The Flowers of War

Very slow times at the video store lately so for a lack of anything else, I picked this one up figuring the "War" aspect had to at least balance out the "Flowers" part of it. Was told by the clerk that "It's a real tear jerker" which didn't win it any points in my book but it went out the door with me anyway.

So I started watching it with a pretty pessimistic attitude so I was at least not disappointed with it. It has its moments but all in all it's a pretty slow movie. It is somewhat educational in that it shows the brutality of the Japanese soldiers to the Chinese in Nanking.

The story is about a group of Chinese Catholic school girls caught up in the battle of Nanking. It involves an American undertaker who assumes the roll of Priest to protect first himself and then later the girls. A group of Chinese high end call girls also seeks refuge in the church compound.

The good part: In the early stages of the film, a "savior" of the girls is a Chinese Major and his small group of surviving soldiers. There are several impressive battle scenes and from what I could tell, they were using correct period weapons and uniforms. The Chinese were uniformed in German style gear and the Major had an impressive Chinese Mauser sniper rifle. This being a learning moment for me that the Germans equipped and trained 8 Chinese divisions was the best part of the film. The Major is soon the sole survivor of his band and becomes the "Diehard" of Nanking.

All in all, not really a bad film. Much of it is subtitled which can be a bit tiresome. I didn't check to see if I could have converted it to all English and unfortunately didn't think of that until after the movie was over. It does have some decent messages in it, good conquering over evil, putting others before yourself, etc. What you can see of the military gear is very good, I just wish there were more of it. On the plus side, it's a war movie your wife probably won't mind watching and it is not nearly as bad as Pearl Harbor.