From the acclaimed filmmaker behind Mr. Six comes a riveting war epic. In 1937, eight hundred Chinese soldiers fight under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army.... (Full plot summary below)
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From the acclaimed filmmaker behind Mr. Six comes a riveting war epic. In 1937, eight hundred Chinese soldiers fight under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army.
Leave your thoughts about The Eight Hundred.
| Film ThreatAlan NgIt’s a fantastic World War II movie, the action is tense, and the stories on the ground are inspiring and heartbreaking. |
| VarietyMaggie LeeGuan’s direction may be less radical or propulsive than Nolan’s, but it too plunges audiences into both the intimacy and magnitude of brutal war spectacle while immersing them in a stunningly mounted period canvas. |
| EmpireIan FreerThe Eight Hundred bites off more that it can chew but it consistently serves up gripping filmmaking on the biggest canvas. |
| The GuardianCath ClarkeWith so much intense focus lavished on the action, there’s none to spare for the characters’ emotional lives, and it’s hard to care much about who lives or dies. |
| The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzWhile the scale of Hu’s production is indeed impressive in its giganticness, and likely plays excellently on the IMAX screens for which it is intended (I had to settle for watching it on my television), The Eight Hundred falls a few hundred yards short of war-movie greatness. |
| The Hollywood ReporterElizabeth KerrLike the ambitious The Wandering Earth, the last Chinese epic to make a play for international glory, and indeed Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, The Eight Hundred is thin on characterization, and too often slips into rote narrative and war movie cliches (really, a runaway white horse?). And that's despite eight writers working on the script. The sheer volume of men fighting and dying in the face of overwhelming odds and stellar technical spectacle step into the gap where emotional connection should be. |
| Los Angeles TimesMichael OrdonaThe Eight Hundred fetishizes martyrdom, but for those seeking big-screen, epic violence, it’s pretty much the only game in town. |
| User ReviewmadterpsOne of the best Chinese movies of this year. This movie is the fictional retelling of a true event that happened in Shanghai during the beginning of Japanese invasion in WWII. It takes a look at the different people that have gathered there because they were either court martialed or stuck there. It is a realistic view of war, as some people are cowards and some are brave. And in contrast there are the people in the foreign district in Shanghai living it up and watching by. Later on, some of the character like Lao Tie and Lao Suan Pan develop comraderies through their struggle to not get killed, even though they were hostile to each other at first. And the emotional sacrifice some soldiers had to make to stop the Japanese really touched my heart. One of the best film of the year for me. |
| User ReviewwesseldjThis movie is about the first major battle from imperial japanese against China in 1937, when the war didn't even started yet in Europe (world war 2 started in europe in 1939, almost 2 years later). First of all in a cinematographic standpoint, this was a masterpiece. Second of all, how can people dare to say this is propaganda, when there are actual historic footages from that time still in historic archives depicting that event, recorded by journalists. And the movie didn't even portrayed the chinese soldiers having a victory, but it was a bloody retreat, as was described in history that is even recorded and known in western history books. And the soldiers weren't even communists, they were from NRA from Chiang Kaisheks army. Also the West, as in The League of Nations didn't lay a finger to help the chinese to fight fascism. It's a shame and disgrace of western cinemas not putting this movie in mainstream theaters and telling the story about the brave sacrifice these chinese soldiers have made in trying to defend their dignity and country. |
| User ReviewUncleWillardExcellent production values and effects. It really has very gritty and realistic combat scenes, but it suffers from both cheesy dialogue and obvious pandering to Chinese patriotism. Not the end of the world, we have some cheesy, patriotic movies that are still a fun watch in the States, but the obvious Iwo Jima rip-off pushed it over the top for me. Still a good watch and a visual treat, but that cheesy patriotism spoils it. |
