jakbird
New Member
- Location
- Lincoln, Nebraska
Last night I watched a new Chinese movie, The Battle of Lake ChiangJin, about the entry of China into the Korean War at Chosin Reservoir. Being a fan of propaganda movies I looked forward to seeing it. This was a big budget, flag waving epic with first rate production values. The CGI with large scale attacks was expertly done, and of course with any spectacular Chinese movie one can always count on hundreds if not thousands of extras, in the tradition of 1930s American epics. The English subtitles seemed to be accurate, at least with the few words of Common Speech I know.
The actors portraying the Americans were unknowns, a bit stiff but generally realistic. There were some great Sergei Eisenstein type contrasts, like the American soldiers eating turkey on Thanksgiving while the Chinese commandos sat freezing in the mountains, eating raw potatoes. Being a propaganda movie it naturally glossed over some of the historical details, in particular the huge losses to frostbite and exposure due to lack of cold weather uniforms for the Chinese. Also, the Chinese soldiers were armed with what would be modern submachine guns at the time, when in reality Chinese army equipment was decades old German war surplus.
Still, it was fun to watch and does live up to the hype around it. It will show up on lists of top war movies along with the likes of Back To Bataan or Destination Tokyo.
The actors portraying the Americans were unknowns, a bit stiff but generally realistic. There were some great Sergei Eisenstein type contrasts, like the American soldiers eating turkey on Thanksgiving while the Chinese commandos sat freezing in the mountains, eating raw potatoes. Being a propaganda movie it naturally glossed over some of the historical details, in particular the huge losses to frostbite and exposure due to lack of cold weather uniforms for the Chinese. Also, the Chinese soldiers were armed with what would be modern submachine guns at the time, when in reality Chinese army equipment was decades old German war surplus.
Still, it was fun to watch and does live up to the hype around it. It will show up on lists of top war movies along with the likes of Back To Bataan or Destination Tokyo.
