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Reviews & Ratings for
 Men Behind the Sun 4 More at IMDbPro »Hei tai yang: Nan Jing da tu sha (original title)

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27 out of 35 people found the following review useful:
unique war film, 17 March 2003
Author: (sumdenguy@hotmail.com) from Denver, CO

It's not often you hear about the Japanese atrocities committed against the Chinese. Black Sun : The Nanking Massacre unflinchingly tells the true story of the over 300,000(that's 300,000!!!!) Chinese people who were brutally killed by the occupying Japanese army. Mixed with real film footage and photographs of the actual events, the film really shows the atrocities of war. It's mostly told from the Japanese point of view, and several conversations between Japanese commanders and soldiers are chilling. There are some exploitative gross out moments, like an unborn baby being pulled out of a pregnant woman's stomach via bayonette...but it always feels true. There are so many scenes of crowds being machine gunned down that you can be desensitized pretty early on in the film. The scary thing is, is the Japanese really WERE this barbaric. They slaughtered babies, infants, children, women, men and monks alike. The scene of hundreds of bodies being burned on the beach is a truly haunting moment. While it is an absolute must see for war film fans or historians...the film, however, is gory enough to make splatter fans happy.

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13 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Brutal and harrowing war drama., 31 May 2005
8/10
Author: HumanoidOfFlesh from Chyby, Poland

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"Black Sun:The Nanking Massacre" is another harrowing piece of horror/war drama directed skillfully by Tun Fei Mou,the creator of two disturbing masterpieces "Man Behind the Sun" and "Lost Souls".The film stays soundly rooted in the retelling of events that took place in 1937-specifically,those actions that took place in the Chinese city of Nanking,where a planned massacre was ferociously and flippantly facilitated by the invading Japanese.The stock footage of Nanking massacre and actual killings is genuinely disturbing and not for the easily offended.The scene where a pregnant woman has her unborn baby torn from her stomach and skewered on the end of a Japanese soldier's bayonet is absolutely revolting.The sequence of the bodies being burned on the riverbank is truly powerful-the sight of these enormous flames racing across an entire landscape of dead people is especially hard to forget.The film is well-made and acted,and the photography is simply stunning.Watch this one in pair with Mou's "Man Behind the Sun"-just avoid two Godfrey Ho's films "Man Behind the Sun 2:Laboratory of the Devil" and "Man Behind the Sun 3:Narrow Escape".8 out of 10.

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9 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
getting across the message that the Japanese are evil, 7 August 2006
7/10
Author: christopher-underwood from Greenwich - London

This is worth viewing and the DVD Special edition well worth buying for the 'extras', but there are one or two problems. I think the main difficulty is that the director has available to him awful, original footage of events and decides to mix these in with what for the main part can only be described as exploitative material. Nothing wrong with a good old exploitation movie of course but here the, probably cheaply done, massed bodies and brutal slayings look nothing compared to the original sickening footage. There are moments like the burning of the bodies at the river's edge that are undoubtedly powerful but for the most part we are only too aware that this is a one event movie spun out for the sole reason of showing the spilling of blood and guts and getting across the message that the Japanese are evil. Having said all that the DVD distributors have exceeded themselves and included notable items including a most illuminating 1944 US propaganda film, 'Why We Fight: The Battle Of China' - not to be missed.

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4 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Exploitation or historical document? You be the judge..., 10 October 2005
5/10
Author: Libretio

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

BLACK SUN: THE NANKING MASSACRE (Hei Tai Yang: Nan Jing Da Tu Sha)

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Mono

Dramatized account of events in 1937-38, when Japanese military forces overran the city of Nanking, unleashing a wave of barbarous cruelty on the defenceless population.

Though hyped by its director as a sincere depiction of China's darkest hour, BLACK SUN: THE NANKING MASSACRE will be remembered chiefly for its exploitation trimmings, such as the scene in which a sneering Japanese soldier uses his bayonet to cut a foetus from the womb of a pregnant Chinese woman. It sounds horrific, but the incident is staged with freak-show explicitness more likely to generate laughter than horror - until one remembers that such things *did* happen during this period, and much worse besides...

In narrative terms, the film offers a curious mixture of gruesome horror and earnest recreations of historical events, punctuated by lengthy scenes in which high-ranking Japanese officials argue the merits (or not) of their behavior toward 'enemy' civilians. Unlike the scenes of carnage, however, these dialogue exchanges are rendered with little or no visual flair, a stylistic conceit which serves the demand for historical accuracy whilst simultaneously blunting any possible sympathy the audience may develop for the Japanese characters. Director Mau Dui-fai - billed as 'T.F. Mous' - was previously responsible for such see-'em-and-vomit items as LOST SOULS (1980) and the notorious MEN BEHIND THE SUN (1988), and here he demonstrates an aptitude for sideshow theatrics which renders him uniquely suited to the subject at hand.

For all its sensationalism, however, the movie is distinguished by an extraordinary *lack* of melodrama. Mau depicts the worst horrors (rape, decapitation, mass shootings and burnings) with po-faced solemnity, lapsing into carnival grotesquerie only when the pace threatens to flag. Those looking for sleazy thrills will get their money's worth, but "Black Sun" straddles the gap between commercial exploitation and journalistic integrity, and takes few prisoners along the way. Performances by a largely unknown cast are uniformly fine, and production values are top-notch for such downmarket fare.

(Cantonese dialogue)

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6 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Important subject worthy of a better treatment, 31 October 2006
3/10
Author: Weird Al from Manchester, England

Having seen men Behind the Sun I guess I hoped for an evolution in style & technique to match the larger scale of this movie. I was also quite interested to see someone make a hard-hitting fact-based fictionalised account of what happened during this most notorious of Japanese atrocities, but this is not it. This plays like a bottom-to-mid tier European Nazi exploitation movie from the 70s - e.g. SS Experiment Camp etc (perhaps more like Deported Women of the Special Section actually). Granted it has a greater scope and more people running around, but it resorts to the same cheap and cheerless device of lots of hapless non-actors limply falling over to the sound of ridiculously fake gunshots, spiced up with the occasional poorly executed 'shock' sequence. The admittedly horrible documentary footage is roughly spliced in between scenes so hackneyed that even these real images are robbed of much of their power. Watch channel 4's 'The Holocaust' (aired recently (still running?), as of 1 No 2006) for a genuinely disturbing documentary on the evils of war (featuring excellent in-context use of actual footage). This is the type of treatment the horror of Nanjing deserves, not this hackneyed exploitation garbage (a better executed exploitation movie minus the disrespectful use of stock footage would have been fine, but again this is not even a very good exploitation movie). Rating: 3 (5 as exploitation, 1 as a treatment of the subject).

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2 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
A superb prequel to "Men Behind the Sun"., 5 January 2008
Author: chuck-219 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

We open with stock footage of the Japanese invading China, 1937. Nanking, we are informed, falls by mid December of that year. So begins this recounting of a hopeless time for China.

According to the film, disciplining the Chinese population (with mass rapes and murders) was justified due to its preserving Japan's lock on them for the future. Its depiction of said massacre makes the soldiers of "Bridge on River Kwai"(1957) look like Disneyland attendants. There are two minor subplots in the film. One involves a man desperately trying to save his young niece and nephew from the invading Japanese. Another involves a father and his young son, the father cooperating with the Japanese in lieu of his son's life. As was the character of this film, neither would come to much fruition. Refugee camps, with American and German observers, are raided without so much as a care for world opinion.

The high points of the film come with opinions being shared between Generals in the "trenches" and those of the High Command. The entrenched Generals win out in the end. Also of note is a conversation between a Samurai adviser and an Army General on the moral situation at hand (all spoken in deference to their Samurai Swords and the respective makers). It is most entrancing.

This film depicts atrocities most heinous in nature. A street side abortion is performed with bayonet precision. It is a somewhat "fakey" looking affair, but effective in its message. Thousands are burned seaside in an effort to "cleanse" the landscape for foreign journalists. Many more are machine gunned in hopes that the people will better understand their hopeless position in the war. No one is spared in this matter.

The production values and acting are simply superb in this film. It makes one wonder what Hollywood could produce if it weren't for the MPAA controlling things there. This film is definitely proof that extreme cinema need not be labeled "exploit" to keep one glued to the screen through cinematic excellence and horror alike. Most highly recommended.

Charlie.

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1 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
I'm ambivalent, 24 June 2007
7/10
Author: Nelson Von Stricker (super_chicken46@hotmail.com) from Toronto

I really don't know what to think of this movie. I would say that, after the first 30 minutes I was ready to dismiss it. I don't think it's inability to pick a genre is a virtue (though I think it could have been). I also think the film comes off way too much like a propaganda film for the People's Republic. It seems to suggest that the "Rape of Nanking" was some kind of secret. Well, for whatever reason, I knew about it already, and so I thought that attitude was rather odd. Another random thing: that introduction is bizarre. There must have been 30-40 cuts in 90 seconds. That's just insane. It didn't work in my mind. But anyway, the director has more balls than any American or even just any mainstream filmmaker would in depicting the atrocities. Though an atrocity doesn't automatically make a good film, I still find this attempt at truly conveying the horror commendable. And further, there is no imposed happy ending, unlike western films that try to deal with these things. For that, I think I can forgive the stylistic difficulties.

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1 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Shocking and Disturbing (and unfortunately a true event), 25 March 2008
7/10
Author: brasil60 from Plymouth, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This film is truly shocking, not in the sense in that its a bad movie but in the sense that the events that took place during the war were truly disturbing. The film also includes true footage taken including old black and white photographs which in part are more disturbing than the film its self.

More shocking is the fact that at the end of the movie they tell you the grand total of number of people that were killed during the invasion of Nan king and that the film footage is not as bad as what really went on during the war.

Overall i wouldn't say that this movie is all that great, but its worth checking out if you enjoyed men behind the sun or other exploitation movies or if you are just interested in the history of the Japanese invasion of China.

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5 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Pretty Solid Follow Up To "Men Behind The Sun", 14 September 2005
7/10
Author: EVOL666 from St. John's Abortion Clinic

THE NANKING MASSACRE is another solid piece of work from T.F. Mou regarding the atrocities that the Japanese brought upon the Chinese in WWII. Personally, I felt that this installment lacked the punch of MEN BEHIND THE SUN, but was still very effective in trying to relate the horrors of war and oppression. There are a few "gore" scenes, but to be quite honest, they almost come off a little comically (or i'm just sick...). I found the "forced abortion" and the "baby in the rice steamer" scenes to be pretty hilarious, though I'm sure they weren't meant to be - the FX just looked silly and not horrifying. That's not to make light of the film itself or of what actually happened in China at that time period. All-in-all I found the film to be very moving, and should really be looked at as a history lesson more than as a horror film. I know that "extreme" horror fans will seek this and MEN BEHIND THE SUN out for their notorious reputations as "shocking" and "horrific" gore films, but I think that those who are just looking for blood-and-guts will be severely disappointed. As I stated before, these are neither horror nor gore films, but a fictionalized recreation of events. Either way, I feel that they are both good films, although I prefer MEN BEHIND THE SUN over THE NANKING MASSACRE. Definitely not for everyone due to some graphic material, but highly recommended 7 1/2 out of 10

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15 out of 57 people found the following review useful:
A Glowing Tribute, 15 August 2005
Author: Mahatma Fabrizi (mahatma_phanishwar@yahoo.co.in) from Sri Lanka

Arriving at my door, this video, which I had procured from E-Bay.com has many extras and features and is very-well put together, but the film itself, unbeknownst to me at that time, would prove to be my undoing: Quite by accident I'd come upon a dread vision more fantastic than anything from out of Dante; putrified, bodies piled in heaps on beaches in the Chinese province of Xixioung, a, like so many flesh-balloons ripening and bursting in the afternoon sun. On this the camera lingers, unflinchingly -- Pop! a corspe, bursting at the seems, abruptly inflates and then pops open strewing it's organs amid a splash of half-uncoagulated blood, and then another, and then another...

Finally, toward evening, this ranch of carnage is set ablaze and we are treated to a symphony of sickening popping sounds and the abysmal sight of what can best be described as a field of human popcorn yielding it's unwholesome fruits. The heat from the resulting conflagration, you see, creates pressure within the floury endosperm of corpse-meat, causing it to explode, and, horrific to relate, turn itself inside out.

In addition to a severe case of panic/anxiety disorder, a screening of these terrors, celebrated in this film, "Rape of Nanking-- Solar Disc of Umbra" (literal translation) resulted in something my doctor has told me is called "restrcutring cognitive distortion", a condition wherein brain fluid backflows (refluxes) into the lobular cavities, sometimes getting into the ears, occasionally, I understand, even into the mouth. It produces ultra-intense headaches at least twice a week. Actually. before I started taking Pantroprazole, it was occurring not just twice a week, but more than twice a day. In addition to the nightmares, in a very small percentage of people, including me, it produces nearly impossible to describe creepy feelings like something besides just brain fluid is crawling around in my head.

Additionally, it also seems to produce, or, at least, trigger creepy feelings and pressure in my head that vaguely resemble the anxiety I experienced when first watching the terrific imagery presented in this title, but are unlike any headache I've ever had. My doctor says that those headaches have nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre, but I don't believe him.

And when dead bodies start erecting themselves, and march out of their graves, or people with crippled skeletons are restored to perfect form, CNN will be there ...

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