When you can see what the hell is going on, \u201cDongji Rescue\u201d is one visually sumptuous, heavily embellished account of heroism during World War II.<\/p>\n
The movie takes us back to 1942, when a Japanese cargo liner (named the\u00a0Lisbon Maru), carrying British POWs, was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine and sank in 24 hours in the East China Sea. Chinese fishermen from nearby Dongji Island rescued over 300 POWs who survived the sinking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since this is a Chinese production, \u201cDongji Rescue\u201d places most of its focus on the island and its inhabitants, whose island was occupied by the Japanese during the war. As this story tells it, one English medic (William Franklyn-Miller) got out and was rescued by a compassionate villager named Ah Dang (Wu Lei). This act of kindness causes a conflict between Ah Dang and his older, cynical brother Ah Bi (Zhu Yilong), who doesn\u2019t want more Imperial Japanese tyrants swarming around.<\/p>\n
Zhu and Wu are the resident, studly badasses of this picture. Possessed with a superhuman ability to hold their breath underwater for an insane amount of time, these chiseled, long-haired alpha men eventually become the generals who lead this charge. Even before the other fishermen show up, they\u2019re already liberating prisoners and putting their hands on the bad guys.<\/p>\n
Shot with IMAX cameras (IMAX showings around these parts are very unlikely) and an $80 million budget, \u201cDongji Rescue\u201d is a bombastic Chinese blockbuster that, like so many big-budget WWII films from other countries that came before it, makes the case that their people fought with more honor and bravery than anybody else. When they\u2019re not serving up fetching widescreen shots of this downright paradisiacal island, directors Guan Hu and Fei Zhenxiang do stage large-scale action sequences featuring our protagonists and a whole lotta extras. The climactic rescue alone is staged like it\u2019s set in a perfect storm, with raging waters flowing all over the place as the fisherpeople\u2014Ah Bi\u2019s boo Ah Hung (Ni Ni) leads this mission\u2014try to save POWs who are getting mowed down by enemy machine guns.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, that sequence is easier on the eyes than other, nocturnal parts of the film. I don\u2019t know if it was the screener copy I received, but the scenes set in darker surroundings (like the mid-movie night rescue the boys initiate when they\u2019re on the ship) lack brightness. I want to think this is the filmmakers\u2019 grim way of putting the audience in the islanders\u2019 shoes\u2014usually in the dark (literally and figuratively), unable to see any light ahead of them. But I have a feeling the directors have been watching the dimly-lit tentpoles we\u2019ve been making over the years and just decided to bite our style.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of \u201cDongji Rescue\u201d is how it begins as a fact-based yet formulaic story of meek, simple folk overcoming their oppressors and doing what\u2019s right. Then, halfway through, it becomes a chaotic, bloodthirsty tale of vengeance that borrows heavily from the Mel Gibson School of War-Movie Filmmaking. Since the Japanese are portrayed as either homicidal sadists or spineless yes-men, you know their comeuppance will be severe, quite messy, and uncomfortably satisfying. Before this movie, I\u2019ve never heard knives jabbed in the body with such lurid-sounding plunging.<\/p>\n
If anything, \u201cDongji Rescue\u201d proves that the Chinese can make WWII films as spectacular\u2014and spectacularly jingoistic\u2014as the ones we make. Besides, we once let Michael Bay tackle Pearl Harbor, so who the hell are we to judge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you can see what the hell is going on, \u201cDongji Rescue\u201d is one visually sumptuous, heavily embellished…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-85584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}