Review: Beijing Rocks is about love, about people coming from different places and dreams and hopes for the future. These are all concepts that we can understand and relate to in one part or another. Beijing Rocks is a stylish and beautiful movie full of a lot of meaning with the potential to strike a chord with the spectators. This movie is also fueled by hi-energy Chinese rock music, it's a type of music that is full of soul and energy and it adds an extra depth to the movie.

The story is set in Beijing where an unsuccessful musician from HK is killing time and looking for inspiration. He comes across a band of rockers who seem to have it all figured out, fascinated by this band and attracted to one of the chicks he decides to follow them on the road. The premise of the story is simple and maybe some things a little predictable but none the less it's a great set up for an adventure. Also the context of communist china you really have a sense of the rebellion of rock and roll that has not existed in north america since the 50s. Overall the story was enjoyable but it could have gone further and could have been better.

The majority of this movie is about the relationships between people and thus the characters were really the most important part of the movie. The story was all about them but I find that the movie was too narrowed on just a few characters. You have several interesting looking characters in the movie but only three main characters are important. This is where we had a problem with the movie; we completely hated one of those 3 characters. Road (Geng Le) was one those angry and misunderstood rock star type characters, we just could not stand him. He keeps crying how the world is cruel to him and then he goes around cheating on his girl friend and being a general asshole. He was an important part of the movie and that just brought down our appreciation of the movie because we could not stand him. The other two characters Michael (Daniel Wu) and Yang Yin (Shu Qi) where alright, they made sense and there were not boring. They did not come off as extremely interesting and adorable but they were more of the real people for a real story type of characters.

Beijing Rocks is not an action type of movie, it is a drama where words and actions are the bulk of the story. Just because there is no action doesn't mean it is boring, there is a deep story that evolves in the movie. There is one or more elements in the story that you maybe able to relate too. One thing that did stand out in this movie is the visual style, the photography was simply beautiful. A lot of effort was put into to movie to make it look good, many of the scenes carry that extra impact because of the setting and photography.