Review of City of Life and Death (2009) by Johnson Y — 17 Dec 2011

The anti-war film City of Life and Death tells us the horrible story of how the Japanese soldiers treated the Chinese civilians Nanjing, the big massacre, and all the starvation, because all the food goes to Japanese soldiers, so most women see no other choice than to sell their bodies to Japanese in order to provide food for their families. There are some foreign workers that tries to do their best to save as many as possible, even the German businessman John Rabe who is able to save 200,000 Chinese from slaughtering. The main focus in this film is primarily on all the terror, the brutal murders and the adulteries. It don't have such a great focus on John Rabe, mostly because it would been another Schindler's list copycat.

I like this, I like what the thing they tried to do. This is a pure ant-war film, that shows the horror of war. Even that there are some heroes doesn't make any different to our reaction, It might eases the pain that there are some descent kind people, but that the fact that the slaughtering continues. I wish I could say this was a masterpiece, but I think that this movie might try to hard, It's one of these movie that thinks it's enough to just color it black and white to make it more authentically. But the fact is that it would have look more real in colors. But besides that it's a well crafted story that shows every thing we must see even if we don't want to. So thumbs up from me.