[4] The film stars Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Song Hye-kyo, Huang Xiaoming, Tong Dawei and Masami Nagasawa.

Yen Zekun (Takeshi Kaneshiro), an ethnic Chinese field medic conscripted into the Japanese army from then-Japanese Taiwan, is captured.

On the POW train, Yen reads a letter from his Japanese paramour Masako (Masami Nagasawa).

A few years later during the resumption of the Chinese Civil War, Yu Zhen (Zhang Ziyi), a poor, illiterate young woman volunteers as an orderly at a Nationalist hospital in Shanghai.

Despite her mother's warnings not to accept the attention of soldiers, she dances with Lei, their chemistry obvious for the entire room to see; months later, they marry.

The next year, Yu Zhen meets signal corps sergeant Tong Daqing outside of the same photography studio Lei and Zhou used for their wedding.

Sergeant Tong has hired Yu and a borrowed baby to have a photograph taken together as a family as proof of marriage, which would provide his parents at home with more food rations.

Zhou has her cousin take a picture of her, capturing Lei in the background as he has come in secret to watch her departure before he leaves for the front.

Yen, who was on the Taiping with the Zhou sisters, disembarks with them at the Port of Keelung in Taiwan, where they are greeted with a military band and Nationalist flags lining the streets.

The official, seeing that he is a native of Taiwan, asks where Yen learned the Guānhuà he is conversing in instead of the local language, Taiwanese Hokkien.

Yu escapes from the fracas and starts a career of prostitution to secure enough money to travel to Taiwan in hopes of finding her missing lover.

He angrily goes to his headquarters, where his commanding general tells him that two recent breakout efforts have badly failed, likely due to the People's Liberation Army getting wind of the plans.

Lei laments how he has returned to the same battlegrounds he fought on against the Japanese, only this time his men were dying against their countrymen instead of against foreign invaders.

Zhou asks Yen to tell her about Masako for inspiration, thus starting a friendship anchored by their shared longing for a distant beloved.

In the Communist camp, the local populace arrives with food and supplies for the soldiers, whose morale is greatly increased.

As the Communists burst through and start to overrun the Nationalist positions, Tong is badly burned pushing Lei out of the way of an exploding truck.

Lei then returns to his command post to look upon his wedding photo and dream of his wife and children at a country estate.

[6] Part II: During the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, three couples flee from China to the island of Taiwan.

One of them stabs Zekun, who slowly dies, having the vision of his Japanese girlfriend that had taken her own life over grief earlier.

Yu Zhen is reunited with the injured Tong Daqing, and he loses the notebook that Lei Yifang had given him in the previous movie.

They eventually hold on to a piece of the ship until the sunrise comes when an Australian warship HMAS saves them along with some additional 31 survivors.

4 months pass, Zhou Yunfen has given birth to Lei Yifang's son but she doesn't know what has happened to her husband.

[8] A new script written by John Woo, and Taiwanese filmmakers Su Chao-pin and Chen Ching-hui was described as "considerably altered".