Based on the 1937 rape of the China city Nanking by the Japanese.

Rating: Null/10 (17 August 2012)

Christian Bale is one of the actors I like, I find that he always creates a memorable character. In this movie he is John Miller, an American undertaker arriving in war-torn 1937 Nanking to give a recently deceased Catholic priest a proper burial.
As he is making his way to the walled-in church and convent compound he has to dodge bullets and finds himself in a large flour bin, and arrives at the gates covered in white powder. This becomes important later as he needs new clothes and finds the deceased priest's vestments fit him. So he spends much of the rest of the movie dressed as a priest, and the Japanese soldiers think he is a priest.
The core of the story involves two groups of approximately 12 to 14 females. One group are the 12 to 14 year old children, students that live at the school and convent. The other are the 20-something prostitutes that managed to climb over the fence and seek shelter in the basement of the compound.
Over the development of the story John Miller starts out as a simple, money-grubbing man who wants to get paid for his services. He cares about no one but himself. By the end he has come to care for all the girls, young and old, plus George the young boy who helps in the convent. The movie is inspired by real events, but I don't know if the core of this story is real or not.
Anyway it is a superb movie, slow-moving but meaningful. It does not sugar-coat the hardships of war. It was a very expensive movie to make, the whole compound and devastated city was a set built on a large parcel of land.
The DVD extras are very interesting, showing the process to select actors, almost all unknown and inexperienced. And the interaction between them and Bale, the only "name" actor in the movie. It was touching to see how many of them were crying as filming ended, because going their separate ways was like breaking up a family.
SPOILERS: In the end John realized that a Japanese invitation for the girls to attend a party and sing was really a death knell for them. The prostitutes sacrificed themselves for the girls, allowing John to straighten their hair and make them up to look more like children, so they could go instead. Meanwhile John managed to repair an old truck and, hiding the children under some crates, managed to sneak them out of Nanking to safety.