Dead to Rights (2025)

[Drunk Monk]

Dead to Rights

This is one of the most brutal films I have ever seen. It’s about the Japanese invasion of Nanjing, and it’s all atrocities. It was also China’s Oscar submission but it didn’t get into the finals. It’s an impossibly hard watch. Mass killings, rape, beheadings, baby death - let’s just go with that one fo a taste. The Japanese stage a photo shoot to show how happy nanjingers are during the occupation. A baby is crying. A soldier grabs the baby and throws it to the ground, killing it. Then the dead baby is placed in the arms of one of the protagonists, an opera singer posing as the wife of a postman posing as a film developer and they are told to smile for the photo.

The main story is about the real life photos of the atrocities, how they came to be and how they are smuggled to foreign press. A postman poses as a film developer to survive because the Japanese military photographer needs his photos developed quickly, and the postman find the real film developer hiding with his family in the basement of his photo shop. The are joined by the opera singer and a wounded soldier, aided by a translator. 

Chinese stories love sacrifice and each character endures overwhelming and inevitably the ultimate sacrifices. It’s a constant barrage of cruel war crimes, many go way past tolerable watching, partially becasje their graphic (so many people set on fire or shot in the head, so many firing squads) but the level of psychological warfare is just unbearable, especially for a 2 1/2 hour epic. 

I’m glad to have watched it because it’s a significant Chinese film, but I’ll never want to watch it again. Another scene that really got me was a dog cuddling with its dead master. 

Only D00M recommended if you’re interested in one of the darkest chapters of this war, or you’re just in a masochistic mood (like I can never unsee that masochistic).

[Drunk Monk]

There’s also a lot of smoking, like so much that it’s distracting, even beyond killing babies.