Tie dao ying xiong

A very good film depicting a microhistory of Chinese resistance against the Japanese occupiers. The production is excellent in all aspects, including technical, narrative, and visual elements. All the characters are highly believable, and the powerful cinematic imagination makes this film a hidden gem in the mainstream war movie landscape. The Chinese, who endured a war toll of over 16 million deaths among civilians and military personnel, have been underrepresented in World War II filmography. Some viewers may label it as somewhat propagandistic, and there are reasons for that, as some sequences clearly glorify communist brotherhood, which is of great interest to China. However, the question remains: What war film doesn't have some degree of propaganda? Aren't the thousands of Hollywood productions also propagandistic to some extent?

In fact, the film borrows many typical Western movie tropes from Hollywood, where a group of outlaws, in this case, Chinese resistance fighters, engage in attacking trains.