Dull and contrived

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2012)

I'm not sure any film could ever capture the extent of the brutality that occurred during the Rape of Nanking. Only a documentary could do this. This film only touched on some of what was going on. The rest of the movie was a feeble attempt to build a story around an American expat trying to save some girls from a convent. Toss in some unrealistically attractive prostitutes for visual effect, a few action scenes, and you have yourself a movie, not a very good movie, but a movie. Every scene drags on longer than it should. The movie starts off fairly well and then declines to the point where you really aren't interested in what happens next. The acting is weak. Christian Bale goes through the motions, though I did enjoy the stereotypical way he tried to speak English to the Japanese soldiers who had no idea what he was talking about. Actually, the movie is filled with stereotypes and seemed to be made with Western viewers in mind, giving them the stereotypes they feel most comfortable with. The word, pandering, comes to mind. The only scene that matches accounts given at the time is that in which the church is invaded by Japanese soldiers. You can't, and should not, try to build a heartwarming film around incidents such as that.
By the end of the movie, I really didn't much care what happened to anyone. The characters acted in their own shells. No rapport was built between any of them. There are some bloody scenes and some scenes that are hard to watch. Troubling as they are, they do keep the film anchored in the reality of the time. It is just that they are not integrated well enough with the rest of the story. I think that is where the problem with the film arises. The immensity of the time, the psychological trauma of it, could not be addressed with these characters and with this plot. The end result is a series of disconnected scenes with nothing to hold them together well enough to make for a satisfying film.