One of the most beautiful and disturbing widescreen epics in last year's Seattle International Film Festival.
– John Hartl,
Seattle Times,
5 May 2006
rotten:
Instead of a laudable ecological crusade, the film feels more like a futile Captain Ahab obsession, with patrol leader Ri Tai (Duobujie) vainly chasing a poaching kingpin through the harsh, windy wilderness.
– Bruce Westbrook,
Houston Chronicle,
12 May 2006
fresh:
An epic story of white-knuckle tension in a setting of harsh, unearthly beauty, it's the kind of story Hemingway might have told if he'd made it to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
– Colin Covert,
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
18 May 2006
fresh:
Much of the time, the movie plays like a catalog of challenges sprawled over terrain so forbidding that you can't watch it without feeling a steep measure of awe.
– Robert Denerstein,
Denver Rocky Mountain News,
19 May 2006
fresh:
Breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly brutal and simply breathtaking.