The Founding of an Army

The Founding of an Army is a Chinese historical war film set in 1927, during the violent split between the Nationalists and the Communists. After Communist members and their sympathizers are purged from the Nationalist ranks, revolutionary army units, joined by workers' militias and peasant self-defense groups, rise up and seize control of the garrison in the city of Nanchang on August 1, 1927. That uprising is remembered as the origin of the People's Liberation Army, and the film was commissioned to mark its 90th anniversary.

Andrew Lau Wai-Keung directed the film, the twenty-second of the twenty-five features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between From Vegas to Macau III and Kung Fu Monster. Huang Jianxin, Zhao Ningyu and Dong Zhe wrote the screenplay, Zhao Hai-Cheng produced, and the large credited cast of forty-eight includes Liu Ye as Mao Zedong, Zhu Yawen as Zhou Enlai, Huang Zhizhong as Zhu De, Chen Xiao as Ren Bishi, Wang Jingchun as He Long and Ou Hao as Ye Ting. It runs 133 minutes and was made by companies in Hong Kong and mainland China, among them Bona Film Group, Shanghai Film Group, Media Asia Films and China Film Co-Production Corporation.

Released in August 2017, the film took in about 61 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 4.5 out of 10 from roughly 1,200 votes, while on TMDB the rating is 5.2 out of 10 from a much smaller body of 25 votes.