1937, Nanking in China: The Japanese conquer the city and kill whoever
they feel like killing, women, children, prisoners of war - whom they are
supposed to spare according to
international laws -, even foreign diplomats ...
Actually, there is no
more story than this, and even if most of the atrocities depicted in this
film (depicted less graphically than in earlier films of the Men
Behind the Sun-series I might add though) are based on fact (as
the film tries to prove repeatedly by inserting actual documentary
footage), Men Behind the Sun 4 is only of very little historical
relevance as it is nothing more than a sequence of Japanese warcrimes
interrupted only by the occasional (fictional) ramblings of Japanese
officers that are only there to unterline how evil the Japanese were back
in the day - which is made clear enough in the on-screen brutalities as it
is, I think. Thing is, this almost endless series of war atrocities has
the potential to quickly wear out the interested viewer, as its
repetitiveness paired with a lack of actual plot gets boring rather
quickly, and the shock and horror about what the Japanese actually did
back in the day soon give way to a certain indifference (at least as far
as the movie's narrative goes) - which is clearly the wrong way to
portrait warcrimes, isn't it?
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