Zhou Yu's Train

Impressions before seeing it
I found this movie on TV and decided to watch it because it starred Tony Leung and Gong Li. However, I forgot that there are two Tony Leungs in Hong Kong cinema, and this dude wasn't the Tony I was thinking of from all the Wong Kar Wai films. Damn, now I'm stuck with the less cool Tony for two hours.

How was it?
Sometimes Zhou Yu's Train does feel like it's trying to be a Wong Kar Wai film, with it's unconventional romance story and occasional voiceovers, but it lacks the charm, and the proper Tony Leung (okay, I'll stop mentioning that now). But maybe it's not fair for me to compare film styles just because they're both Chinese.

What I want to say about this movie is that at first I had some trouble following what was going on (there was unexplained symbolism for the first half), then they offered an explanation and I understood what they were going for, then they offered some more explanations and I just got confused again. I don't have a problem with things being open to interpretation, but there's a difference between that and not making sense.

Recommendation
I think this movie had potential to be interesting and cute, but they tried too hard to be artistic and I didn't care much for the characters or the love triangle, which I'm not entirely sure actually existed due to the lack of clarity. I wanted to like it, and I didn't hate it, but I was underwhelmed.