Xin hai ge ming 2011

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: Packed with so many characters and subtitled history lessons it barely allows its excellent main cast room to maneuver. Read more

Rachel Saltz, New York Times: What should be rousing stuff - a republic is born! the chains of feudalism thrown off! - remains a kind of lavishly illustrated history lesson. Read more

Nick Schager, Time Out: Corny, preachy and tedious. Read more

Mark Feeney, Boston Globe: With "1911,'' art direction speaks louder than words. Read more

Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter: Chan has not injected any of his playful charm or physical virtuosity into Wang Xingdong's and Chen Baoguang's insipid, poorly structured screenplay. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Earnest and studious to a fault. Rarely has a film about upheaval felt more like a textbook. Read more

Sara Stewart, New York Post: May be slow going for anyone not well-versed in this chapter of Chinese history. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: The Revolution will not be televised, Gil Scott-Heron once sang. Nor should it be filmed, we might add -- at least not as a costume drama with stirring speeches, an inspirational love story and gloriously heroic military charges. Read more

Greg Quill, Toronto Star: 1911 serves too many masters for its own good. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: The revolutionaries who fought to free China from nearly 3,000 years of dynastic oppression deserve a worthier cinematic monument than 1911. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: If the success of epic storytelling were determined by the sheer number of unnecessary on-screen name tags, 1911 would be a masterpiece. But the small matters of characterization, audience identification, and scene-making are entirely absent here. Read more