long dong's bootleg DVD review: Assembly

[justashooter 430]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881200/

Chinese WW2 movies are usually a little less than realistic. they show communist chinese troops winning heroic battles against japanese forces, and never acknowledge that most victories in the theatre were really won by KMT. they almost never credit allied action in the theatre, and never acknowledge that without the meiguo gue si (american devils) that they would still be slaves to the japanese. such is propaganda in today's china.

chinese movies about the post-war conflict between CCP and KMT are even less objective. in these flicks CCP regulars are shown as "real people", with "real lives", while KMT characters are never really fleshed out. the only real worth in these films is in the display of some really neat historical equipment that would otherwise just be sittign in te beijing military museum getting dusty.

so it is with Assembly, or Ji Jie Hao, which title could be interpreted in many ways, depending on the particular characters substituted for the pinyin title. my personal favourite in the translation is "your older sister is a good chicken (hooker)". really, though, i suppose the correct translation is more like "winning a good victory".

well they damned sure should have won, with the cool american hardware they were slinging around the streets of tian jin. the standard K98 type was commonly seen, but more so were springfields, garands, 1919's, and even a johnson carbine. also seen were the historically correct 8mm inglis bren guns, a jap type 99, broomhandles, sten, sterling, and tt33. after the big one, all kinds of ###### was in theatre.

tracked vehicles included a sherman, under an American group that crosses paths with the protagonist hero CCP guys while they were dressed in captured KMT uniforms, which looked rather like American bdu and web gear, which is historically accurate in terms of the amount of American aide provided via the Hump Route and Burma Road to the KMT. of course, at this moment they were carrying garands and forward observing for arty on a KMT depot.

the first half of the movie is very Private Ryanish, but the second half of the film is just putonghua mumbo-jumbo over angst and sappy stuff like that. in the end survivors dedicate a memorial to fallen brothers. gotta honor that. men fallen in the field of conflict deserve memoriam, regardless of who they are fighting for, as long as they observe the rules of war. so, that memorial has got to come down.