City Of War: The Story Of John Rabe

I have to say I enjoyed this film, its no Schindler's list but it will inevitably be compared to it. The film is a biopic of John Rabe, a member of the National Socialist Party, working as an engineer for Siemens in China. John has a confused view of the reality of events in Germany having lived in China for 27 years. As the Japanese invade, the film depicts his need to help his fellow human beings and his gradual disillusionment with the political party he belongs to.
I was aware of some of the brutal treatment dished out by the Japanese as they invaded China in 1937 but I didn't know anything about John Rabe or have a real familiarity with actual incidents in Nanking. John is part of the international community in Nanking and is cornered into setting up a free zone to protect Chinese civilians. He along with a number of other brave people do what they can to feed, shelter and protect the civilians from the brutality of Japanese soldiers.
I think the film makers did take some liberties with some of the set pieces and incidents as another reviewer pointed out, however don't let this get in the way of what is a good film.
The film is well made and the special effects top notch, and the director and actors do a good job of making you appreciate some of the attrocities that went on at this time.
Ultimately what the film achieved for me is to spark an interest in finding more out about this time period in China as well as John and the other brave people who helped him. Recommended!

to disagree with the author of the other reviewer I think the fact that they let the film play out and not turn it into a horror fest was a better idea. I think the fact that they show the japanease using bodies to fill holes in the roads, the bodies stacked up all over the place and the murder of civilians going on through out the film was enough to get the message across. they even show actual footage of people being buried alive. I ask, what did he want to see exactly?

the film is well acted through out, and to be honest I don't care about what language it was in. I found it informative and engaging. the story was delivered well and with feeling. like all films about history you take into account that they will change certain aspects for dramatic effect, make up a character here and there, that's film making, they are in it to make money. however the story comes shining through in the 2 hours you have and if your interested in further examination you can go pick up a book on the subject like I do. having read on the subject of nanjing I found I learned something, was reminded of others, and came away feeling that it is a good thing that films like this are made because at least they give people an insight into history,, especially as this is where the second world war really began.

A German-Chinese-French co-production, City of War: The John Rabe Story aka John Rabe suffered the misfortune of coming out internationally at the same time as the much more stark and graphic City of Life and Death, the two films cancelling each other out at the box-office and in critics' minds, which is a pity because it's quite an impressive picture on its own merits.

Telling the story of John Rabe, the head of Siemens in Nanking who saved thousands of lives during the astonishingly brutal rape and destruction of the city by the Japanese by creating a precarious Safety Zone, it avoids turning him into a movie saint and highlights many of the awkward aspects of his character: as well as having a corporate middle management mentality and a patronising view of the Chinese, he was also a member of the Nazi Party who initially supported the Japanese invasion as potentially good for business. True, the film does provide him with a hardline Nazi to contrast his more gently patrician style of corporate exploitation, but it also offers Steve Buscemi's American doctor to constantly remind the audience of his political allegiance as well as Daniel Bruhl's Jewish diplomat to remind the audience what the Nazis stood for. Yet surprisingly and refreshingly it doesn't impose a rude political awakening upon its hero: he never sees the light and, for all his humanitarianism, remains a Nazi to the end. Thanks to Ulrich Tukur's beautifully observed low key performance he remains a figure who triumphs from his ability to manage logistics and negotiations rather than an idealised movie hero, a quiet, ordinary man applying his business skills to the business of saving lives.

The film certainly has one of the more troubling images of recent years for anyone trying to market a movie, with hundreds of refugees cowering under a giant Nazi flag as Japanese planes fly overhead: if the Germans and Japanese weren't allies it's the kind of image you could see Goebbels jumping at. In reality, Japan claimed all the credit for the Safety Zone while Rabe was written out of history and returned to Germany in disgrace, to be arrested by the Gestapo as a Chinese collaborator, forbidden to lecture about what he had seen and died in poverty.

For once the multi-national cast isn't just there for co-production reasons, the film a truly multi-lingual affair that gives supporting players like Buscemi and Anne Consigny real and substantial roles to play rather than mere cameos to add a familiar name in the US and France for the DVD sleeve (though curiously Consigny's real-life character has her name changed from Minnie Vautrin to Valérie Dupres). It's well-staged by writer-director Florian Gallenberger, with convincing special effects that don't take you out of the movie with their artificiality melding well with surviving period buildings in Shanghai to recreate the city, but it's never quite as powerful as it could be. The film does go surprisingly easy on the Japanese atrocities, which tend to happen offscreen or are far more tastefully handled than the sordid events merit (though that didn't prevent production in China being briefly halted over concerns of the film's impact on Sino-Chinese business relationships). Although it draws on some surviving black and white footage that only hints at how bad things are, by concentrating so much on Rabe the film does tend to fail to really convey the sheer overwhelming scale of one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Censorship concerns may have played a part, but it does unfortunately dilute much of the film's impact, though the few glimpses beyond the Zone's walls the film affords are perhaps more striking for their scarcity. Even those were enough for local distributors to boycott the film in Japan, where it remains without a distributor.

Despite Metrodome opting for their usual Swastika-and-strafing-plane artwork that's their default mode for every cheap European war movie they pick up for UK distribution, they've done a decent job with the DVD, offering a good 2.35:1 transfer, half hour making of featurette and trailer.