gong Li in the title role. This film adaption of Chen Yuanbin's novella The Wan Family's Lawsuit tells the story of a peasant woman, Qiu Ju (Gong Li), who lives in a rural area of China. When her husband is kicked in the groin by the village head, Qiu Ju, despite her pregnancy, travels around looking for a apology. When apology isn't given, she goes to the nearby town to find the policemen to press charges, and later a big city to deal with its bureaucrats to try to find justice for her husband. Her lack-back husband, on the other hand is just happier to just move on, and let bygones be bygones, but for Qiu Ju, it becomes a never ending cycle dealing with lawyers, judges, and courts. It's a humorous fable of justice that shows how justice is distributed varies between classes. Gong Li is wonderful as Qiu Ju, a tenacious farmer determined to right a wrong done to her husband. If watching this film with hopes of seeing Gong Li's ravishing beauty, you will be disappointed. She is blandly dressed and pregnant through most of the film. Defying all stereotypes of the passive Chinese woman, she remains unbowed by the frustrations of bureaucracy in her quixotic search for dignity. In this case, "The Story of Qiu Ju" shows how the legal authorities find money as a just compensation, whereas Qiu Ju finds an apology more appropriate. The movie has a Frank Capra, Mr. Smith goes to Washington feel to it, with a simple-minded person go to the government looking for change. Also the camera work whose influence comes directly from the Italian Nero Realism films such as Francis Truffaunt's 'the 400 Blows' as the ending nearly mimics that ending shot using the freeze frame and close up. The story feels like Bicycle Thieves due to it's well narrated story about the modern day parable that explores the gray area between seeking justice and exacting revenge is chilling. It is a cautionary tale as well since it shows that justice is not an absolute. Justice can be a somewhat intangible concept - something that needs to be defined by the human experience. One person's injustice can be another person's justice. The movie intent to expose the daunting bureaucratic Chinese government, with it's use of comedy, drama, and political satire. Although the film takes place in China, there is a sense that it could be just about anywhere in the world since the struggles contained within are so universal in nature. The snakelike pathways of the bureaucracy to an unexpected outcome is a universal problem that is as much in evidence in a Democracy as well as Communist. The resulting film, as an exercise in frustration, is as essential an addition to the "literature" of the law as Dickens' Bleak House or Trollope's Orley Farm, and should be on the curriculum of every law school. The movie is a bit of a frustration to get through as well. The faults of the film are that the movie is hard to get through in one sitting, there are long periods of non-talking, and nothing going on screen, and the never ending tragic results of Qiu Ju not getting her way. The slow-paced temp of the film really hurt the film. The kick is never shown, but the entire film is based around it. I would love to see the action being case, but having the kick not show add another layer of mystery. The humor is dry, but it's funny that one point that the director seems eager to make is that the people are not hungry in China. Nearly ever other scene shows people eating. The film lacks any of the visually stunning as his other film 'The Road Home', but it's does what it can with the shots, they have. The rural scenes and settings are real. The village, journeys and settings are all real China, not a Hollywood set. The background actors are incredibly real people who don't work for screen actors guild. It's feel like Communist China. While the film might be for all audiences, it's worth checking out

Fighting bureaucracy at any time and in any place is a tremendously frustrating experience. No disrespect intended, but how much more frustrating it must be in a Communist country! "The Story Of Qiu Ju" is the story of a woman's fight against the Communist bureaucracy as she struggles to get justice for her husband, Qinglai. Qinglai got into a dispute with a local village chief, and was kicked in the groin as a result. Qiu Lu wants an apology from the chief, because she's afraid her husband won't be able to father children after the kick. She tries the official mediation route, going from village to district to city officials and gets turned down at every juncture. Finally, she files a lawsuit, with some ultimately unexpected (and undesired) results.For the most part, the movie seems to be lighthearted, although to be honest comedy seems to lose something when it's subtitled. You get the funny lines as you read them, but it's just not the same. Given that this was made in Communist China, I have to assume that the government had some censorship role in it, and I was surprised at the amount of fun that was poked at the system throughout, but I also thought I detected something of a warning in how this ended - don't take things too far because they could get out of hand.There's a realistic feel to the depictions of village life in this, and the interconnectedness of the lives of the people in the village also comes through clearly. Even in the midst of the dispute, the village bonds aren't broken. Still, something was missing here - maybe the subtitled comedy; maybe what I thought (having visited China) was the too beneficent view of the local police. The first third of the movie I found quite dull, and while it picked up from then on, it still wasn't as much fun as some Chinese movies I've seen. In the end, I'd rate this as a 4/10

all the knee-jerk reviewers with their banal, namby pamby comments used all the high ratings up. Get real people, she wants "nothing more than to have the village elder apologize to her husband". NO. She wants the apology for herself. How many people like this do I know? People who've never accomplished much of anything in their lives, but they run around like the Queen of Sheba, demanding the world listen to them above all else. "bureaucratic nightmare"?!?! She gets treated better than Americans do by both their government and most of the commercial organizations which we pay for service! "a completely convoluted and impregnable" system "totally devoid of compassion and understanding"? The system is open to her, even saying "you have a right to be suspicious, we might make mistakes" & then prompting her to take it to the next level. The system UNDERSTANDS that systems cannot make people APOLOGIZE. Systems can throw people in jail, fine them, etc. An apology is an emotion, not a system event. Her problem is she doesn't understand what things are worth & worth fighting for. She's always haggling over money in the film. What are things worth? What is an "I'm sorry" spoken by someone with a gun held to their head WORTH? Get real people. "the Chinese are quiet, gentle people"!?!? Yeah, tell that to all the victims of the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, etc. They are PEOPLE, some good, some bad, some gentle, some psychotic killers more interested in their own good time & fortune than in other people's next breath. Get real. "Oh, it shows the real Chinese countryside." It was made IN the Chinese countryside by Chinese! Were you expecting to be reminded of Coal Miner's Daughter & the Appalachians perhaps?All in all, fine acting and a fine Rorschach of a story. It drags quite a bit in the "local color" scenes, but for anyone who has never strayed more than 500 miles from their birthplace, there's the local color.

Probably my least favorite Zhang Yimou film. Oh, it's not bad. It's pretty good, to tell the truth. But it's the kind of film where you get the point right away and you have to spend 100 minutes watching the filmmaker stumble toward the foregone conclusion. Gong Li plays the title character, a hugely pregnant woman. Her husband just got kicked in the nuts by their farming community's chief, and Qiu Ju wants an apology. Unfortunately, none of the officials she takes the case to can actually force the guy to apologize. They can make him dole out monetary compensation, but that's not good enough for Qiu Ju. Every time she doesn't get the results she wants, she attempts to go to a higher level of authority. It's an amusing situation, but the film kind of plods along slowly. I won't demand Zhang Yimou stick to his wonderful visual talents, but it is disappointing how mundane this film looks and feels. The worst crime perhaps is that Gong Li isn't given much acting to do. I love the final look on her face when the film ends, but I think pretty much anyone could have played Qiu Ju. I know, it sounds like I hated it, but I didn't. I just wasn't overly impressed with it, despite its obvious qualities.