Posted on 11/11/2021 1:33:00 PM PST by sphinx
Chinese distributor CMC Pictures said Wednesday that it will release jingoistic Chinese war film “The Battle at Lake Changjin” in North America next week.
The film is currently the highest grossing title in the world and in China so far in 2021, having already earned RMB5.60 billion ($877 million) in its home market alone. It is currently the second-highest grossing film in China of all time, trailing only slightly behind “Wolf Warrior 2,” which earned RMB5.69 billion ($891 million at today’s exchange rate).
The film will arrive on screens in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 19, and then Australia on Dec. 2.
(Excerpt) Read more at variety.com ...
I will be especially interested in how U.S. reviewers handle the film. American war films have certainly evolved greatly over our lifetimes. Modern films will usually present U.S. and allied characters as real, conflicted individuals. (Some films succeed better than others.) And most modern U.S. films will humanize the enemy to some degree.
Doing right by the characters while not mangling the plot and the underlying politics can get tricky. Patton (1970) is now an old film. (Egads, that means we ain't young no more neither.) But even at that time, Patton was an extremely sophisticated film. The bombastic, tub-thumping glorification of war, so much in evidence in many scenes, is entirely acceptable in that movie because it is all a direct projection of George Patton's own inner vision. The film imposes Patton's view on the viewers.
But at the same time, every other character in the movie recognizes that Patton is a cracked egg, a great commander and someone you want on your side in a fight, but still not right in the head. Many characters have this reaction, and Omar Bradley carries the narrative through the film. It's the tension between the Patton and the Bradley point of view that gives the film its power. The scattered reviews I've seen suggest that The Battle of Lake Changjin is a reversion to crude comic book characterizations. Whether that will play to anyone outside of China is the question. It's a surprising miss in my book.
Other than for the scenes that try to show Poles in a poor light, the German series “Generation War” (Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vater) was good, too.
Breaker Morant was a good movie.
Gee I can’t wait to see how China portrays Americans being slaughtered by communists. I guess China thinks the time is right.
The world wonders...
Remember when China was the “Good Guys” in the original Red Dawn?
I’ve got many of these movies on DVD. One of the most brutal is COME AND SEE.
https://www.criterion.com/films/28895-come-and-see
Interesting. Google and IMDB will not let the web page open. I Had to go to the Criterion listing for this movie.
Interesting that so many good foreign war movies about WW I and WWII are now being watched rather than the modern Hollywood trash.
Red Cliff.
Got it on DVD. Excellent movie!
The Chinese had high levels spies and knew in advance that Truman would not use nukes. If Truman had been chomping at the bit to send a bunch of Communists to Thermonuclear Hell there would only be one Korea today.
I've had a love for Australia for decades.I'd say that Breaker Morant is a classic...far better than A Few Good Men.
Well I didn’t read it, just saw the movie. I tend to stick to sci-fi. China used to be the good guys, though, until the commies took over and murdered 70 million of their own (that we know about).
From the title, it sounds like Xi is wiping up the people with his propaganda now that he has successfully survived the Party meeting and issued a re-written history like his hero, Mao, and the despised Deng.
That becomes a somewhat tricky question. To the extent that it was a Chinese "victory," it was a Pyrrhic one. Operationally, the Chinese intervention did catch the allies by surprise, which was a massive failure of intelligence on our part. We were caught off balance and the Chinese counterattack reclaimed North Korea. That reset the strategic equation and the U.S., utterly preoccupied at the time by Europe, settled for the armistice and the continued division of Korea.
My question for the movie folks, however, is how a U.S. film would handle these calculations. Apparently the Chinese film presents it simply as a Chinese victory against a technologically superior adversary. I would guess that a U.S. film would be much more complex and explain the backstory in some detail. Consider how the most recent Midway (2019) handled an equally complex dynamic. We see an intelligent, honest depiction of the calculations on both sides. We also see courageous actions by sailors and airmen on both sides, while also acknowledging Japanese atrocities.
“The Light Horsemen” is a good film about the men of a Australian World War I light horse unit involved in Sinai and Palestine campaign’s 1917 Battle of Beersheeba.
I also liked the ANZAC TV series a film about well the ANZACs in WW I. First time I ever heard of Paul Hogan was this series.
Another good Aussie film this about Vietnam - “The Odd Angry Shot”. A film about the Australian SAS deployment in Vietnam. I think Byron Brown is in it.
the movie tells the story of how soldiers from China’s People’s Volunteer Army fought a key Korean War campaign during the freezing winter at the titular lake, also known as the Chosin Reservoir.
Conveniently omitting the mountains of Chinese bodies - so high, the following troops had to use ladders to get over to the other side, only to be chewed to pieces like those that preceded them by the glowing red hot Ma Duces.
they worship the God King, Mao and the glorious, infallible CCP.
Released just as the new God King Emperor, Xi ascends the thrown.
I hope Michael Caine is interviewed about this film. Caine is an interesting guy and, while I gather his politics are largely MovieWorld liberal, he is capable of being quite heterodox from time to time. As a young man, he was a working class yute with vaguely pro-communist views. Then he got called up for military service (1952-54), which is how he found himself sitting in a foxhole in Korea, behind a machine gun, watching Chinese human wave attacks roll up the hill towards him. Apparently he was in a couple of situations in which he gave himself up for dead. He altered his views somewhat, as he realized that there was something wrong with a system that had such complete contempt for human life.
Yes very good movie - far better than the trash China is churning out these days.
The Lost Battalion is also very good. (WWI)
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