Chang jin hu: Shui men qiao

Given the cultural bias imposed by the English language in Singapore, most Chinese Singaporeans who know about the Korean War have formed their views reading Western sources. If you ever want to break out of just being a footnote to global Western cultural dominance, and acquire a sense of self, it is very important to expand your horizons by connecting with the non-Western viewpoint, be that Chinese, Iranian, Russian, Korean etc Watch this movie (Parts 1 & 2) not just for the action and stories of sacrifice of the CPV, but also for a non-Western perspective.

By now it's futile to use the term propaganda. This film serves it's purpose to celebrate hyper nationalism like it's predecessor. It doesn't provide anything new content wise but to speak of positives, this one isn't overstuffed like the previous one. There are a battalion of characters like the first one, a lot of body count as well. The single mission story without any sub plot works in it's favor as the story is easy to follow. The action just about works with some patchy vfx but we have basically seen this all unfold in the previous part.

With nearly 150mins runtime, the screenplay is filled with enough heroic moments and sacrifices. If one finds it as an overdose then the film is not for them. Despite being a straight forward war film, somehow it felt less engaging this time. Also too many character deaths felt like it was overdone. The American cast was mere caricatures and didn't contribute much with their weak lines. It was one side's bravery and sacrifice told over and over again.

Well, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed the 2021 movie "Chang Jin Hu" (aka "The Battle at Lake Changjin") and thus, of course, I also opted to sit down and watch the 2022 sequel titled "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao" (aka "Water Gate Bridge").

Writers Jianxin Huang, Xiaolong Lan and Xiaojiang Quji put together a storyline that takes place immediately after the end of the first movie, and thus is a continuation of the previous movie. And that worked quite well in favor of the movie. Especially since the storyline in "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao" was every bit as entertaining and enjoyable as the first movie.

While the 2021 movie was more of a large scale war movie, the narrative in this sequel takes the combat down a notch to a more skirmish scale. But fear not, the movie doesn't suffer from that. Most definitely not. Because the action in "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao" is intense and once again the directors managed to film the movie in a way that was immensely dynamic and energetic, as if the audience was right there in the chaos and mayhem of the war.

And it was good to see some of the cast from the first movie return to reprise their characters in the sequel. Again, lots of great cast members on the cast list.

Visually then "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao" looked and felt like a war movie. I especially liked the attention to detail in all scenes, and the attention to the soldier's uniforms and such. Everything was gritted and dirty, as it should be in a war movie. And the biting cold that the soldier struggled with was definitely also handled quite well in this movie.

If you enjoyed the 2021 movie "Chang Jin Hu", then you most certainly have to also sit down and watch "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao". It runs at about 30 minutes less than the previous movie, but it is hardly something that you noticed, because as in the previous movie, there wasn't a dull moment throughout the course of the sequel.

I was genuinely entertained by "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao" and it is a movie I warmly recommend to fans of war movies.

My rating of "Chang Jin Hu Zhi Shui Men Qiao" lands on an eight out of ten stars.

This sequel to The Battle at Lake Changjin is heavy in battles and CGI warfare and less interested in actually creating compelling individual characters as it focuses on the remaining survivors of the first film that return to battle with a new mission. This film is just as visual stunning as the first film but like the first film, it suffers from that quality of "bigger is better" which is not always the case. This being said, it's a heavy handed and patriotic film just like PEARL HARBOR or pretty much most conservative and conventional war film (including the war/westerns of early John Wayne) so if you've seen know that going in, then you know what to expect. I doubt think that the film has way too many sequences with an astronomical amount of soldiers making those scenes "overblown" and repetitive after a while especially since the film is over 140 minutes.

This war movie bounces between action scenes and emotional scenes. Much like other movies in the ww2 era, guns, grenades, bloods, and tears.

It might sound dull for an artwork. However, for front line soldiers in a war, the battleground might not be much different. Fight, mourn, fight more, mourn more, ... If this movie manages to show that two hours of that is already kind of boring, how about two weeks, two months, two years, or two decades in real life and in fear?

Disclosure: I am a pacifist who has spent an equal amount of adult life in both of the throat-cutting states in this movie.