disclaimer represent during my venture into foreign cinema and i have take a liking to a wide variety of movie that span different genre that include horror and action and drama and comedy and and romance and to name a few . thus and i have enjoy the thoughtful and serious tone of drama as well a the mindless and popcorn fun of action film . with a wide array of chinese and japanese and and korean movie under my belt and i be confident in my ability to recognize bright spot in movie to appreciate and complement . unfortunately and ash of time have nothing to recognize . it be one of the bad chinese movie i have ever see . to start off and this overrated swordplay epic showcases the infamous slideshow action sequence throughout and which be nothing more than an ultra cheap and pathetic form of action choreography . one simply need to show a series of close up picture of grimising face and sword and leg and or or arm and and then a dead body . bravissimo . you now have an action sequence for ash of time . the problem lie not only in it poor quality but also in the fact that the scene be so chaotic and disjoint that the viewer have no idea what the hell be go on . the dramatic element of this film be nonexistent and a it rely on the character tell the viewer that they love someone or hate someone instead of actually develop and show such element on screen and which render all character generic and colorless and leave the viewer completely indifferent to their action . in fact and the storyline itself be an absolute disaster and introducing way too many character way too quickly with way too many plot device . plot complexity in film can be use very advantageously ( i. e. and a tale of two sister ) and but ash of time becomes exploitative trash when it do nothing more than convolute a very simple plot for no apparently good reason . in fact and this entire movie act like a series of smokescreen to cover up it deficiency . horrible action choreography be cover up by slideshow trick and chaotic camera movement . non existent character development be cover up by the character overtly say how they feel . and a thoughtless storyline be cover up by confuse the viewer with convolution . a if this weren not bad enough and this movie be extremely boring and seem more like 150 minute instead of the actual 95. rating equal a rarely give 0/5 star .