Philosophy of a Knife

Why is this 4 hours long? Could easily be edited down to 90 mnts

There are some interesting "historical" nuggets interwoven into endless B&W stills

Watch on fast forward if you must

I'm rarely moved to comment on movies and books because others have generally already expressed everything I have to say. No need to repeat.

However, this movie is so appallingly bad that it deserves every terrible review we can collectively muster.

As a documentary, it fails. Too many inaccuracies, too much left out, too many things left unexplained. The man whose interview answers are interspersed throughout was not directly involved in any of it and had nothing new to contribute. The narration, delivered in all its monotone glory, is insipid and adds no insight. Of course, despite purporting to convey a true story, it's not billed as a documentary so I suppose you could forgive the faults. But seriously, this is laughably inaccurate.

As a horror film, it fails. Mostly because it's too long by at least 2 hours, has no momentum and is, frankly, boring. Yes, the experimentation scenes are graphic. But there are only a handful of them – maybe one every 20 minutes? - so this can't even qualify as a gore fest. Besides, the effects are amateurish at best, and no self-respecting horror fan would be impressed. The infamous tooth-pulling scene is shockingly fake. There are numerous lengthy scenes of prisoners sitting around waiting – is Iskanov trying to create suspense? I have this bad habit of doggedly finishing a book or a movie I really don't like or actively loathe, just because I hate leaving something unfinished. I don't usually regret this because it's a conscious decision and I feel I have a better idea of the work as a whole if I actually finish watching or reading it. I regret wasting my time with this movie.

It was some of the most self-indulgent dreck I've ever come across. Iskanov's repetitive use of silent snow-falling-on-gray-building scenes were maddening. I started timing them, and they ranged from about 2 to 6 minutes, making them ideal for bathroom breaks, walking the dog or fixing a sandwich. If you wanted to skip over the Russian guy's interview scenes too, you'd have enough time for a solid power nap.

Actually, don't bother with it at all. Then you don't have to mess with fast forwarding and all that.

The small portions of this movie that have any merit, mostly the archival footage which is in some cases quite well applied, are over shadowed by a number of glaring flaws. The narrator blatantly overlooks other widespread abuses and atrocities committed by the whole of the Japanese military, instead claiming that any injustices were simply in response to pressures from the conflict with Russia. To try and whitewash Unit 731's role as a defencive measure is historically inaccurate, and since the Philosophy of a Knife claims to be a sober look at historical events, it fails on that level. I would say while there are few other movies that focus primarily on Imperial Japan's forays into chemical and biological warfare, this one does not ear points for filling a niche void.

This epic is 4 hours long. Much of that 4 hours is the exterior of a building which may or may not be the one in question.

In a prologue the director and I think one of the producers tell us, among other things, that they "did not research" a lot of the facts.

But they say their work is based on facts and that the movie is supposed to be about death and war....

There is a fair amount of interesting stuff in the movie, enough for maybe 90 minutes. But not 4 hours. I think they wanted to give the viewer some sense of ennui by showing the building the falling snow from this angle, from that angle, from another angle...all with no narration over and over. It seemed like about 2 minutes of story and 5 minutes of exterior of building in the falling snow for 4 hours.

I may be exaggerating, but not much. As for the story....

Those who know about Unit 731 may be offended by this film as an effort to cash in on a grisly reputation. Others may be offended by it's portrayal of one American and several Russians as the victims of Unit 731. I am pretty sure the majority of victims were a very diverse group consisting of P.O.W.s from all who fought against Japan, Chinese locals and even Japanese criminals. Pregnant women as well as children were also prey to the heinous Japanese "doctors" of Unit 731.

Regardless, the whole thing to me comes off as lame bondage/torture-porn. That you MIGHT get some idea of a story out of if you take notes when they are actually speaking. Even if you are looking for Bondage/toture-porn keep the remote handy, you have a lot of the building in the falling snow from this angle, from that angle, from another angle...all with no narration over and over to fast forward through.

Philosophy of a knife is a 4 hour long documentary recalling the atrocities of unit 731. This film has some real footage from ww2, along with interviews and of course the poorly made reanactments which are all compiled together in a pretty good way to create this movie.

The real ww2 footage is pretty good in this with some moments being really interesting, the interviews are also good but I do feel as if the person being interviewed is gratifying the atrocities in some way. However the reanactments are just aren't that great, for example the acting is just atrocious and there isn't a single bit of emotional response coming from the victims or even the pathologists and guards. Every time a victim gets strapped to a chair or an operating table they make absolutely zero attempt to struggle or even react to the pain being afflicted, the perpetrators also don't produce any emotional reactions either which is somewhat accurate to historical events but they should have also explored the different ways they couldve looked horrified at the orders given, giving those characters moments of humanity instead of making every member there a mindless psycho cutting into people randomly. Another problem I have with the reanactments is the actors themselves, the majority of unit 731 victims were Chinese with a small amount of russian and an extremely small amount of Americans, however philosophy of a knife has no Chinese victims and instead has a ton of white, russian and American prisoners. This not only white washes the cast of this film but also history itself which is extremely disrespectful to the actual victims. The final problem I have with the reanactments is the extreme butcher shop violence which are ment to be the experiments, the many pathologists just seem to slice and dice in a very non professional way, most of the experiments don't even seem like they have any contribution to science which is kind of the point of experimentation, like there's one "experiment" where they stick a cockroach up a prisoners vagina to see if it will come out the mouth, it isn't even explained why they do this it just happens. The real unit 731 had professional pathologists and doctors which did there work strategically and somewhat professionally when they conducted there inhumane experiments, the professionalism is also whats most horrifying about unit 731 as it shows that even though there profession is targeted at helping people, they still committed these atrocities and I do wish this theme was done better in this movie.

The effects in this film do vary in quality, from crappy effects which look lazy and don't fit the moment and to pretty good effects which did make me cover my face. The makeup is pretty decent as well which definitely excelled the scene at times. The camera quality however wasn't the best with moments being way to shakey and the majority of the camera work being uncomfortable shots just made it get pretty boring after a long while.

The music in this film though is fantastic, being a mixture of uncomfortable ambience and sinister tunes which made this film generally scary at times. A really good example of how good the music is can be seen in the title theme, as the song progresses the music gets more chaotic and distorted which may represent the stages of unit 731 throughout the years, going from questionable experimentation which still remains in the boundaries of ethics and then progresses to extremely evil and Inhumane experimentation which loses its grip on ethics. This progression could also be a euphemism on how the experiments went from improving biological warfare to having little to no connection with the betterment of humanity. Truly chilling stuff.

The intro to this film is pretty cool aswell, having some badass music and some pretty good footage. This moment is the only part of the movie I actually enjoyed and gave me some hope to this being a fairly good movie but was disappointed after seeing the rest of the film.

In conclusion even though this movie has its pretty good moments it still falls short due to the dramatic amount of gore and exploitation, the incredibly long runtime of 4 hours and the poor acting which does let down a really good idea to adapt this dark part of humanity into a movie like this.