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.
