La batalla del lago Changjin

It's 1950. American forces have landed at Incheon and driving north towards the Chinese border. The politically ambitious warmongering American military leader Douglas MacArthur insists on bombing Chinese border locations to cut off supplies and retreat for the North Koreans. Chinese leader Mao decides to answer the provocation and sends in the PLA. They would confront the Americans at Lake Changjin. The Americans would call it, the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

I'm not going to argue for accuracy. There is a definite deliberate slant to its views but it's not overtly wrong. A perfect example happens quite early. Somebody gets CGI happy and puts in a sky full of American fighter planes. There is more chance of them flying into each other than bombing the right targets. It's insane how many planes are in the sky on their bombing run. It's like a WWII mass bombing raid except it's utter chaos. Something similar happens to the American characters with one exception. There is one heroic competent war leader. Otherwise, the Americans are mostly arrogant, fat, and throwing up his breakfast. It's a political slant to sell to the Chinese public. I would compare this to Pearl Harbor without the romance. It's not a good thing. The CGI is a micro-step down from that. The story is over-the-top melodrama. The film is using a lot of slow-motion action. The best war scene happens quite early with the soldiers faking dead on the dry river bed. If it stayed semi-realistic, this could have been good.

Not really had any war movies in the cinema this year, and to get this, and from a Chinese perspective, is good, and a change.

Make no mistake, this was shot in IMAX, and looks brilliant, plenty of giant FX houses come up at the end credits, and you can see why. The action is spectacular and the war violence is all there, very gory. The acting is all solid as is the story and direction, if a bit overlong so I think some trimming would be nice, that's my real only problem.

I'm quite sure there are some problems, history wise, as I studied only WW1 and WW2, so I can't comment on this. As entertainment, it's fine, just try and see it in IMAX / Super screen, if you really want the best from this film. Lots of good stuff from China these past two years, more to come.

Commissioned by the Chinese Communist Party to commemorate their 100th anniversary, The Battle at Lake Changjin pours an entire nation's jingoistic fervour, anti-US sentiments, blatant propaganda & more into a 3-hour long war film that's no different from majority of Hollywood war films in its fact distortion & history revision but it's a tad too simplistic & predictable to deliver on the storytelling front.

Directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark & Dante Lam, the story is a fictionalised retelling of the battle that unfolded between Chinese soldiers & American troops during the Korean War and is crafted in a manner that's meant to provoke nationalistic pride in its intended audience. While the first hour is uneventful, things do get better once the battle is on and the film does well to make sure the interest isn't entirely lost from thereon.

The mass battle sequences do deliver the goods but only when it's being waged in close-proximity. Still, for a $200 million production, the CGI is an absolute cringe and prevents several scenes from making their desired impact. Further weakening the ride is the narrative approach, awful dialogues, cardboard characters, excessive runtime, repetitive action, weak performances & overdone sentimentality. It is a state-sponsored picture and it shows.

Overall, The Battle at Lake Changjin has moments of spectacle and the swift pans & camera manoeuvres add the necessary cinematic touches to its action sequences but there is a lot in here that could've been further improved. The caricature depiction of US forces isn't really a complaint since most American war films do the same. However, the extreme flag-waving on display is so forceful & overpowering that it often kills the film's unabashedly entertaining aspects.

This is just an expensive imitation of the great war movies like Save Private Ryan. The problem is, unlike in Save Private Ryan, the Chinese directors and actors did not show the war as human tragedies, where countless young lives were lost. They presented the battles as glorious, heroic and patriotic acts. This just show the mindset of the Chinese elites nowadays.

The movie did not demonise the US troops. That's an improvement. However the US officers and soldiers characters are just like movie props, with little personalities or emotions. I don't know if this is because they can't get good US actors, or because they don't want US soldiers look more humane than the Chinese.

The movie showed the huge loss to the Chinese army only in numbers, when casualties were reported by the soldiers. But the fighting scene predominately shows US soldiers got blown up into the sky, with very few scenes showing Chinese soldiers getting killed. This is the same old practices of the Chinese war movies, showing how brave and effective killing machine the Chinese army is.

For the westerners who generally do not know what happened in Korean War, and what kind of soldiers were sent over to fight. Here is a fact to ponder: a large portion of Chinese POWs refused to go back to China and were sent to Taiwan.

Not a bad movie, a bit long but overall good.

PS: ignore the other reviews that give it a 1. I have seen so many 1 and 10 for a movie before. Bega me to think the 1 reviews are not objective about the movie, but personal feels.