ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

poe426 It was during the American Civil War that the Truth was driven home like a wooden stake through a vampire's heart: target the civilian population, engage in a "scorched earth" policy, and you'll shorten the war. But has it ever been otherwise? History suggests it's always been the norm. Not long ago, I watched a documentary about a photographer who had gone to Africa and returned with some of the most horrific photos imaginable. There were the usual atrocities, drought, etc.,- but the most shocking photo, which turned out to have been recorded on video as well, showed a human being literally reduced to skeletal proportions crawling slowly along a dirt road. One couldn't help but feel for the man... and then the documentary revealed that this man and other members of his tribe had butchered and beheaded and dismembered all the members of another tribe... the tribe that had been responsible for farming and providing food for everyone in the region. When the U.$. invaded Afghanistan, Afghanistan was said to be "the POOREST country on Earth." "The enemy creates a desert," someone says in the documentary NANKING, "and calls it Peace." Also in NANKING, we're told that those Chinese with Money and Means were able to avoid the horrors visited on the rest of the population- "the poorest of the poor," who couldn't AFFORD to flee (Katrina, anyone?). It's ironic, indeed, that one of the Chinese benefactors was a devout Nazi sympathizer; ironic, too, that it was the United $tate$ itself that supplied the Japanese with war supplies. The Japanese strategy in Nanking was summed up by "the three Alls: Kill All, Burn All, Loot All." (The exact same strategy employed by the U.$. in The American War- in Vietnam...) Says one missionary: "During this time, we really felt that we were contending with the powers of evil." ("Axis of Evil," anyone?) "I can see little indication of God," one wrote. (And these writings, as powerful as they are, are somehow LESS powerful when read by Actors so very far removed from the Reality; better it had been a narrator- or at least Actors kept off-camera.) It was indeed infuriating to see the unrepentant old Japanese war criminals fondly recalling the atrocities they committed (see the documentary THE ACT OF KILLING to see this kind of jerking come full circle) and some of the revelations about their depredations were truly startling- for instance, that they raped young BOYS when young Girls weren't available... and the (eye-witnessed) act of NECROPHELIA. (Did you know that General Patton left Nazi guards on duty at some of the "liberated" concentration camps during World War Two? How's THAT for a War Hero? Gung Ho Gung Ho Gung Ho...) As for the Japanese, they just "wanted no witnesses."

Lee Eisenberg While the Nazi atrocities were the most infamous events in the 1930s and 1940s, Japanese forces carried out a series of equally vicious actions in China and Korea. In 1937, the Japanese army nearly wiped the city of Nanjing off the face of the earth while committing a near genocide against the population. In the midst of the horror, a group of westerners established a Safety Zone as a refuge for people fleeing the atrocities. The documentary "Nanking" intersperses footage of the terror with readings from the diaries of the westerners who established the Safety Zone, and also interviews with Chinese citizens who survived the massacres. In addition, there are also interviews with former Japanese troops who act as if they didn't do anything wrong.The documentary shows a good contrast between the ability to carry out evil acts and the desire to do good in the most desperate circumstances. The Chinese survivors have some of the most heartbreaking stories, probably very similar to the stories that the survivors of concentration camps have.The point is to understand that these malicious deeds are unfortunately inevitable when a country has an empire. Much like Germany's actions in Poland or Italy's actions in Ethiopia, Japan's actions in China must never be forgotten, although Japan's government still denies it.Another good movie focusing on the Japanese occupation of Nanjing is the recent "Flowers of War", starring Christian Bale as a clergyman giving Chinese schoolgirls sanctuary.

jzappa How does one visualize the diaries of unfilmed people who are no longer living? Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman employ actors to read, as if in a playwrights' initiative, the records of the tortured souls buried by time and the formal writings of human history. At first, I thought the story was somehow cheapened by this technique, but upon reflection, I see the power of its subjectivity. As a freshman in high school, I saw a documentary in a history class about "The Rape of Nanking" in 1937, which truly stunned me with its depictions of the utmost brutality and heartless destruction that went on when the Japanese invaded. That was one thing. Another was seeing this film, which not only interweaves stock footage and photographs on par with those of the Holocaust, but features Chinese survivors who tell their stories, their overwhelmingly horrific stories. And as for the survivors who can't speak for themselves, actors speak their very words for them. In a sense, that is one of the more essential aspects of what actors do: Identify.It's not often that I connect on a personal level with historical accounts of atrocity. I hear of Jews, gays and gypsies being cooked alive, gassed, starved and other such things and I can only recognize the horror and be disturbed by indefensible fright and indescribable shock that I see in a victim's eyes, for instance. The story of Nanking from the mouths of these people seems to me like a whole new world of terror. It is thus evidenced that human beings are capable of the most unspeakable cruelty and insurmountable venom. Perhaps it's that German and Japanese culture have a history of thinking very uniformly, whereas Americans, in spite of how cruel and despicable we've been throughout our history, have a record of being torn by internal struggles. This documentary glimpses the other side of the coin: Are human beings capable of surviving their experience with the same unspeakable cruelty and insurmountable venom?Maybe the reason I felt at first as if the film was deterred by the artifice of actors could be because the most riveting moments are all interviews with real Chinese survivors. The most arresting moments by far are the unexpected interviews with Japanese who were in the army during the Sino Japanese War committing the atrocities. At least one of them chuckles at a recollection.

futures-1 "Nanking" (documentary, 2007): When we think of Evil and War, we think first of the Nazis, Germany, and Jews. Though this is simplistic, we at least have these household terms as points of reference. We HATE everything around the names Nazi, Swastika, and Hitler. What our history has failed to do is discuss the Japanese at and before that same era with their attacks upon China, and, how they were no less brutal than the Nazis. Ill even go further than that and say their blood lust was more brutal, random, passionate, and less calculating than the Nazis. WHY we, as Americans, have allowed our history to be written so clearly and sharply about the Germans, yet so vaguely and softly about the Japanese, is a question I suspect has embarrassing answers. See this documentary. It wont answer all your questions, but it will initiate them.