La brigade des 800

Thrilling war drama with plenty of action and connections with the main characters

Did not know of this part of Chinese history so made the film more interesting.

The Good: I think it's safe to say that the film's highlight is the expertly crafted and powerful action scenes. This movie is clearly trying to recall and homage Chinese war stories of old and it does a really good job of doing that, visually. The action scenes are fantastic and I was surprised as to how tasteful the blood and gore was here; I sorta went into this expecting a brutal ride.

Initially, I felt the film's lack of character development was a negative. On reflection, I think this might be a cultural bias on my part and also not entirely appropriate for the story. American war films tend to focus on individual(s) for storytelling and emotional purpose. I think this approach, focusing on a group of basically unremarkable people, is actually a really effective way of making this battle feel like...well, a battle in a larger conflict. That while this moment mattered, ultimately, the war was not won that day.

I also have to applaud the set and costume designers...WOW. The International Concession set is so immaculate and bursting with life, I felt transported into the past when watching those scenes. The contrast with the abandoned, decaying warehouse is truly striking.

The Bad: I'm a little conflicted as to whether or not to include this, but the dub of this movie is absolutely terrible. I felt like I was watching extended video game cut scenes; the voice actors almost never sound appropriate for what it happening on screen. Again, I don't know if this is fair or not, but the dubbing made what was supposed to be emotionally powerful into a farce.

However, this criticism will be universal, whether you're watching the English dub or Chinese original. This movie is as subtle as a brick through a window. I understand what this particular time in history means for Chinese people, but damn...is this as propagandistic as they come. It's sometimes hard to take seriously and yes, I acknowledge culture plays a part in this.

The Ugly: On that point, this movie's ra-ra patriotism may be a bit refreshing for audiences who have come to expect war films to be, by default, "anti-war." Surely this movie isn't pro-war, but it's realistic in that it acknowledges war is a part of the human story and sometimes, the unjust thing to do is to shy away.

After enjoying the trailer, and being a fan of Asian cinema, I went to the movies to watch The Eight Hundred.

As the movie is based on a true story and true events, it was very interesting to see a different kind of war film that's not Hollywood-ised and the great high quality production certainly was impressive.

The movie is gripping, intense with solid tension building throughout the movie, lots of action guns and bombs with great performances that I believe the actors deserve great credit for.

The writing and direction by Guan Hu was very impressive with nice stylised cinematography.

My own dilemmas with the movie was the pacing, story beats and focus on the central story. The movie felt too split everywhere into different perspectives and doesn't focus on a singular character or group to follow the story properly.

There was no clear goal or focus for us as the audience to keep an emotional core building. The essence of Chinese patriotism is the front runner story but I felt it took away from my attachment to following a core protagonist/s with their story instead of the theme or essence of patriotism.

There's lots of invasion attempts and warfare action with some heartfelt emotional scenes, but not a clear storyline direction that makes it understandable to follow.

Make sure to give this movie a go, it's definitely an experience!

The Eight Hundred was the biggest grossing film of 2020 , beating Tenet but it's not surprising when you think about it. It was released during the pandemic and China has a population of over two billion , so in theory they could beat Hollywood every year.

Having said all that , this is a much better film than Tenet anyway .

It's the story of a group of Chinese soldiers and draft dodgers , in 1937 who put up a four-day defence of a Shanghai warehouse complex just as Japanese forces are overwhelming China.

This film looks amazing. As war films go it's right up there and i was surprised to see it only cost only eighty Million dollars. Perhaps that is because they didn't spent so much of the budget on actors wages as Hollywood , would normally ?

I have to admit the logistics had me confused at times. I would have liked more of an explanation as to why one side of the river was so different to the other and why people of all nationalities were just watching the chaos go on .

The acting was really good and i like the fact that they were not afraid to kill off main characters.

It's biggest problem is it's too long . In fact it's that long the opening credits were still playing twenty minutes after the start of the film. I did think at one stage that i might have to watch it in two parts but thankfully i manages to see it through and in the long run , it was definitely worth it.

I'm sure the Chinese people will have loved this. It does feel a little flag waving at times , almost as if it's a propaganda movie but i can forgive director Hu Guan for that because he has produced a stunning piece of work.

This movie creates a lot of emotion and makes you sympathize with the characters.