The Battle at Lake Changjin

It's 1950. American forces have landed at Incheon and driving north towards the Chinese border. The politically ambitious warmongering American military leader Douglas MacArthur insists on bombing Chinese border locations to cut off supplies and retreat for the North Koreans. Chinese leader Mao decides to answer the provocation and sends in the PLA. They would confront the Americans at Lake Changjin. The Americans would call it, the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

I'm not going to argue for accuracy. There is a definite deliberate slant to its views but it's not overtly wrong. A perfect example happens quite early. Somebody gets CGI happy and puts in a sky full of American fighter planes. There is more chance of them flying into each other than bombing the right targets. It's insane how many planes are in the sky on their bombing run. It's like a WWII mass bombing raid except it's utter chaos. Something similar happens to the American characters with one exception. There is one heroic competent war leader. Otherwise, the Americans are mostly arrogant, fat, and throwing up his breakfast. It's a political slant to sell to the Chinese public. I would compare this to Pearl Harbor without the romance. It's not a good thing. The CGI is a micro-step down from that. The story is over-the-top melodrama. The film is using a lot of slow-motion action. The best war scene happens quite early with the soldiers faking dead on the dry river bed. If it stayed semi-realistic, this could have been good.

For a war movie, it is not bad, at least have some plots. The sad truth is that there is no winner in this war, that's why it's dragged for three years and no one can claim to be the winner. But since it's a movie, not a documentary, I don't think we need to discuss the truth or fiction here. However, many reviews are anti-China, I highly doubt those people ever watched the actual movie.

Not really had any war movies in the cinema this year, and to get this, and from a Chinese perspective, is good, and a change.

Make no mistake, this was shot in IMAX, and looks brilliant, plenty of giant FX houses come up at the end credits, and you can see why. The action is spectacular and the war violence is all there, very gory. The acting is all solid as is the story and direction, if a bit overlong so I think some trimming would be nice, that's my real only problem.

I'm quite sure there are some problems, history wise, as I studied only WW1 and WW2, so I can't comment on this. As entertainment, it's fine, just try and see it in IMAX / Super screen, if you really want the best from this film. Lots of good stuff from China these past two years, more to come.

There are too many distinct inferior positions for chinese to respond the war,but if they make a concession,the war would have to be undertaken by their children.

As a Chinese, I don't like this movie at all. This movie is kind of typical of Hollywood.

It's not a good movie to tell the history of the battle of Lake Changjin or the history of the war to resist U. S. aggression in Korea.

The movie didn't tell clearly that before Chinese army attended the war, the U. S. Navy's seventh Fleet had sailed into the Taiwan Strait on the orders of President Harry Truman. At that time, both Chinese government and Chinese people didn't want to attend a war again. But we have no choice.

The movie seems to blame MacArthur for all these faults. But at that time, the U. S. government itself also supported attacking NORTH Korea and even China. China warned the US not to cross the 38th parallel, but the government's leader Truman ignored it and thought China wouldn't send troops. These weren't made clear in the movie.

How the Chinese generals direct their soldiers to fight were not shown clearly in the movie. How the Chinese solders used wisdom and courage to defensed the tanks were not shown clearly in the movie either. They even let the main character use another tank to defense. That cannot be true.

Even at the end, the director arranged for American officers to salute the dead Bodies of Chinese soldiers. I'm not sure wether an ordinary soldier would do it, but I'm quite sure those who led the armies to attack Chinese People's Volunteers would not. It's really ridiculous.

The story about Lei was really great. He knew how to lead the soldiers to defense with wisdom, he knew to take advantage of the terrain, he also knew a soldier's sacrifice needs to be worth it. I cried when he died, especially when I heard the song of Yimeng. The Chinese sacrificed a lot in the war of liberation but now they need to fight again, to fight against the US army.

Who started the war first? Who amplified the war first? Who is invading? OF COURSE, not China.

Some people may think, the film is a propaganda tool for the Chinese government. This is ridiculous. This movie didn't even tell the history of the battle of Lake Changjin in a good way. Can it be propaganda? It wasn't nearly as much propaganda as Transformers, which showed off the U. S. military.

Do not assume every Chinese film as a propaganda tool, to be honest, the Chinese directors weren't good at propagating politics as American directors.