In Harm's Way

The chinese widow seems like a promising movie. At first, the acting isn't that good and the CGI are awful but bareable. The scenes at the Chinese country side and the leading lady's life was interesting and eye catching. However, the story isn't as good as it should have been. Or, at least, the movie didn't excecute it well enough. The romance was quick and the ending even quicker. Actually, the ending was really bad.

Some of the Chinese dialog didn't feel right, normal or correct for any Chinese speaking to each other, especially this film is about a bunch of villagers living in a remote mountainous area. No kid would say "Fu-Chin (father)" to his mother, but would say "Dad (Die)" or "BaBa", "Fu-Chin" is too literal and popular enough to be used in a mountain village in China. There are so many incorrect and wrong use of the Chinese language in this film's dialog. Those words used in this film simply felt more like highly educated people living in the big cities, these people in this film instead were living in a remote poor village in the mountain area, most of them would be illiterate since its around 1945. So every time, when the Chinese characters speaking, it's just not right but only bad screenplay writers would use such theater language that were not spoken by realistic Chinese people in their daily lives.

I often felt that most of the Chinese screenplay writers never could script correct and normal dialog speaking among the common Chinese people, every word just felt staged, like watching actors speaking on a theater stage. They cannot separate, distinguish, or truly grasp the realistic words according to the locations, the era, the time frames, the age differences, the education backgrounds, male or female gender differences....but just lazily and carelessly used the same format to write the scripts' dialog.

This is the main reason why most of the time I could only give lower ratings to most Chinese movies, because they just felt false and absolutely ridiculous.

This film was made, produced and released before the Japanese Prime Minister, Abe, revisited China a few days ago, and the Chinese Communist higher-ups suddenly changed their attitude to the Japanese government from hateful animosity to brotherhood love and friendship. If this film release date in China was scheduled when Prime Minister Abe's visiting date, then it would be definitely banned. Innocent Chinese villagers were viciously shot or chopping head off by the Japanese are now so unpopular and would be cunningly forbid or not recommended by the Chinese Communist government.

Monday is movie night at our house. My wife comes home with a new one from Red Box after work every Monday without fail and we have run the genre Gambit. Everything from meaningless junk to Best picture winners. We've laughed, we've cryed, we've cursed, we've applauded, we've been left wondering why and/or how we sat through many of them. I've often wanted to turn some off and forget I ever allowed myself to suffer through some of these flicks. Then "In harm's way" found it's way to our DVD player ... This movie will probably never be heralded with the greatest films ever made. But I can honestly say: I absolutely loved it. I never want to know what I'm about to watch. I don't want to know the genre, or any plot points. I want to be completely open minded and never have any premonition of the story. I hate the idea of "movie trailers" I think they are the absolute worst thing that can be done as far as movies go. I mean why watch a ballgame if you know who's going to win???... I will not ruin this experience for anyone else with spoilers. All I will say is: If a heart beats inside of you...watch this movie. Have a wonderful life too. God bless all and thanks for reading my review.

Jack Turner (Emile Hirsch) is one of surviving Jimmy Doolittle raiders. He is being debriefed by his superiors. He recounts crash landing in China and rescued by local widower mother Ying (Liu Yifei). Her soldier husband was killed in Nanjing.

This is a Chinese film with an American star. There was a rash of them with Chinese money trying to make a Hollywood movie. It's surprisingly fine. The CGI green screen is a little outdated. The writing could be better. The romance is unnecessary and feels especially forced. There is better romantic potential with the teacher but I wouldn't want that either. There is some good tension but I would have liked to get moving sooner. This needs to be more of an escape road movie. This is a good first draft but it needs some refining.

Based on true facts, it is a very reasonable film, but despite the romantic and dramatic plot, it is too documental.

I recommend it for its historical value.