Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

In response to the "Why did they campaign in China?" review. At the time, Japan had been forced open to foreign influence by the Americans in the mid 1800s. They saw what was going around with Westerners essentially turning China into their play thing and meddling as they wished in East Asia. Japan concluded that it would have to begin colonizing like the European powers in order to become more power such that they would be free of foreign influence. In that way, the Russo-Japanese war can be see as a defensive action. Russia and Japan had made a treaty before the war, but Russia kept encroaching on more and more land in violation.The movie is old and it shows. The special effects aren't the best. The deaths are overly dramatic and as stated above, there is ketchup blood. The recoil on the cannons are nonexistent (which becomes rather laughable when you see the 28cm guns fire). There is a lot of saber rattling and Banzais, but there are some subplots away from the war.For history buffs. I would watch this just because there is little else on Port Arthur. This is not a documentary of the whole siege however (the run time might fool you). The whole siege is not portrayed. The lieutenant main character is part of the 7th regiment of the ninth division which fought in some important actions of the siege but the whole effort was much greater. There is a small departure to the 203 meter hill as it has become a sort of symbol of the Siege of Port Arthur (why this is, I am not exactly sure, there was much desperate fighting in many other places as well).

In the beginning of the movie, the aside said the campaign was to protect their country. To protect their country, they could invade other country. Is this right? According to this parlance, our country also can assign the force to Japan? And to protect our profit,we can take somewhere in Japan as our basis for almost 50 years? Everyone who love peace can consider this logic is wrong and don't agree with Japanese acquaintance for the history. Today most Japanese don't correct the wrong viewpoint of their invaded history.So Japanese is not worth to be trust! And I think China will be strong in the future and don't suffer the other countries's invasion.

This is not exactly a masterpiece of of a movie. It depicts, generally, the "glorious" battle for Hill 203 during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. The hill was eventually captured at stupendous loss of life on both the Japanese and Russian sides. The capture of the hill enabled the Japanese army to put pressure on the Russian pacific fleet, thus securing the Japanese victory together with Admiral Togo's "lucky" win in the coming naval battle.The movie is sometimes quite heavy, complete with thick pancake make up even in close-ups and stunningly unrealistic beards. The fighting scenes are full of hands thrown up in the air and death cries, ketchup blood and people yelling banzai. All in all it reminds me of the kind of war movies put out in Hollywood about 30 years earlier. For history buffs and those interested in seeing a war movie with a more "oriental" flavour, I'd recommend it. I've never found a subtitled copy though the Japanese is not so difficult.Worth noting are the actors playing Emperor Meiji, General Nogo and the young idealistic lieutenant who also provides the movie with a subplot of love, a woman left behind and the angst of combining an internationalist pacifist world view with a burning patriotism. Super stuff.