Hoh Xil: Mountain Patrol Critic Reviews

Filmed in long, quiet takes across gorgeous, all-but-empty landscapes, Mountain Patrol feels more like Gus Van Sant's "Gerry" than like the cops-and-robbers thriller its plotline suggests.Read the full review

Extraordinary on many levels...because Mountain Patrol instead becomes what might be the first Chinese conservationist spaghetti western ever made.Read the full review

What is remarkable is that this film is based on a true story, and filmed on the actual locations. These are hard, violent men, risking their lives to save an animal species.Read the full review

These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.Read the full review

Films about environmental catastrophes tend to wax preachy, putting pedagogy and scolding above art. This one, for all its sorrow and the throb of righteous anger it provokes (only about 50,000 antelopes remain), is more than anything a work of creative imagination.Read the full review

Exquisite to behold and with a stimulating storyline that mixes guns with ecological consciousness, picture is a considerable change of pace for director Lu Chuan.Read the full review

It is a grimly exciting film that is picturesque and brutal by turns.Read the full review

Never has a movie so soberingly made the fight to save life and the struggle to hold on to it seem so futile.Read the full review

Other than raising awareness for endangered wildlife, Mountain Patrol: Kekexili doesn't have anything profound to say, but it has a lot to show.Read the full review