Dong Jing shen pan

This film covers the trial of 28 Japanese war criminals after World War 2. We have the film "Judgement At Nuremburg" which covers German war criminals but nothing that covers this part of history. In this country we know very little about the atrocities committed by the Japanese on China. This is truly an engrossing film told from the perspective of the Chinese judge. After watching the special on the DVD of the making of the film I was impressed by how well the actors who played real historical character were made up to look like the actual characters counterparts.

I have a few criticisms. One is that the film was, in my opinion, too short. It could well have been 30 minutes or more longer and I would not have minded. Also, the clothing and the hair styles of the younger fictional characters were far too modern for that time. Finally, beware of the subtitles on the Hong Kong DVD. They are not good. However, much of the film is in English so it is not a complete disaster. And this is somewhat compensated for by great acting and direction.

When I first saw this movie probably a year ago, this site did not even have a page for it. So I was not able to write a comment right away. I see that there is only one comment on here, So I decided to write one now.

At first, I was thinking that this film might be boring. After all, it is about a trial. What can they show you about a trail. I was wrong. Even though this film is almost 2 hours long, I didn't feel bored while watching it. It kept my interest till the end. It has hired people from all over the world, from mainland China, Hongkong, Japan and other places. The storyline was well written. They hired a guy from Hongkong as a Japanese soldier, who knelt in front of a Chinese guy apologizing for what he did back in China. That seemed to be a little out of ordinary. Even though Chinese probably wish that Japanese apologize a little more, there are still plenty of Japanese who refuse to admit that Nanjing massacre ever happened.

To some people, they may think that the seating argument was unnecessary, but the Chinese judge felt that he was representing China as one of the country which defeated Japan. He was entitled to represent China to sit next to the Chief Justice.

I disagree with "rightwingisevil" who thinks that this film is about Communist party or the nationalist party. S/he failed to realize that this is not about any political parties, this is about Chinese nationalism, about the pain that most Chinese feel about what Japanese army did to China for that eight long years during World War II.

The holocaust is a well-known fact to people in the Western world, however, many of them have never heard about the Nanjing massacre or the Tokyo Trial. There are only a handful books and films that are dedicated to this subject. Just by considering this fact, I gave this film a 10 for all those people who worked hard to make this film a reality.