KUALA LUMPUR, July 26 — Veteran Chinese actress Liu Xiaoqing is in the news following her role in a new Chinese war movie called Ice Sniper 2.

This is after the 68-year-old Liu who plays a youthful bandit leader, Dan Niang, in the film was criticised by Chinese social media users on Weibo.

It was reported on portal 8days.sg that Dan Niang’s age in the film was just 17 years old.

The film which centres around the Siping Campaign in 1947, had just made its way to streaming platforms such as iQiyi and Youku earlier this month.

Following its release, seeing Liu playing a role much younger than her actual age has not sat well with social media users with some lamenting that it is ‘unnatural’.

Others were also seen questioning whether there are no more younger actresses who could take on the role.

Aside from that social media users also pointed out the almost 20-year age gap between Liu and her co-actors in the film.

This includes the role of actors Wang Xinjun who was cast as Dan Niang’s partner in the film as well as Ren Qing An who plays Dan Niang’s father.

Wang is 52-year-old while Ren is 53-year-old.

According to the movie’s synopsis on Youku, Ice Sniper 2 tells the story of a platoon leader Yang Jianfeng (Wang) who was assigned to combat the different factions of notorious mountain bandits in Northeastern China.

He then employed formidable female leader of the Menghu Mountain bandits Dan Niang (Liu) to help him with his cause.

The movie also includes Chinese stars such as Zeng Tianyang, Wan Shanhong as well as Wu Rundong.