Armand is heart of this film. a film full of Manicheic shadows, touching, cruel, with few drops of melodrama, but precise work. because, far from image of a China from many others, far from a nice adaptation of a novel, it is a profound story of a man with ordinary ambitions. axis of his desires - be yourself. and the courage of the young man is root for an entire universe. result - touching fairy - tale, beautiful ballet scenes, good performance, and universal image of making happiness. an universal case of every "ballerino" beyond Iron Curtain who choose freedom. its virtue - science to respect measure ( the Chinese shadows are only instrument for powerful effect ) and to create not exactly a film but image of a painful testimony. and this is appreciated.

Murray Morison One clever element of this film is the way in which various people who are significant in Li Cunxin's life, tell him stories with a message. The frog trapped at the bottom of a well is one. He hears from a toad at the top of the well that the big wide world is worth seeing.The whole film is a story with a message - and the message is one that uplifts without in any sense being cloying. Beresford, the director, even manages at several stages to invoke the idiom of Chinese revolutionary film and theatre. The scenes actually shot in China are some of the most authentic in the film, which is not uniformly good in this regard. Somehow, the slightly stagy acting of some of the Huston Ballet Company characters, ceases to matter because the lead parts are well carried and the storyline is strong.Li Cunxin defected to America partly for his art and partly for love. The wonders of the materiality of Huston are perhaps a poor substitute for losing your country; yet that country was deeply scarred by the Mao's cultural revolution. To watch the part early on where the benefits brought by Chairman Mao to the Chinese people, are laid out by Party Functionaries, has a dark poignancy, given that today we know he was directly responsible for the death of many, many millions.The dance sequences are done very well and the film pleases at that level as well as a tale with more twists and turns than you might imagine. A film of some subtlety and considerable beauty; recommended.

David Traversa If this movie was a Hollywood product from the 1940s, as a propaganda vehicle for America against the Japanese or the Germans, enemies at that time of the Land of Freedom, I could have understood it and, maybe, watched it. Not in 2009 when it was filmed. During the first minutes of this movie, we see a young hick (that was the impression he gave us) from China leaving the airport in some American city, looking up, open jawed at the glass curtained skyscrapers, ubiquitous and more than abundant products of the twenty and twenty first centuries, in the USA, DUBAI!!! (Incredible ultramodern architecture there!), China, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, France, Russia (practically all over the world they are the same).Appalled at the comfortable guest room in his host's house, as if he never saw anything remotely similar ever before in his life, ogle eyed at a freshly baked muffin (obviously in China they only eat balls of boiled white rice that they keep all day long in their dirty trouser pockets) and almost fainting in wonder at the view of a blender in action; in general behaving like Alley Oop out of his Neanderthal cave suddenly thrown into the twenty first century, badly dressed in a poor fitting suit (his host, looking at it, his eyeballs towards heaven, thinks: "Oh, that outfit..., we must do something about it..."). There is a Time Machine disturbing feeling between filming buildings of the present time --2009?--, a Mao's time village (1950?), a young boy from those days now a twenty something old man in the present (2009? SIXTY YEARS LATER???)... How are we supposed to put two and two together??? Simply outrageous. I only got that far --10 minutes or so-- before removing the CD from the player. Sorry, I don't have neither the time or the patience for this sort of c**p. What was the idea for this old fashioned, clumsy, OFFENSIVE type of propaganda? Do you want to see a SUBLIME film about ballet?: "The Red Shoes"-1948- with Moira Shearer, a true timeless Masterpiece.

Gordon-11 This film is about a young ballet dancer from Communist China, who goes to Houston for an academic exchange. As his horizons have been broadened, he makes decisions that changed his life forever.It is too easy to criticise China's dark history, but "Mao's Last Dancer" portrays Communist China back in the 1970's in a relatively neutral way. The people, costumes, how people behaved, and the collective mentality are all convincing yet without negative light. I would have believed it if someone told me it was a Chinese film.Some may say Li was selfish, as his decision could have severely adversely affected his family members in China. It is the struggle between this and the desire to want more of what's in the Pandora's box that makes "Mao's Last Dancer" captivating.Of course, the plentiful ballad dance sequences are mesmerising as well. I also liked the way Li's English progressed as time goes by. Another striking thing was the lack of subtitles in the most tear-jerking scene of the final emotional climax, as if it is to be felt, empathise and savour, which requires no words.