Historical dramas often tread controversial ground, but there are few that match the raw combination of horrific violence, political tension and historical tension that is rolled together in the events that occurred during the siege of Nanjing and the subsequent massacre cruelly perpetrated by invading Japanese forces.

Beginning with the fall of the city, and charting several characters ranging from an ordinary Japanese soldier to a Chinese diplomatic aide, from a woman forced into sex slavery to a child soldier, and to German businessman and legendary humanitarian John Rabe whose actions in setting up and desperately trying to protect the ‘safety zone’ saved countless German lives. These stories, however, merely form part of a broader depiction of a historical event so unimaginable and powerful in scope that capturing them is a near impossible task.

The result is a tone that carries all of the bombast that subjects of historical importance can command. The undoubtedly huge budget of the film is spent on ambitious shots of mass devastation, on small bursts of battle that crack and fizzle with an intensity heightened by the knowledge that political repercussions of these events resonate even today, and on scores of actors who hurl themselves wholesale into the horror that are being recreated around them.

As you may expect for a film about such frightening subject matter, much of the film is painful to watch. Japanese soldiers brutally attack civilians, women and children are raped, and in one particularly harrowing scene a screaming toddler is hurled from a fourth story window. The unflinching violence injected into every shot is clearly infused with national consciousness of China.

There is little that is redeeming about any of the Japanese soldier, even the one character who is a mere nod that a veneer of humanity existed beneath the barbarism of this manic horde is presented as a spineless dullard with no capacity to battle against the disgusting excesses of his comrades. What’s more the occasional punctuation with scenes such as Chinese soldiers on the brink of execution standing in unison and chanting ‘Long live China’ verged on the propagandistic.

That said, it would be unfair to dismiss the film as mere national sentiment. It is much more apt to acknowledge that this powerful film is imbued with the pain and anguish of a filmmaker anxious to convey the agony inflicted not just on the hundreds of thousands whose lives were destroyed by this atrocity, but on the billions of citizens of modern China whose historical consciousness is deeply scarred by this dark time.

For those of you who respect the magnitude of certain historical events, this is a spectacle not to be missed. It’s power and scope will not fail to impress. But the faint-hearted among you should be aware that this is an atrocity whose scale is captured on every level, and it makes for harrowing cinema.

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By: Mike Edwards