In the early 1990s, the Chinese directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige dominated the art houses in the West with films like Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell, My Concubine. The institutions that made these important films were seen as being the complete opposite of the industry and corporations that made films in Hong Kong. Chinese films had depth and refinement; Hong Kong films were shallow and crass. Chinese films were slow; Hong Kong films were fast. Chinese films were made for the mind; Hong Kong films were made only for the market. The directors who best represented the Chinese approach were Zhang and Chen; the directors who best represented the Hong Kong mode were John Woo and Tsui Hark. Then two things happened: One, Hong Kong was reunited with China in 1997, and, two, China became the second most important capitalist nation on earth. This transformation of China meant a transformation of its film industry.

Zhang easily adapted to the new conditions and made a martial-arts thriller (Hero) that starred Hong Kong's biggest names—Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Chen tried to adapt but failed with the messy CGI extravaganza The Promise. Just as everyone thought the twilight was setting on Chen's career, he came up with Sacrifice, a huge box-office hit that met the needs of the market but did not entirely abandon the director's roots in serious art-house cinema.

Sacrifice, which is based on the old Chinese opera Orphan of Zhao, is set in the fifth century BC and concerns a doctor (Ge You) and a warrior (Wang Xueqi). The doctor is compassionate; the warrior is ruthless. The doctor delivers babies; the warrior kills his enemies. Though the two have absolutely nothing in common, a complicated set of events ends with the warrior being the godfather of the doctor's adopted son. True, the film has lots of action scenes, but they are never as fast and confusing as the ones in Woo's Red Cliff (horses, swords, more horses). Sacrifice is a successful unification of Hong Kong trash and Chinese seriousness. recommended