Man Behind the Sun

Original title: Hei tai yang 731

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

7.6K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,608

648

Drama History Horror War

Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.1/10

7.6K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,608

648

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Director Tun-Fei Mou paid a lot of attention to the film's historical accuracy and sought to create something that very earnestly captured his true-life source material doing years of research. He chose actors who purposely resembled Japanese people of the war era and even cast Korean kids living in China to play the Youth Corp as Mou thought Koreans most resembled Japanese kids of that era. Mou filmed the movie in Harbin, Manchuria where 731 was stationed. He used 731's real headquarters as a location, it was a school at the time of the shoot. When Mou took down the school's name and put the Japanese flag back, it horrified the local elderly who had lived through the war. One particularly upset old lady approached Mou and his crew and said "I knew they'd be back (the Japanese), I just hoped it wouldn't be this soon!"

Goofs
Surgeons cut the stomach of an alive boy without any bleeding.

Quotes
Dr. Shiro Ishii: A small rat can beat a cat. Fleas and germs can defeat bombers and guns. This is... the basic theory behind Squadron 731. It is also my philosophy.

Alternate versions
The UK version was cut by 2 minutes by the BBFC to remove a scene where a cat is thrown into a room full of live rats and then killed by them, and to edit shots of rats on fire. Despite the film's graphic violence it received no further BBFC cuts, possibly because the video was given a limited UK release and sold only through Chinese video stores.

Connections
Edited into Men Behind the Sun 3: A Narrow Escape (1994)

User reviews91

Review

Featured review

don't believe the sequel hype

Man Behind the Sun is a worthy film, and readily smeared through its association with a number of schlock "sequels".

Given that most reviewers here can't read Chinese and are measuring the film by its disgust factor, it's easy to see why "Godfrey Ho" is wrongly credited with directing it, instead of just "parts" 2 and 3. The actual director, Mou Tun-fei (aka T.F. Mous) is alive and well and living in Taiwan at last report. He is also a committed Chinese nationalist, which helps to explain the genuine, almost uncontrollable anger in this film.

The "sequels" on the other hand are money-spinners. Anyone who has seen the original should know there was no scope for a sequel set in a camp that had already been destroyed at the conclusion of WWII. At best, "part" 2 is a remake, and a cheap, shabby one at that.

The film is also careful to note significant historical elements, such as how the US government protected some of the criminals portrayed in this film, partly in order to get hold of the scientific data produced at the expense of the lives of thousands of Chinese civilians. If you read books on the matter you will also discover that the vast majority of Japanese scientists implicated in these experiments went on to enjoy successful careers in Japanese universities.

There was no Simon Wiesenthal to chase up and prosecute these individuals, despite their conspicuous presence under a lengthy US administration, and to this day the two governments prefer not to talk about this particularly vile component of Japan's wartime legacy. "Stuff happens," eh Mr Rumsfeld?