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Review: Sacrifice (趙氏孤兒) (2010)
This movie was surprisingly watchable. I say this because during this time period of the 2010s, there were a number of Chinese historical movies that looked nice but were badly written which led to them being boring. I looked up this movie and found out that it was directed by Chen Kaige so maybe that explains why this one was slightly better. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still more engaging than I expected. Overall this was okay.
Spoilers.
Story
This movie was based on the story of the Orphan of Zhao which was a Chinese folk tale. I looked up the ‘official’ story on Wikipedia and this movie did not deviate too much from it.
The Duke of Jin had two generals. One was Tu’an Gu. The other was Zhao Shuo, the son of the chancellor Zhao Dun, and the husband to the duke’s older sister Lady Zhuangji. Tu’an Gu was jealous of Zhao Shuo, who was clearly favoured by the Duke. Tu’an Gu was also forced to suffer the burdens of the occasionally immature Duke. Tu’an Gu concocted a plan to assassinate the Duke and to install his own duke, as well as to exterminate the entire Zhao clan.
Cheng Ying was the doctor to Lady Zhuangji. Tu’an Gu’s plan was to call Zhao Shuo away by giving him false news that his wife had given birth. While out of the palace, he was ambushed and killed. However, he’d made it home to warn his wife. At that time, Lady Zhuangji gave birth to her son with Cheng Ying’s help. She asked Cheng Ying to smuggle her son out of his medicine bag. On his way out, he was stopped by Han Jue, who served under Tu’an Gu. Lady Zhuangji pretended to still be pregnant and committed suicide, in hopes that Han Jue could just tell Tu’an Gu that she had already killed herself along with her unborn baby. Cheng Ying successfully took the Zhao baby home.
Tu’an Gu returned to the scene and found out that Lady Zhangji had faked her pregnant belly, meaning the baby had been born. He slashed Han Jue’s face and dismissed him. This was where the movie deviated from the play, as in the play Han Jue was killed.
Tu’an Gu collected all of the babies in the city in order to find the Zhao Baby. Cheng Ying and his wife recently also had a baby so now they had two babies. Cheng Ying’s wife let the soldiers take the Zhao Baby. However, that meant that they assumed that the taken baby was Cheng Ying’s baby, and Cheng Ying’s baby would now be mistaken as the Zhao baby. Cheng Ying went to Gongsun Chujiu for help to smuggle the baby, assumed to be the Zhao baby but was actually Cheng Ying’s baby. Cheng Ying’s wife revealed the true identity of the baby and Gongsun Chujiu empathized, still offering to help them hide the baby. When interrogated by Tu’an Gu, Cheng Ying broke under pressure and revealed that Gongsun Chujiu had helped him smuggle the Zhao baby already. However, Gongsun Chujiu was unable to leave. Tu’an Gu caught up to Gongsun Chujiu and found the baby, which he believed to be the Zhao baby, and killed both the baby and Cheng Ying’s wife.
Cheng Ying then collected the Zhao baby and raised him as his own son Cheng Bo. He planned to raise him to exact revenge on Tu’an Gu for his own family as well as Cheng Ying’s baby. Cheng Ying entered Tu’an Gu’s retinue to grow close to him. Tu’an Gu adopted Cheng Bo as his godson and raised him as his own.
Cheng Ying would sometimes meet with Han Jue. In order to keep Cheng Bo from telling anything to Tu’an Gu, he would bribe him with food. It became a delicate balancing act as Cheng Bo grew older and had his own free will.
When Cheng Bo grew old enough, he wanted to go to war. Cheng Ying didn’t want to let him, and tried to tell him the truth of his parentage to stop him. Cheng Bo didn’t believe him and went anyway. At this time, Tu’an Gu also started to notice some similarities between Cheng Bo and Zhao Shuo. He went along with Cheng Bo to war and got injured. When Cheng Bo came back, he asked Cheng Ying for medicine for Tu’an Gu’s wound which Cheng Ying gave him.
When Tu’an Gu recovered, he told Cheng Bo that he suspected him of being the Orphan of Zhao and wanted to question Cheng Ying. That was when Cheng Bo realized that Cheng Ying and Han Jue had been telling him the truth of his origins. He and his father made up and they confronted Tu’an Gu together.
Cheng Bo challenged Tu’an Gu to a fight. It resulted in Tu’an Gu killing Cheng Ying and Cheng Bo killing Tu’an Gu. In a final dream sequence, Cheng Ying would join his wife and dead baby.
It was a simple story about revenge, but I was surprisingly engaged with the dynamic between Cheng Ying, Cheng Bo, and Tu’an Gu. Cheng Ying had to be very careful about letting Cheng Bo get close to Tu’an Gu so that Tu’an Gu would become attached, but he also had to prepare Cheng Bo to receive the truth when he grew older. By the end, Cheng Ying had himself grown attached to Cheng Bo and he just wanted to take him away to live normally. And honestly this always happens in these types of stories. Parents raise children that were not theirs, that they had to sacrifice their own children for, but they end up caring for the child anyway.
I’d say that the ending was slightly abrupt and didn’t totally have the emotional catharsis that I would have liked, and I think part of that is attributable to the sudden change in behaviour of Cheng Bo. That was not handled the smoothest, whereas the feelings of the adults (Tu’an Gu and Cheng Ying) had mostly been consistent throughout the movie.
Still, it was an interesting story. I can see why it would have been a popular play.
Production
There were a lot of random cameos in this drama but I think Ge You and Wang Xueqi did most of the heavy lifting in this movie. They made the characters engaging. The production value was decent, you at least need something of this caliber for a movie.
Characters
Tu’an Gu
Tu’an Gu was jealous of Zhao Dun and Zhao Shuo. The Duke teasingly talked about what good luck the Zhao family had, and also about what might have happened if the Duke had betrothed his sister to Tu’an Gu instead. As well, Tu’an Gu was forced to suffer the blame when the Duke would do childish things like attacking the Zhao horse with his slingshot. So while Tu’an Gu was a hateful man, it was also clear that some of it was warranted. So he concocted his plan to destroy the Zhao clan including any scions.
When Tu’an Gu tracked down whom he thought was the Zhao baby, he convinced Cheng Ying and his wife that he wouldn’t necessarily kill the baby, but he killed the baby anyway. So he was ruthless and set in his goals. He also killed the Duke and replaced him with his own puppet, so he was firmly in control then.
Cheng Ying entered into Tu’an Gu’s service and Tu’an Gu took a liking to Cheng Ying’s son Cheng Bo. He got to be the fun godfather, while Cheng Ying was the unfun dad. Tu’an Gu would teach Cheng Bo to fight, he’d take him on fun excursions. It was all smooth sailing for him. He suspected nothing.
It wasn’t until Cheng Bo wanted to go to war that Tu’an Gu grew suspicious. Maybe it was because when wearing his armour, Cheng Bo bore a resemblance to Zhao Shuo. And after seeing his godson in battle, he was pretty sure of his suspicions. I’m not sure why he told Cheng Bo about what he was thinking but maybe it was just to speed up the ending lol.
I’m not too sure what Tu’an Gu’s plan was. I think he just wanted to know the truth and then he’d send Cheng Ying and Cheng Bo away, because he already had everything now. He wasn’t threatened by that Zhao clan anymore. But he did have to answer for his crimes. Cheng Ying had always wanted Tu’an Gu to suffer the fate of being killed by a child he loved very much. I think during the last fight that Tu’an Gu mostly stayed on the defensive against Cheng Bo. But finally when Cheng Ying stepped in, he killed Cheng Ying, which prompted Cheng Bo to kill him.
What Tu’an Gu was cruel, but he failed to do what he had set out to do. He wanted to wipe out the Zhao clan so that he could be the most powerful non-royal in the dukedom. Zhao Dun and Zhao Shuo were both too powerful. He had to wipe out the entire clan so that no one would come after him. But he failed to kill the Zhao baby and instead killed Cheng Yi. So that left the Orphan of Zhao who would be the remaining family member to exact revenge. He’d also killed the true Cheng Bo as well as Cheng Ying’s wife, so Cheng Ying had a grudge against him too.
If Tu’an Gu was less politically ambitious he probably would have avoided all of this. But it seemed he was also belittled and humiliated too. As we saw, the Duke would play tricks on him. When Zhao Shuo was going to meet his wife whom he thought had just given birth, he told Tu’an Gu that if his son had lived, then he’d have grandkids too, rubbing the salt in the wound that he had no children and no legacy. It’s not easy to live like that. So I almost can’t put the blame entirely on him.
It was just a different time, where people had to deal in absolutes. But he was undoubtedly the villain here for having committed mass murder.
Cheng Ying
Cheng Ying was the doctor who got caught up in the mess. Lady Zhuangji asked him to smuggle the baby, and in the mess, his baby and the Orphan of Zhao were mixed up. After the fiasco, he held a grudge in his heart for the cruel way Tu’an Gu killed his child and his wife. His plan was to get close to Tu’an Gu, have Cheng Bo be endeared to Tu’an Gu, and then one day have Cheng Bo turn against Tu’an Gu.
Of course there were difficulties. Cheng Ying was strict with Cheng Bo, wary of him being killed. But he also needed Cheng Bo to learn martial arts from Tu’an Gu. Cheng Ying was also secretive with Cheng Bo, not telling him who Han Jue was. He had to bribe him to keep quiet about this from Tu’an Gu. It was a balancing act keeping Cheng Bo happy but not letting him know the truth yet.
After a fight, Cheng Bo had run to Tu’an Gu and Cheng Ying was so worried he was going to tell Tu’an Gu about Han Jue. The result of the confrontation was Cheng Ying revealing in front of Cheng Bo that Tu’an Gu had killed his wife. Cheng Bo was a little more sympathetic to his father.
However, as he grew older into a soldier, he grew close to Tu’an Gu again. Cheng Ying was very frustrated when Cheng Bo wanted to go off to war and tried to reveal the truth to Cheng Bo. He left out the part about sacrificing his own son for the Orphan of Zhao, but Han Jue told Cheng Bo anyway, though Cheng Bo didn’t believe the story.
Still, Cheng Ying was kind of done with it all. Han Jue had shot Tu’an Gu with a poisoned arrow but when asked by Cheng Bo, Cheng Ying gave the medicine anyway. Afterwards, he just wanted to take Cheng Bo away with him to live as commoners. I think he realized it was unfair to put this all on Cheng Bo.
When Cheng Bo heard from Tu’an Gu and confronted Cheng Ying about it, they got into a fight and Cheng Bo told Cheng Ying that he wasn’t even his dad. That upset Cheng Ying, and they made up and decided to confront Tu’an Gu together. Cheng Ying told the truth. Tu’an Gu and Cheng Ying kind of blamed each other for the death of Cheng Bo which was a copout for Tu’an Gu. Anyway, Cheng Ying let Cheng Bo fight Tu’an Gu, but he also defended him, resulting in his death.
Cheng Ying gave his life for the Zhao clan, so he got his happy ending to join his wife and child. I think Cheng Ying was representative of a patriotic and moral hero who stood for what was right.
The Orphan of Zhao/Cheng Bo
The Orphan of Zhao grew up a fun loving child. He didn’t really know what was going on. He did know his dad was being suspicious but Cheng Ying bribed him to keep a secret from Tu’an Gu, his godfather whom he also liked very much. As mentioned, Cheng Ying and Cheng Bo had this push and pull relationship because of the secret meetings between Chen Ying and Cheng Bo which I felt brought interesting tension to the relationship. There were times when Cheng Bo would love his godfather more for giving him the things he wanted (taking him out for a day of fun, playing with him, etc.). But there would be times he’d be reminded that his father loved him more than anything, like when Cheng Bo jumped off the roof and Tu’an Gu let him fall, but Cheng Ying caught him.
The first big reveal, if we could call it that, was when Cheng Ying revealed that Tu’an Gu had killed Cheng Ying’s wife, whom Cheng Bo believed to be his mother. Afterwards, he was being extra good, and he also told Cheng Ying that he wouldn’t reveal a word about Han Jue.
As Cheng Bo grew into a soldier, he became closer with Tu’an Gu once again, admiring him as a general. Cheng Ying tried to dissuade him from fighting in war by telling him the truth of his parentage but he didn’t believe Cheng Ying and went off anyway. But Tu’an Gu had already started to suspect Cheng Bo. Still, Cheng Bo was filial to him, asking for medicine for his wounds and such. But when Tu’an Gu recovered and told Cheng Bo of his suspicions, Cheng Bo realized things were true. Cheng Bo also reconciled with his father. Even if Cheng Ying wasn’t his biological father, he was the only father he'd known.
They went to confront Tu’an Gu together, and Cheng Bo was intent on seeking revenge for his family and his dead parents. After Tu’an Gu cut Cheng Ying, Cheng Bo cut Tu’an Gu in return. Though Cheng Bo was presented as 15 years old at the end of the movie, I think the play (according to Wikipedia) had him at 20 years old. Nonetheless, this was his coming of age. He loved his adoptive father Cheng Ying a lot, but he figured it was time to let him go. Cheng Ying had suffered a lot for the Zhao family, and now he was due his send off. So Cheng Bo sent him off.
Themes
Family, revenge, and loyalty, some of the most common themes of Chinese literature, are also themes in this play and movie. Tu’an Gu was unpatriotic and immoral for killing the Zhao family for no reason, even if they were dicks. Cheng Ying was a patriot for saving an innocent baby. Cheng Bo did his filial duty to seek revenge for the entirety of his clan that was killed.
Overall
Surprisingly watchable. Not perfect as I felt the ending was a bit rushed, but still engaging performances particularly from the actors Ge You who played Cheng Ying, and Wang Xueqi who played Tu’an Gu.
Spoilers.
Story
This movie was based on the story of the Orphan of Zhao which was a Chinese folk tale. I looked up the ‘official’ story on Wikipedia and this movie did not deviate too much from it.
The Duke of Jin had two generals. One was Tu’an Gu. The other was Zhao Shuo, the son of the chancellor Zhao Dun, and the husband to the duke’s older sister Lady Zhuangji. Tu’an Gu was jealous of Zhao Shuo, who was clearly favoured by the Duke. Tu’an Gu was also forced to suffer the burdens of the occasionally immature Duke. Tu’an Gu concocted a plan to assassinate the Duke and to install his own duke, as well as to exterminate the entire Zhao clan.
Cheng Ying was the doctor to Lady Zhuangji. Tu’an Gu’s plan was to call Zhao Shuo away by giving him false news that his wife had given birth. While out of the palace, he was ambushed and killed. However, he’d made it home to warn his wife. At that time, Lady Zhuangji gave birth to her son with Cheng Ying’s help. She asked Cheng Ying to smuggle her son out of his medicine bag. On his way out, he was stopped by Han Jue, who served under Tu’an Gu. Lady Zhuangji pretended to still be pregnant and committed suicide, in hopes that Han Jue could just tell Tu’an Gu that she had already killed herself along with her unborn baby. Cheng Ying successfully took the Zhao baby home.
Tu’an Gu returned to the scene and found out that Lady Zhangji had faked her pregnant belly, meaning the baby had been born. He slashed Han Jue’s face and dismissed him. This was where the movie deviated from the play, as in the play Han Jue was killed.
Tu’an Gu collected all of the babies in the city in order to find the Zhao Baby. Cheng Ying and his wife recently also had a baby so now they had two babies. Cheng Ying’s wife let the soldiers take the Zhao Baby. However, that meant that they assumed that the taken baby was Cheng Ying’s baby, and Cheng Ying’s baby would now be mistaken as the Zhao baby. Cheng Ying went to Gongsun Chujiu for help to smuggle the baby, assumed to be the Zhao baby but was actually Cheng Ying’s baby. Cheng Ying’s wife revealed the true identity of the baby and Gongsun Chujiu empathized, still offering to help them hide the baby. When interrogated by Tu’an Gu, Cheng Ying broke under pressure and revealed that Gongsun Chujiu had helped him smuggle the Zhao baby already. However, Gongsun Chujiu was unable to leave. Tu’an Gu caught up to Gongsun Chujiu and found the baby, which he believed to be the Zhao baby, and killed both the baby and Cheng Ying’s wife.
Cheng Ying then collected the Zhao baby and raised him as his own son Cheng Bo. He planned to raise him to exact revenge on Tu’an Gu for his own family as well as Cheng Ying’s baby. Cheng Ying entered Tu’an Gu’s retinue to grow close to him. Tu’an Gu adopted Cheng Bo as his godson and raised him as his own.
Cheng Ying would sometimes meet with Han Jue. In order to keep Cheng Bo from telling anything to Tu’an Gu, he would bribe him with food. It became a delicate balancing act as Cheng Bo grew older and had his own free will.
When Cheng Bo grew old enough, he wanted to go to war. Cheng Ying didn’t want to let him, and tried to tell him the truth of his parentage to stop him. Cheng Bo didn’t believe him and went anyway. At this time, Tu’an Gu also started to notice some similarities between Cheng Bo and Zhao Shuo. He went along with Cheng Bo to war and got injured. When Cheng Bo came back, he asked Cheng Ying for medicine for Tu’an Gu’s wound which Cheng Ying gave him.
When Tu’an Gu recovered, he told Cheng Bo that he suspected him of being the Orphan of Zhao and wanted to question Cheng Ying. That was when Cheng Bo realized that Cheng Ying and Han Jue had been telling him the truth of his origins. He and his father made up and they confronted Tu’an Gu together.
Cheng Bo challenged Tu’an Gu to a fight. It resulted in Tu’an Gu killing Cheng Ying and Cheng Bo killing Tu’an Gu. In a final dream sequence, Cheng Ying would join his wife and dead baby.
It was a simple story about revenge, but I was surprisingly engaged with the dynamic between Cheng Ying, Cheng Bo, and Tu’an Gu. Cheng Ying had to be very careful about letting Cheng Bo get close to Tu’an Gu so that Tu’an Gu would become attached, but he also had to prepare Cheng Bo to receive the truth when he grew older. By the end, Cheng Ying had himself grown attached to Cheng Bo and he just wanted to take him away to live normally. And honestly this always happens in these types of stories. Parents raise children that were not theirs, that they had to sacrifice their own children for, but they end up caring for the child anyway.
I’d say that the ending was slightly abrupt and didn’t totally have the emotional catharsis that I would have liked, and I think part of that is attributable to the sudden change in behaviour of Cheng Bo. That was not handled the smoothest, whereas the feelings of the adults (Tu’an Gu and Cheng Ying) had mostly been consistent throughout the movie.
Still, it was an interesting story. I can see why it would have been a popular play.
Production
There were a lot of random cameos in this drama but I think Ge You and Wang Xueqi did most of the heavy lifting in this movie. They made the characters engaging. The production value was decent, you at least need something of this caliber for a movie.
Characters
Tu’an Gu
Tu’an Gu was jealous of Zhao Dun and Zhao Shuo. The Duke teasingly talked about what good luck the Zhao family had, and also about what might have happened if the Duke had betrothed his sister to Tu’an Gu instead. As well, Tu’an Gu was forced to suffer the blame when the Duke would do childish things like attacking the Zhao horse with his slingshot. So while Tu’an Gu was a hateful man, it was also clear that some of it was warranted. So he concocted his plan to destroy the Zhao clan including any scions.
When Tu’an Gu tracked down whom he thought was the Zhao baby, he convinced Cheng Ying and his wife that he wouldn’t necessarily kill the baby, but he killed the baby anyway. So he was ruthless and set in his goals. He also killed the Duke and replaced him with his own puppet, so he was firmly in control then.
Cheng Ying entered into Tu’an Gu’s service and Tu’an Gu took a liking to Cheng Ying’s son Cheng Bo. He got to be the fun godfather, while Cheng Ying was the unfun dad. Tu’an Gu would teach Cheng Bo to fight, he’d take him on fun excursions. It was all smooth sailing for him. He suspected nothing.
It wasn’t until Cheng Bo wanted to go to war that Tu’an Gu grew suspicious. Maybe it was because when wearing his armour, Cheng Bo bore a resemblance to Zhao Shuo. And after seeing his godson in battle, he was pretty sure of his suspicions. I’m not sure why he told Cheng Bo about what he was thinking but maybe it was just to speed up the ending lol.
I’m not too sure what Tu’an Gu’s plan was. I think he just wanted to know the truth and then he’d send Cheng Ying and Cheng Bo away, because he already had everything now. He wasn’t threatened by that Zhao clan anymore. But he did have to answer for his crimes. Cheng Ying had always wanted Tu’an Gu to suffer the fate of being killed by a child he loved very much. I think during the last fight that Tu’an Gu mostly stayed on the defensive against Cheng Bo. But finally when Cheng Ying stepped in, he killed Cheng Ying, which prompted Cheng Bo to kill him.
What Tu’an Gu was cruel, but he failed to do what he had set out to do. He wanted to wipe out the Zhao clan so that he could be the most powerful non-royal in the dukedom. Zhao Dun and Zhao Shuo were both too powerful. He had to wipe out the entire clan so that no one would come after him. But he failed to kill the Zhao baby and instead killed Cheng Yi. So that left the Orphan of Zhao who would be the remaining family member to exact revenge. He’d also killed the true Cheng Bo as well as Cheng Ying’s wife, so Cheng Ying had a grudge against him too.
If Tu’an Gu was less politically ambitious he probably would have avoided all of this. But it seemed he was also belittled and humiliated too. As we saw, the Duke would play tricks on him. When Zhao Shuo was going to meet his wife whom he thought had just given birth, he told Tu’an Gu that if his son had lived, then he’d have grandkids too, rubbing the salt in the wound that he had no children and no legacy. It’s not easy to live like that. So I almost can’t put the blame entirely on him.
It was just a different time, where people had to deal in absolutes. But he was undoubtedly the villain here for having committed mass murder.
Cheng Ying
Cheng Ying was the doctor who got caught up in the mess. Lady Zhuangji asked him to smuggle the baby, and in the mess, his baby and the Orphan of Zhao were mixed up. After the fiasco, he held a grudge in his heart for the cruel way Tu’an Gu killed his child and his wife. His plan was to get close to Tu’an Gu, have Cheng Bo be endeared to Tu’an Gu, and then one day have Cheng Bo turn against Tu’an Gu.
Of course there were difficulties. Cheng Ying was strict with Cheng Bo, wary of him being killed. But he also needed Cheng Bo to learn martial arts from Tu’an Gu. Cheng Ying was also secretive with Cheng Bo, not telling him who Han Jue was. He had to bribe him to keep quiet about this from Tu’an Gu. It was a balancing act keeping Cheng Bo happy but not letting him know the truth yet.
After a fight, Cheng Bo had run to Tu’an Gu and Cheng Ying was so worried he was going to tell Tu’an Gu about Han Jue. The result of the confrontation was Cheng Ying revealing in front of Cheng Bo that Tu’an Gu had killed his wife. Cheng Bo was a little more sympathetic to his father.
However, as he grew older into a soldier, he grew close to Tu’an Gu again. Cheng Ying was very frustrated when Cheng Bo wanted to go off to war and tried to reveal the truth to Cheng Bo. He left out the part about sacrificing his own son for the Orphan of Zhao, but Han Jue told Cheng Bo anyway, though Cheng Bo didn’t believe the story.
Still, Cheng Ying was kind of done with it all. Han Jue had shot Tu’an Gu with a poisoned arrow but when asked by Cheng Bo, Cheng Ying gave the medicine anyway. Afterwards, he just wanted to take Cheng Bo away with him to live as commoners. I think he realized it was unfair to put this all on Cheng Bo.
When Cheng Bo heard from Tu’an Gu and confronted Cheng Ying about it, they got into a fight and Cheng Bo told Cheng Ying that he wasn’t even his dad. That upset Cheng Ying, and they made up and decided to confront Tu’an Gu together. Cheng Ying told the truth. Tu’an Gu and Cheng Ying kind of blamed each other for the death of Cheng Bo which was a copout for Tu’an Gu. Anyway, Cheng Ying let Cheng Bo fight Tu’an Gu, but he also defended him, resulting in his death.
Cheng Ying gave his life for the Zhao clan, so he got his happy ending to join his wife and child. I think Cheng Ying was representative of a patriotic and moral hero who stood for what was right.
The Orphan of Zhao/Cheng Bo
The Orphan of Zhao grew up a fun loving child. He didn’t really know what was going on. He did know his dad was being suspicious but Cheng Ying bribed him to keep a secret from Tu’an Gu, his godfather whom he also liked very much. As mentioned, Cheng Ying and Cheng Bo had this push and pull relationship because of the secret meetings between Chen Ying and Cheng Bo which I felt brought interesting tension to the relationship. There were times when Cheng Bo would love his godfather more for giving him the things he wanted (taking him out for a day of fun, playing with him, etc.). But there would be times he’d be reminded that his father loved him more than anything, like when Cheng Bo jumped off the roof and Tu’an Gu let him fall, but Cheng Ying caught him.
The first big reveal, if we could call it that, was when Cheng Ying revealed that Tu’an Gu had killed Cheng Ying’s wife, whom Cheng Bo believed to be his mother. Afterwards, he was being extra good, and he also told Cheng Ying that he wouldn’t reveal a word about Han Jue.
As Cheng Bo grew into a soldier, he became closer with Tu’an Gu once again, admiring him as a general. Cheng Ying tried to dissuade him from fighting in war by telling him the truth of his parentage but he didn’t believe Cheng Ying and went off anyway. But Tu’an Gu had already started to suspect Cheng Bo. Still, Cheng Bo was filial to him, asking for medicine for his wounds and such. But when Tu’an Gu recovered and told Cheng Bo of his suspicions, Cheng Bo realized things were true. Cheng Bo also reconciled with his father. Even if Cheng Ying wasn’t his biological father, he was the only father he'd known.
They went to confront Tu’an Gu together, and Cheng Bo was intent on seeking revenge for his family and his dead parents. After Tu’an Gu cut Cheng Ying, Cheng Bo cut Tu’an Gu in return. Though Cheng Bo was presented as 15 years old at the end of the movie, I think the play (according to Wikipedia) had him at 20 years old. Nonetheless, this was his coming of age. He loved his adoptive father Cheng Ying a lot, but he figured it was time to let him go. Cheng Ying had suffered a lot for the Zhao family, and now he was due his send off. So Cheng Bo sent him off.
Themes
Family, revenge, and loyalty, some of the most common themes of Chinese literature, are also themes in this play and movie. Tu’an Gu was unpatriotic and immoral for killing the Zhao family for no reason, even if they were dicks. Cheng Ying was a patriot for saving an innocent baby. Cheng Bo did his filial duty to seek revenge for the entirety of his clan that was killed.
Overall
Surprisingly watchable. Not perfect as I felt the ending was a bit rushed, but still engaging performances particularly from the actors Ge You who played Cheng Ying, and Wang Xueqi who played Tu’an Gu.