Director Zhang Yimou’s respectful but straightforward approach to the story gives it quite a powerful punch even though it employs a few conventions that we’ve seen in several other films.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2022

As a melodrama it's passable, solidly crafted entertainment, but one can't escape the nagging feeling that perhaps such ghastly atrocities shouldn't go down this easy.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 6, 2019

A florid, melodramatic tear-jerker of questionable taste but undeniable emotional impact.

Full Review | May 3, 2015

The filming techniques cross Saving Private Ryan with Zimou's own Hero and other dynastic, martial arts-driven Chinese epics.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2012

It contributes nothing of value to an understanding of these events.

| Aug 5, 2012

It can look tremendous, even if Zhao Xiaoding's hyper-stylised '90-retro cinematography sits uneasily beside relentless bloodshed and sexual violations.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 3, 2012

Bale is forthright and emotional in the role, and with a hint of boyish vulnerability, even reminds us of his 13-year-old self in Spielberg's Empire of the Sun.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 2, 2012

Maudlin make-believe in which a molecule of fact has been dropped like vermouth into a martini ...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 2, 2012

Zhang gives his fondness for chaste melodrama and shimmering colours full rein: it's a style that suits his courtly martial arts films such as Hero, but this material would have benefited from a more Spielbergian, or perhaps David Lean-ian, approach.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 2, 2012

While absorbing and never dull you can't help feeling the horrific subject matter deserved rather more subtle handling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 2, 2012

The title alludes to a precious beauty that grows during times of war, but this is just taking things way too far. The colour here is way off.

| Aug 2, 2012

Impressively directed and beautifully shot, this is a compelling, superbly acted drama that exerts a powerful emotional grip, though it's impossible not to suspect that certain liberties have been taken with the actual events.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 1, 2012

It is is impossible not to be moved. Bales sometimes overeggs his Western saviour yet is watchable throughout, imbuing Miller with a nobility that is only explained in the final reel.

| Aug 1, 2012

Zhang's flamboyant camera choreography and diva-ish flounces of melodrama are vivid but misplaced.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 31, 2012

As you'd expect, it's beautiful, emotional and exciting, if florid in style. Bale, beauties and English dialogue widen Yimou's appeal.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 30, 2012

Um filme que peca ao ouvir a expresso "espetculo de crueldade" e conferir maior peso primeira palavra do que segunda.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 25, 2012

"The Flowers of War" seems like a pretty good film until you begin to think about it.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 29, 2012

...the movie's less-than-engrossing atmosphere [is] compounded by its stagy and distressingly uneventful midsection...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 26, 2012

An unsettling mixture of spectacular brutality and sentimentality that might make even Steven Spielberg blush.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 24, 2012

Not only huge and unwieldy, but seemingly unsure of what it wants to do/say/prove.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 24, 2012