Review of The Flowers of War (2011) by Kong M — 11 Apr 2012

First of all, amongst the many Zhang Yimou films I have seen in recent years, those of which were sad to say heavily formulated with stereotypical Chinese-style overacting drama/action and bombastic soap opera emotions, or mundane slow pace which did not quite fit into the scenes realistically, Flowers of War is surprisingly free of most of that and I enjoyed the distinctly more natural acting performances here.

However, what disappointed me was that the director chose to splash too much on the melodrama but fail to amend several obvious flaws that seriously defy the logic of some of these characters' actions.

For instance (SPOILER ALERT), unless he intends to be a thief on belongings of the dead, I dont see why a foreigner who obviously has no attachments to Nanking (judging from his poor command of chinese) would choose to go all the way at the start of the movie for a job which any sensible man would know that its not worth taking.

And why, if they plan to sneak out to avoid the soldiers, would they dress up in noticeable cheongsam? Do they not value their lives over the joy of making loud noises on a childish girl fight to make the soldiers notice? What is with 'educated' Japanese high ranking officers who bothered to play piano songs and never question whatever happened to his fallen soldiers? Small issues on lack of food, water, hygiene and the paranoid feeling that affects the group morality, were nonexistent and that to me is another serious flaw.

There are several others, but the main flaw is that since John Rabe (also based on Nanking massacre) the Chinese themselves have ample opportunities to make something personal to them above John Rabe's standard as its benchmark, and what a huge disappointment it was in the end.