Just done watching the movie. At first I thought this movie will be more about the military prostitutes and their sufferings then it turned out to be a story about the male lead's journey or experiences while in service. So it was a bit disappointing that we really didn't get much into the girls... the only one that I actually felt sympathy for was Jiao... you can see how she was "broken" by what happened to her.

There are lots of things in the story that wasn't really clear for me. Example was Tun Shan's memory of the shepher girl after he killed Jian. The girl looked a lot like Jian, why was she the last or the first person that came to mind after he killed Jian? Was it because Jian looked a lot like her which is the reason why he fell for Jian? or why he liked Jian? Or was that girl Jian herself?
I wasn't really that interested with Nini... she's too sophisticated a lot of times... and I couldn't really feel her character.

There are lots of parts that I thought was boring and wanted to skip. I think the best part of this movie was the end, when Pao started questioning about his actions on his "what ifs" because honestly speaking, there were lots of things that I questioned regarding his actions so it's good to see that even he himself questioend them and never forced to gave the viewers an answer.

For me this movie is more like a coming-of-age movie.