General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Taking of Tiger Mountain (智取威虎山)

The Taking of Tiger Mountain (智取威虎山) is a 2014 Chinese-Hong Kong 3D war film directed by Tsui Hark (徐克), adapted from Qu Bo's (曲波) 1957 novel Tracks in the Snowy Forest (林海雪原) and from the Peking opera of the same name. It stars Zhang Hanyu as the PLA scout Yang Zirong, who disguises himself as a bandit to infiltrate the stronghold of the bandit chief Vulture (座山雕) on Tiger Mountain in northeast China during the civil war of 1946–1947¹. Released in mainland China on 23 December 2014, it earned 879 million yuan there and ranked among the highest-grossing Chinese films of its year¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Director / screenplay	Tsui Hark; screenplay credited to Huang Jianxin, Li Yang, Tsui Hark, Wu Bing, Dong Zhe, and Lin Qi'an¹^•³
Source material	Qu Bo's novel Tracks in the Snowy Forest (1957) and the model Peking opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy¹^•⁴
Release	23 December 2014, mainland China; 143 minutes; Mandarin and English¹^•⁵
Mainland box office	879 million yuan as of 19 May 2015; tenth highest-grossing film in Chinese box office history in its release year¹^•²
Principal cast	Zhang Hanyu (Yang Zirong), Tony Leung Ka-fai (Vulture), Lin Gengxin (Shao Jianbo), Yu Nan (Qinglian), Tong Liya (Bai Ru), Chen Xiao, Han Geng¹
Major awards	35th Hong Kong Film Awards: Best Director, Best Sound Effects; 30th Golden Rooster Awards: Best Director, Best Actor, Best Editing; 2015 Golden Horse Award for Best Visual Effects⁵^•⁶
Production	Filmed 19 December 2013 to 27 April 2014 in Beijing and the northeast snow country, at temperatures near minus 30 degrees Celsius¹

Spoilers

Plot

In the winter of 1947, a small PLA detachment, Squad 203 of the Northeast Democratic Allied Forces under Captain Shao Jianbo (Lin Gengxin), is sent into the snowbound forests of northeast China to suppress banditry. To seize a map of thousands of advance troops controlled by the bandits, Shao dispatches the scout Yang Zirong (Zhang Hanyu) to infiltrate Tiger Mountain (威虎山), the largest bandit stronghold¹.

Yang wins the trust of the bandit chief Vulture (Tony Leung Ka-fai) and his eight commanders, and is ranked "Ninth Lord of Tiger Mountain." The suspicious Vulture repeatedly tests him; Yang meanwhile risks his life passing intelligence to his comrades below. The captured bandit liaison officer Luan Ping (Du Yiheng) escapes and appears inside the stronghold, confronting Yang face to face and leaving him exposed on both sides¹. The climax comes at the "Hundred Chickens Banquet" held for Vulture's birthday, when Yang and Squad 203 strike⁷.

Origins and development

Tsui Hark first encountered the story in the 1970s while volunteering at a cinema in New York's Chinatown, where he saw the model opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy and was struck by its tale of an undercover scout matching wits with bandits⁸. After returning to Hong Kong around 1977 he read Qu Bo's novel and learned that its characters and events had real prototypes¹. The adaptation rights were a long-standing obstacle; in 2009, with the help of Bona Film Group president Yu Dong, Tsui secured the rights to the original novel¹. He prepared the project for five years before shooting¹.

The film was formally approved for production in mid-2014 filings, though principal photography had already begun: it officially started in Beijing on 19 December 2013¹. The crew moved from Beijing, where temperatures were in the minus teens, to the northeast "Snow Town," where temperatures approached minus 30 degrees Celsius and staff worked in snow nearly a meter deep¹. In an interview, Tsui described the hazards of the location: crews had to survey terrain before snow fell, each person carried a whistle to signal if trapped in a hidden gully, and camera equipment was rated only to minus 10 degrees Celsius⁹. Filming wrapped on 27 April 2014 after more than 130 days¹.

Adaptation choices

The film draws on three prior versions of the story: the novel, the Peking opera, and the earlier black-and-white film Tracks in the Snowy Forest, which Tsui said he consulted while reinterpreting the material from a contemporary viewpoint⁹. The opera itself originated at the Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company, which staged the novel in 1958; it was revised for the 1964 national modern-opera showcase, designated the first of the eight "model operas" in 1967, and filmed by Xie Tieli in 1970¹⁰^•⁴.

Tsui added a frame story absent from earlier versions: a young Chinese programmer, "Jimmy" (Han Geng), leaves friends in New York, sees a scene from the 1970 opera film interrupt a karaoke machine, and imagines the 1946 story as he travels home to Harbin². Critics were divided on this device; a China News Service review called the modern framing the film's one major misstep, while the M+ cinema program noted that it continues Tsui's habit of telling a story within a story and softens the propaganda coloring of the source in favor of commercial entertainment¹¹^•¹².

Tsui also deliberately strengthened the villains. He asked Tony Leung Ka-fai to act so that audiences would not recognize him, and designed Vulture as a deep-scheming figure whose expressions blur anger and pleasure; Tsui argued that the bandits must be intelligent for the "taking by strategy" to be satisfying⁹. The film's action often exceeds physical realism, and Tsui relied heavily on visual effects, including the widely discussed sequence in which Yang fights a Siberian tiger in the forest¹¹.

Reception and box office

The film opened in mainland China at 5 p.m. on 23 December 2014, taking 18.4 million yuan in under half a day and about 20 million yuan including previews; it earned over 200 million yuan in the three-day New Year holiday and passed 800 million yuan overall¹. By 19 May 2015 its cumulative mainland total stood at 879 million yuan, and it received a 10 million yuan award from the national film special fund on that basis¹. One scholarly analysis puts the final total at 883 million yuan from 21.49 million admissions¹³. In North America it grossed about $223,000¹⁴.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 71% critics score from 17 reviews and a 65% audience score¹⁴. Reviewers highlighted the staged action set pieces and 3D work; the lovehkfilm review called it "an unpretentious piñata of popcorn movie goodness" and praised layered 3D compositions such as the opening railway-station shootout¹⁵.

Awards

At the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards the film won Best Director (Tsui Hark) and Best Sound Effects⁵. At the 30th Golden Rooster Awards it won Best Director, Best Actor (Zhang Hanyu), and Best Editing¹. Tony Leung Ka-fai won Best Supporting Actor at the 5th Beijing International Film Festival, and the film took the Golden Horse Award for Best Visual Effects in 2015, with nominations for Best Director, Art Design, and Action Design⁵^•⁶. It also received an Outstanding Film special commendation at the 33rd Hundred Flowers Awards and, in 2022, the Golden Yanghua Award at the 3rd New Era International Film Festival¹^•⁵.

Significance

The film is frequently cited as a model for adapting "red classic" material for contemporary audiences. A 2015 academic analysis credited its success to judicious plot adaptation, 3D technology, a clever narrative structure, and a grasp of mass-cultural consumption, producing both box-office and critical returns¹³. A later scholarly comparison with Xie Tieli's 1970 opera film observes that Tsui's version gives the villains strong character traits the model-opera rules excluded, replaces stylized theatricality with cinematic realism, and remixes Hong Kong wuxia conventions with Hollywood action tropes². The film was selected for the "Flowers in Bloom" retrospective at the 37th Hundred Flowers Awards in August 2024¹.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026