City of Life and Death

Plot Summary

Director Lu Chuan (Mountain Patrol) based this film on the recorded witness testimonies from the real-life survivors of the Rape of Nanking massacre. He meticulously recreated the infamous reign of terror conducted by the occupying Japanese army in the Chinese capital of Nanking in 1937. The first big-budget fiction film by the Chinese to deal with this seminal event, City of Life and Death paints an epic portrait of wartime conflict, filled with an ensemble of conflicted characters caught in the crossfire, including Chinese officer Lu (Liu Ye), who leads his men in a hopeless, defiant resistance effort; the German businessman, John Rabe (John Paisley), who establishes a safety zone in an attempt to protect civilians; and Japanese soldier Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi), who struggles to live with his conscience in a city where executions are commonplace. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times says that this powerful film is "strong enough to change your life."