Hong ying tao

"Red Cherry" follows a pubescent Chinese girl, ChuChu, and boy, Luo Xiaoman, from their prewar children's camp in Russia through WWII as they become de facto orphans caught up in the horrors of war. The film leapfrogs through time and bounces back and forth between the two kids, who become separated, making for a herky-jerky flow while giving us peek-a-boo glimpses of how they are coping against a backdrop of the deprivation and tragedy that is war. On the upside, the film is a well acted, engaging, evocative drama. On the downside, the DVD I watched had only mediocre video quality and poor, near monochrome, color. Recommended only for foreign film buffs into war dramas. (B)

Note - This is not the best movie ever made, it is not propaganda, and it is not seen through the eyes of the child.

Normally I don't take Chinese propaganda seriously, it's made for one purpose and you can look it the other way even see the fun it. But this one is not the usual fiction movie that act like a fiction movie. This is a serious movie and make it claims that it actually happened but the history book says it never did. A false seriousness.

Zhu Min is transferred to Russian university in Moscow in the 1940s. She is happy with her friends until the German Nazi occupation of western part of Russia and Ukraine. She sended to a doctor as a slave, he finds her pure and give her an evil gift of a giant tattoo on her back of the Nazi eagle, she is scarred for life.

Sadly this striking story is false. Nazi did a lot of cruel things but there has never been heard of Chinese captivity nor a girl forced to wear a Nazi tattoo on her back. As far as I know Zhu Min was a daughter of Zhu De that studied in Russia but never heard of anything else about her captivity or anything like that except from a memoir that probably wasn't written by her. And her father wasn't executed, but the communist did execute a lot of anti communist in china which the movie doesn't tell of course but instead cook up a propaganda that her father was poor and executed but the anti communist. And to top the propaganda, a young Chinese boy in this movie is a hero , who do everything right, shoot the Nazis, humiliate them, and adopt a Russian girl even though he is like 16 years old, just to show how good the Chinese people are. Again not a problem if you are blind or can ignore the propaganda purposes of this character existence, which is a lot in Chinese movies unfortunately.

If this movie wasn't treated this false story as it happened then maybe I would give it a higher score but no I can't it's false seriousness, even the fiction war movies is more respectful to the history. 3/10 yes two extra point for the Russian actors who were good.

The main drawbacks of this film are that it lacks coherence (there is a feel like the films has been haphazardly put together), the war effects are badly done, and the German soldiers are the same boring soldiers you see in just about any WWII film-- i.e., they are just plain evil. No doubt there was much inane and brutal violence from the Germans, but one would be led to believe in this film that the Russian soldiers and the children of the international proletariat are saints to the trigger happy Germans. The problem with the action sequences is that the editing comes across as awkward.

On the other hand the acting is well played and the story is fairly interesting. They managed to get some impressive scenes in Belarus at a monastery. It's worth a watch if you are interested in WWII, Russia, or China.

Hong Ying Tao is a brutally true story about atrocities and inhumanity from a child's point of view. Excellent performances highlight. However, this movie does not shy away from the darkest and ugliest side of humans so it's more than a little hard to sit through. Having said that, I feel this is an important film with an important message so suck it up and watch it.

Luckily I've read memoir of Zhu Min.

She was born in Moscow in 1926, after a month, her father Zhu De(the commander in chief of PLA) was ordered back to China to fight for KMT Government against Peking Government, and never have seen each other until 1940. In her childhood, she could only meet her father in the street -- where Zhu De's pictures were on the Wanted.

In 1941 she arrived U.S.S.R. for studies, but after six months, the fifteen year old girl was captured by German soldiers, and had been sent to a concentration camp in East Prussia. During the one week terrible death-march, suffering disease , she could barely believe that she was alive.

The fate was cruel, be Beaten, slashed by German solider was her life in that period, while witnessing many deaths --to be buried alive, gassed and genocide to Russian and Jewish people, and received a bad treatment from a German doctor, who cut off a bossing from her neck without applying any anesthetic nor disinfect.

During the 3.5 year life in the camp she lost her ability of speaking couldn't speak too much Russian, German, even Chinese, and didn't grow up.

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And by the way, there's another boy of CCP's high rank leader was killed at that time, too.

the execution by chopping in two parts was a normal phenomenon in the KMT era for terrorizing the communists. ------------

Whatever, many scenes weren't happen in one person, but it took place, and the reality was more horrible than the movie. I can tell you this film is a mixed truth, except the tattoo.