Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

sergepesic There are so many horrors that people inflict upon the other, lesser, people in this world. Of course, to be able to do those atrocious things, you have to somehow dehumanize them or make them less then yourself. And it seems to work for so many inhabitants of this maddening planet. Average, exhausted person tries to block out all the things that don't fit their small, petty existence. We do not know which countries our leaders bombed in last 20 years. That doesn't make us participants in war crimes, but in the same time not every German or Japanese committed the atrocities on Jews or Chinese. They just averted their gaze from the disturbing or unpleasant. Without the passive onlookers, the monsters would be hiding in the sewers where they belong. Alas, courage is a rare commodity and heroes first scapegoats here and everywhere else .

museumofdave Stark, perfectly charted with a documentary approach in black and white,this brilliantly composed cinematic retelling of the 1937 invasion and destruction of the city of Nanking by the Japanese is grim, indeed. It deals with the complete subjugation of a largely innocent populace, including the brutal rapes of hundreds with ensuing venereal disease and death. The film is not simply a series of unrelated scenes of rampant sadism, but is linked together by focusing on four or five different characters from several sides of the conflict, thus involving the viewer and making us care about individuals. This is not an entertainment, but a lesson; from my viewpoint, however, it was never dull and it was convincing in its power, a power imposed by thoughtful film-making

eatfirst There are a rare few films that have found a way to tackle some of the greatest atrocities ever committed by and upon the human race with such searing, unflinching emotional honesty that they move beyond the categorisations of drama or war movie to something that can best be described as bearing witness. Come And See and Schindler's List belong to this exclusive group, and so too now must Lu Chuan's extraordinary and harrowing City Of Life And Death.It is 1937 in Nanking, former Chinese capital and scene of what is about to unfold as one of the greatest war-crimes in history (a massacre verging on genocide and an event which continues to sour Sino-Japanese relations to this day), but writer/director Lu Chuan is not here to analyse wider military events or stratagems. We open with the briefest glimpse of the Japanese assault on the city walls, and then before the credits have even finished rolling his camera is already patrolling the post-conflict city streets; a blasted, ruined landscape. His film picks up where the likes of The Pianist or Saving Private Ryan leave off, in the midst of a destroyed world, with the invaders and the surviving remnants of the defeated population already pitched together in a dangerous and disorientating mix of sporadic resistance battles, vast wretched prisoner encampments and perilously tenuous civilian "safety" zones.Events are told in a masterful inter-cutting of macro and micro drama. We are introduced to only a handful of identifiable characters. Amongst them a Chinese bureaucrat trying to use his position to save his family, a young boy caught up in the resistance fighting, a naive prostitute (euphemistically referred to as comfort girls), one of thousands shipped to the front-line with no idea of the horrors awaiting them, and a single Japanese soldier with some semblance of conscience amongst his savage comrades. Their desperate personal stories intertwine inside the maelstrom of chaos and horror surrounding them.The stunning black-and-white photography veers from stark, hand-held and up-close, to vast and impressionistic sweeps that depict the large-scale massacres as nightmarish visions of some biblical apocalypse. The combined effect renders the feel of the movie as both something close to a rediscovered contemporary document and personal witness testimony, the small-scale drama illuminating the large-scale atrocity that might be beyond comprehension otherwise.At times heart-stopping in its intensity and tragic almost beyond expressing. City Of Life And Death is a profoundly moving depiction of inhumanity at its most grievous. It simply should be seen.

poe426 Having just recently subjected myself to the almost documentary-like horrors of the Russian film COME AND SEE (about as sobering an experience as can be had), I opted to push my luck and try CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH. I've seen a number of documentaries regarding Japan's invasion of China, so I knew what to expect (although I DIDN'T expect the opening scenes, which harked back to the gritty, hand-held carnage of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN). In fact, CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH is actually more than a little forgiving in some of its depictions: characters who may or may not have been as sympathetic to the "lesser beings" are given the benefit of the doubt (no doubt by way of presenting a more "balanced" view of rape and wholesale slaughter). (Note: in one documentary I saw, a recaptured prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp was hung for all to see and a note was pinned to his chest: "I'm back," it read. And you thought the Nazis had no sense of humor...)