The Crossing I (2014) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★ 3

  Action! - What Does The Dove Say? Woo Woo Woo Woo!

  The director continues to make epic movies that require two parts to fully flesh out their stories. As to whether they succeed and are ultimately necessary, that's up to the viewers. For me, this is a movie I appreciate because while it follows the previous, it differs in approach. While this film is an epic romantic war film, the next is supposed to be Woo's response to "Titanic", so I'm pretty pumped about that.

  With respect to this first part, Woo does an excellent job of capturing the essence of this type of film, bringing a lushness and delicacy to the dramatic scenes, while also constructing fantastic action scenes…

  See Also

  ‘The Crossing: Part One’ (‘Tai Ping Lun: Shang Ji’): Film Review

• Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★½ 6

  The first part of John Woo's latest epic (the second part was recently released in China to little fanfare, but isn't available here yet) is a romantic war movie in the style of The Big Parade or Doctor Zhivago, with a half dozen characters caught up in the Chinese civil war following the defeat of the Japanese in 1945. The most direct connection is probably Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli's 1947 film The Spring River Flows East which follows the ups and downs of a family awash in the same history, and was also released separately in two parts.

  Leaving the nautical disaster that's led the project to be dubbed "John Woo's Titanic" for the second half, this first part…

• Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★

  Every John Woo movie is a love movie. It so figures that his actual love movie would come from the man who’s been telling these stories all his life. It’s just a shame, then, it’s so often obscured by the need to tell this story.

  Always fluid, often handsomely mounted, frequently moving in a commitment to fixing hearts to sleeves among love lost to blowing winds and glances traded between a flapping ballroom dress. It’s also, unfortunately, as incognito in most moments as it’s director has ever been granted.

  Romance won’t keep you from starving. Still, who’s to stop you from basking in it till you’re fat and fed. Swiftly onto part two - let’s see if there’s any more satiating calories in the mix.

• Review by 13_MoMo_13 ★★★½

  John Woo's grand melodrama in the Chinese Revolution is lushly shot and scored the way an American Oscar bait film from the late 90's would have been. It also may top Windtalkers for John Woo's most spectacular modern warfare set piece. It can't top that movie for the emotional connection to these battles, even if the movie itself often does in its quieter moments.

  Part one of a two part epic, all roads here lead to Taiwan (or the ocean between it and the mainland). Zhang Ziyi is an illiterate woman with no formal skills who works in a combat hospital for free, while trying to make ends meet in the night the way many women were forced to. Song…

• Review by matt lynch

  Part 1 only. Not evaluable, as it's just a (fairly syrupy) setup for the main event, presumably to come in part 2. Aside from bookending battle sequences and an early dance scene at a banquet, directed somewhat anonymously by Woo, who nevertheless manages to break out the doves at our first and only glimpse at the ill-fated steamer Taiping.

• Review by Sudar 😌 Manto ★★★½

  "Perang telah mengajarkan kita banyak hal. Tapi perang juga memberitahukan bahwa pelajaran yang bisa didapat dari peperangan telah habis."
  -anonim-

  Perang selalu meninggalkan koreng sejarah. Namun wajah feminin dari perang selalu menarik untuk dikulik oleh para sineas. Berlatar pada babak kulminasi Partai Komunis Tiongkok atau
  perang saudara jilid dua pada tahun 1946-1950. Tentang adu otot dan ngotot Pasukan Nasionalis dan Pasukan Komunis. Mao Zedong dan Chiang
  Kai-shek. Tentang ideologi.

  The Crossing merupakan sinema romansa perang dari panggung sejarah tenggelamnya kapal uap Taiping pada 1949 dan menewaskan 1.500 orang. Segmen tragedi kapal uap Taiping akan
  muncul di bagian kedua dari film dua bagian ini. Film stereoskopik 3D ini tidak tayang di Indonesia, hanya versi 2D saja.

  Dalam ranah fiksi diriwayatkanlah enam…

• Review by Alex Holmes ★★★★

  “I’ve got one thing I need to go back for.”

  A messy masterpiece from Woo. This film has taken me ages to track down and see, so I was thrilled to finally watch it. It was partly what I expected but also I didn’t expect Woo to deliver perhaps the definitive Chinese Civil War flick? As others have stated it’s two part structure means that there’s no real conclusion here - the film just basically stops (even Red Cliffmade its first part a complete film in its own right). Still Woo and has talented cast still sell the epic romance and “people caught amongst the currents of history” storyline and comparisons to Doctor Zhivago are not at all unfair. Keen for part 2 and glad I finally saw it after all these years.

• Review by Simon Lang ★★★

  Beautifully shot and with notable production values, but too slow and jumpy in its narrative. The aspiring mix of love story, melodrama, and war movie works overall quite good, however, it's only the battle scenes which remain in memory and are able to convince the most. Woo's passion project is still worth checking out, although a little bit overambitious.

• Review by Jack Castle ★★★½

  Unfortunately this isn't the most engaging film story wise, its gorgeous in its period piece scale and ambition but overly sappy and never manages to really hook me with any of its many storylines. Action scenes are very slick and I really wanted to love this but its a little short. Hyped for part 2 though .

• Review by comrade_yui

  the melodrama and action don't really cohere in this as well as they do in woo's best work, a flaw i'm blaming on this feeling rather drawn out and anti-climactic due to it's status as a part 1 of 2. it has some good moments and is never irritating, but also doesn't really get to where it wants to go.

• Review by dirtylaundri ★★½

  To end an epic film with a short teaser amounting to "...and then the ship sinks and most of the people you just got to know for two hours will drown" just is not a very clever move. This has some magnificent scenes, the battlefield scenes especially are on par with WINDTALKERS, and at times even more tied to a notion of purity of death and destruction that, in the end, might be one of Woo's prime legacies ... and yet they never quite gel with the female-centered melodrama which is clearly supposed to be the main focus this time.

  (Also, don't know much about it, but was wondering if the box office disappointment might've to do with the fact that this is strictly told from the pov of the nationalists, even if their cause is clearly portrayed as both lost and unworthy?)

• Review by agato ★

  i cannot stand war movies (but i love takeshi kaneshiro). this was super boring, it took me the whole month to finish watching it lol yawn