DVD Review: 1911 (Xinhai geming)

★★☆☆☆
The release of 1911: Revolution celebrates two significant additions to the 100-club; Jackie Chain stars in what is billed as his 100th movie (I’ll take your word for it), a grand historical epic which also marks the centenary of China’s Xinhai Revolution.
The story of the final months of the Qing dynasty and the battle to end imperial rule is fought on two contrasting fronts. Huang Xing (Chan) leads his revolutionary brothers and sisters on the battlefield, while Sun Yat-sen (Winston Chao) takes the political fight to the power-chambers of Europe and the USA, in an effort to raise support for the fledgling republic.
Including all the relevant political, historical and contextual information for the unfamiliar viewer certainly seems to be a dauntingly complex task. It’s one that the film valiantly attempts, but at the expense of any real dramatic or narrative cohesion. Whereas Steven Soderbergh’s flawed, yet vastly superior Che, reduced its story of revolution to a more human one; 1911: Revolution tells its own with much broader, disordered strokes.
The recognisable signifiers of a violent fight for freedom are all present: impassioned cries for equality and people-power, bloody-minded street-fighting, and honourable, teary-eyed martyrdom. Also present, but infinitely less welcome, are the “fill in the blanks” information cards that blight almost every other scene. Presumably crucial snippets of information are presented via a near-impenetrable mass of excruciatingly-brief flashes of text. The resulting clumsy overload manages only to impart the paradoxical sense that one is being exposed to a mass of information, but actually learning very little. Various references are made to the erosion of national identity, or outmoded feudal system that prevails throughout the country; but a concrete grounding, and explanation for the motivation of these rebellious proles is sadly lacking.
Winston Chao’s English-language soapbox scenes come nestled between the fighting, but fare little better. With Chao’s Sun Yat-sen doing his best to spell out the situation to a group of grasping, western money-men, you get the sense that the film is bending over backwards to clue you up. Sadly Chao, acting commendably in a language that is clearly not his first, finds himself undermined by the hysterical woodenness of his screen-mates.
Jackie Chan too seems strangely underused, particularly from a film that boasts his 100th performance. He seems almost unrecognisable in a role that, by-and-large, ignores his near-genius mastery of physical performance, or his wonderful sense of comic timing. It’s laudable and certainly understandable for Chan to be eager to take on a more serious dramatic role; it would have been nice to compliment him with one that was even half-way memorable.
An epilogue which frames the uprising as a precursor to Communist victory in 1949 achieved by “following the spirit of Sun Yat-sen”, serves only to add another level of historical fug to a story which may have been better served by a longer running time than its sparse 95 minutes. Convoluted yet condensed, the relative complexity of the subject matter deserves a more meticulous and clearly defined story. In the end it feels like an anniversary crying out for a film to commemorate it.

2/5

Reviewer: Chris Banks (@Chris_in_2D)
Release Date UK: 19 March 2012
Directed By:Jackie Chan, Li Zhang
Cast:Jackie Chan, Bingbing Li,Winston Chao,

Buy 1911 Revolution on DVD or on Blu-ray