Comedy to carnage, in one remote village.
During the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town. The owner is bullied into keeping the prisoners until the next New Year, at which time they will be collected. The village leaders convene to interrogate the prisoners. The townspeople then struggle to accommodate the prisoners. One is a bellicose Japanese nationalist, the other a nervous translator. Will the townspeople manage to keep the prisoners until the New Year?
Jiang Wen
Ma Dasan
Jiang Hongbo
Yu'er
Teruyuki Kagawa
Kosaburo Hanaya
David Wu
Major Gao
Yuan Ding
Dong Hanchen
Cong Zhijun
Grandfather
Li Congxi
Liu Wang
Li Haibin
Me
Kenya Sawada
Inokichi Sakatsuka
Chen Shu
Qiye
Cai Weidong
Er Bozi
Chen Lianmei
Aunt
Yoshimoto Miyaji
Koji Nonomura
Chen Qiang
Lone-Stroke Liu
Katsuhiro Nagano
Telephone Line Layers
Ryosuke Uomi
Telephone Line Layers
Yunshen Bai
Liu Wang's Father
Haizhao Zhou
Little Thresher Yu'er's son
Haidong Xu
De'rtou
Shiru Du
De'rtou's Father
Director
Jiang Wen
Writers
Jiang Wen, Jiang Wen, Haiying Li, Shi Jianquan
Shi Jianquan
Production Design
Gu Changwei
Director of Photography
Folmer Wiesinger
Editor
Yifan Zhang
Editor
Shiyun Tang
Production Design
badelf
3/6/2023
A fantastic anti-war narrative by Jiang Wen that clocks in at 140 minutes and is so well-paced that it feels like half that time. The comedic overtone that permeates the movie serves to provide comic relief and underscore the strong anti-war, anti-nationalist message.
