ziggy-luo OK, it is obvious to Chinese people who "me" is: the Maoist, Communist resistance force: Communist Eighth Route Army (Ba Lu Jun).It is even more obvious "what" "me" is: an irresponsible, cowardly team of individuals who dumped the extremely dangerous load upon the innocent villagers, and bailed on them, never came back, and eventually led to the death of the entire village (who were so good-hearted that fed and bathed invader, save food for them..) There is so much to be said about this film, it is smartly made, has a message about every side involved in the conflict: Japanese Military, Chinese villagers, Chinese Communists, Chinese Nationalists... Messages that requires digesting to get..

lastliberal This Cannes award winning film by Wen Jiang, on of the directors on New York, I Love You, tells the story of the Japanese invasion of China during WWII. Jiang also stars in the film, that is both tragic and funny.The film is most definitely anti-war as it shows the basest forms of humanity. Despite knowing the war was over, a whole village was slaughters and burned.When one of the surviving villagers took revenge, he was punished by the military for being politically incorrect.It is no wonder the governments of both Japan and China would rather their people not see this film.It should be seen by all.

kosmasp Although the movie has been released in the year 2000 and shot little before that, it does have the feeling of "older" movies. What do I mean by that? Pacing wise it takes the route classic war movies have taken before it and doesn't opt for the MTV Generation cuts/pace (I watched the nearly 3 hour version).I called this a war movie, but don't get excited about fight scenes, it's more a drama! Saying more than that, might spoil something so I leave it at that! Just be aware of that fact, before you watch the movie! It's very well acted and you're unaware of where this will go! Which I think is great! Although it changes kind of "direction" near the end, it fits the movie (imo).

yanjcw up to now, this is my second favourest Chinese movie and only next to To Livegenerally, i don't call it a Chinse fighting-against-japan movie, which is always about a hero. it's about ordinary civilians struggle for survival under Japanese invasion.first of all, it's an idea to make this movie simply about a village and two war prisoners. when they came across a dilemma of take care of the prisoners, the village folks have to be very careful from being killed by either mysterious "me" or the japan invaders. but no matter how they tried, even to please the Japanese by singing, then got inevitably slaughtered.then instead of mandarin, we see local dialect is used in this movie. some words from the dialect really makes the movie interesting and the character alive. when i see this movie, i just feel they are not characters in a movie, but were ignorant/plain peasants living in northeast China. another wonderful element of language is the translation between japan and Chinese. it's really laughing when Hanaya tried to revile and annoy Ma Dashan & Yu'erfinally, it's a great success to shoot this film in black and white, by which the audience can be put in a real situation where the story happens. it's in color until the end when the Japanese surrender, perhaps it is to imply bright life is coming...one must-see for every average Chinese who won't want to forget the history of being invaded, especially when we see what the Japanese government does in the year of 60th Annivesary WWII