Movie: A Batte of Wits.

I went to watch A Battle of Wits yesterday. It's a very nice but tragic show. Nice because some of the war strategies and tactics which was used in the show was good. The strategies and tactics were suitable for the small Liang City which has less than 5000 over people. Their enemy was a strong army of 100 000 from Zhao City. But because suitable strategies and tactics were used, they managed to defeat them 3 times. Ge Li (acted by Andy Lau), the army commander of the Liang side was an outsider, a mozi. Mozi's philosophy is to love everyone and pursue peace. Liang knew they could not fight the war, so seek for Mozi's help. Ge Li was the only one who came, despite the other Mozi's relunctance to help.

Ge Li won the trust and support of the citizens of Liang. Initially, they were skeptical of his power alone. But he gave them hope. He encouraged them to hang on and fight. Even the prince who was initially very egoistic and think he's number 1 at riding horse, at archery and at fighting. When the prince was beaten by a subordinate in archery, Ge Li pat him on the shoulder and said,"Previously, you were number 1 because you are the prince. You need to look further ahead. It's a big world beyong Liang City".

But it is a tragic show because although Ge Li successfully helped to protect the city from Zhao's attack twice, the lord and advisor don't trust Ge Li and ordered to have him and his supporters killed. This marked the start of a civil war. Ge Li escaped and the army caught all those who they think are Ge Li's supporters. The city was thrown into chaos. This is the most upsetting part because after standing united to fight off invaders, they started to fight/kill among themselves. Out of point! Why bother fighting off invaders in the first place!? And amist their chaos and internal killing, the Zhao attacked and won the city. All this due to a lousy leader - the feudal lord.

Looking back at history, it seems like all wars eventually lead to civil war. The one i know of is the china civil war. of course, for this, they were already fighting before japan came to invade. they halt the civil war and unit against the japanese. after they won that, they got back to fighting between themselves. Now, after usa's war on iraq ended, there's also countless killing in iraq. i am quite confused by who's killing who there, so i am not sure if it's civil war. But all the endless fighting and killing, even in modern world, what good do they do?

The show ended with Zhao army losing because the commander of Zhao wants to win Ge Li and lure him to return. Ge Li's came back with a strategy. The Zhao army got trapped again and retreated. So that lousy fedual lord got back his city and people were all cheering,'da wang wan shui'... that cheering was crap. he got it back not because of his own efforts. but of course, the people cannot cheer Ge Li, otherwise, they might get themselves into trouble again. Well, that feudal lord was lousy towards the end. But in the beginning, he trusted Ge Li can helped and gave him the authority to command the army despite resistance from his son and the advisor. Had he not done that, Liang city would be gone in 1 day. He made right choice in the beginning and lousy one in the end.