Reviews

• It saves its clunkiest scene for the finale. No fair telling, but the key words are "political," "propaganda," "outdoors" and "orphans."

  Mike Clark - USA Today
  
  19 January 2013

• It might have been a satisfying if not terribly original piece of historical melodrama, but its clumsiness turns it, against its best intentions, into half-baked operatic kitsch.

  Dana Stevens - The New York Times
  
  19 January 2013

• Can never rise above the melodrama of a past era, despite a splendid, impassioned portrayal by Willem Dafoe and an affecting one by Luo Yan.

  Kevin Thomas - Los Angeles Times
  
  19 January 2013

• The locations and production design are breathtakingly beautiful. But though cast largely with Chinese actors, it was shot in English, which no doubt made business sense but almost certainly accounts for many truly awful performances.

  Maitland McDonagh - TV Guide
  
  19 January 2013

• A film that was made in China but has the soul of a '50s Hollywood melodrama.

  - The Washington Post
  
  19 January 2013