Complete and utter rubbish

Rating: 1/10 (5 May 2014)

Well, where to start on this one. What an execrable mess. This story loosely concerns an American neer-do-well who is inexplicably rambling around Nanking looking for a Church. This guy is apparently a mortician, but where he came from (has he turned up on the wrong film set?) and why he has chosen the middle of the rape and pillage of Nanking to do this is unclear. Inexplicably he seems unconcerned about the several hundred thousand other bodies lying around Nanking, he is fixated on attending to the body of a priest at this church. Given the movie later goes to great pains to show what a dirty rotten scoundrel he is, why he seems honour or duty bound to do this is unclear. It seems he is only doing it for the money but unless the pay for attending to a dead priest is several million dollars you would think he would have been better off staying in his hotel room. While Chinese civilians are being slaughtered left and right our hero is luckily found by the only Japanese soldier that does not shoot people. And luckily, for no apparent reason, a wall falls on this soldier. And luckily, out of the half million people in Nanking he could meet, he comes across 2 girls from the very church he wants to go to. What a guy. Meanwhile a group of girls are fleeing from something - apparently they were out having a picnic when the Japanese inconsiderately decided to attack. A young Chinese man insists on counting them every 10 seconds. Also meanwhile a certain General Li is out there with his men, in the way that Generals always are, right? A soldier says to him something like "General, we must go, everyone else has gone" but our heroic general is made of sterner stuff. Another group of civilians is being pursued by Japanese troops, but inexplicably, the Japanese don't shoot at them. We see ridiculous CGI shots of bullets tearing through people, an overhead shot of a ridiculously unreal exploding tank....and on, and on and on.
All of this in the first 3 minutes, by which time I was shaking my head in disbelief and started reading a book. I lasted through about 20 minutes before I switched it off. Kudos to those that can sit through more of this debacle.
I don't suppose you can blame Christian Bale. I guess he used the script he was given and "acted" the way he was told to. I guess he was made an offer he couldn't refuse, took the money and ran.
It goes without saying that the Rape of Nanking was a horrific event that everyone should know about and remember. However to use these events as period backdrop to such a ridiculous little pot boiler is shameless exploitation.