The biggest factor that this movie asks from it's audience, is to be willing to accept that a little over half of the screen is cropped out, as the film itself is only visibly seen inside a circle (or square). It's an artistic decision for sure, but the movie does take advantage of that fact for several scenes, and forces us to focus on the story in a particular way. With that caveat out of the way, this is a very humorous and entertaining satirical story about tenaciousness, bureaucracy, social status, infamy, and sycophants.
Led by a fantastic performance by Fan Bingbing, the character she plays has a very peculiar situation that takes this story into incredibly twisty unpredictable plot turns. It became a guessing game for us to see where things were heading, and even for a lot of the characters themselves. Speaking of which, I did like the focus on how the characters specifically acted when they were talking to somebody above them and below them in status. There's also a lot of little Chinese cultural insights here and there that I found fascinating as well.
While some people might be turned off by the cropped video image, or the fact that this is primarily a talking heads movie, the rest should find a highly engaging tale that you'll want to see play out until the very end.
lovedit ENJOYED IT itsokayitsmehitsterrible
