{"id":1161230,"date":"2021-12-27T13:34:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T18:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1161230"},"modified":"2021-12-27T13:34:46","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T18:34:46","slug":"review-chinas-anti-american-battle-at-lake-changjin-is-the-worst-movie-of-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/review-chinas-anti-american-battle-at-lake-changjin-is-the-worst-movie-of-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: China&#039;s Anti-American &#039;Battle at Lake Changjin&#039; Is the Worst Movie of 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Freview-chinas-anti-american-battle-at-lake-changjin-is-the-worst-movie-of-2021%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1161230&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"subheading\">First, the bad news. China\u2019s super-sized propaganda <em>The Battle at Lake Changjin<\/em> is one of the highest grossing movies of the year, raking in more than $900 million in less than three months if we\u2019re to trust official CCP figures, which we can\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t, but more on that later. It was the No. 1 movie at the global box office until&nbsp;<em>Spider-Man: No Way Home<\/em>&nbsp;surpassed it this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The three-hour Korean War epic has easily trounced other Hollywood blockbusters to cement Commie-wood\u2019s ascendance as a movie industry ready to dominate the world. The movie is allegedly so popular in China that a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/entertainment\/2021\/12\/17\/china-follows-up-2021-box-office-king-with-another-anti-american-war-movie\/\">sequel is already in production<\/a>. Be afraid.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Now for the good news. <em>The Battle at Lake Changjin<\/em> is terrible, awful, and at times laughably inept \u2014 so bad in fact that it took me several attempts to finish it and I have a high tolerance for long, foreign-language movies.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it is pro-communist, anti-American propaganda to its core, but that\u2019s not why it\u2019s bad. I expect a movie commissioned and backed by a genocidal communist dictatorship to be anti-American, and the filmmakers \u2014 three credited directors are responsible for this monstrosity \u2014 exceeded my expectations.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19273730\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/maxresdefault-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19273730\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/maxresdefault-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Alibaba Pictures<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Like so much of what comes out of China, the movie is a crappy knockoff of an original American product \u2014 the Hollywood war epic. Watching <em>Changjin<\/em> is like watching a Michael Bay movie if Michael Bay had gone through a communist re-education camp and was then partially lobotomized.<\/p>\n<p>This is easily the worst movie of 2021. And I saw the vomitrocious <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/entertainment\/2021\/12\/10\/nolte-even-left-wing-critics-declare-dicaprios-global-warming-comedy-rotten\/\"><em>Don\u2019t Look Up<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Watch below:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<p>Full disclosure: I watched a low-quality bootleg version of <em>The Battle at Lake Changjin<\/em> so I can\u2019t say how it plays on a big screen. But a bad screenplay is a bad screenplay and this one is a stinker.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>The movie dramatizes the Battle of Chosin Reservoir \u2014 as it\u2019s known outside China \u2014 where the Chinese successfully repelled U.S.-led forces attempting to make their way through North Korea toward the Chinese border. The battle, fought in weather so cold that soldiers recalled open wounds freezing on contact with the air, signaled a major turning point in the Korean War \u2014 or as it\u2019s known in China, The War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.<\/p>\n<p>Pro-CCP sentiment is the movie\u2019s guiding force, and so the story opens with war hero Wu Qianli (<em>Wolf Warrior<\/em> star Wu Jing) returning to his village in a sequence that idealizes rural proletarian poverty. No sooner does he embrace his elderly parents than war once again calls him to the front. Little does he know his callow younger brother (former boy band star Jackson Yee) is tagging along in hopes of tasting the glories of war for the first time.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p><em>Changjin<\/em> follows its hero as he leads the 7th Company of the People\u2019s Volunteer Army into battle. The movie attempts to impart personalities to the ensemble cast \u00e0 la <em>Platoon<\/em> or <em>Band of Brothers<\/em>, but the bonding scenes are hackneyed and clumsily executed, with an incessant musical score dictating the emotions of the moment. The movie has little feeling for normal human interaction and often feels like it is biding its time before the big battle sequences begin.<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, we get a couple of brief scenes with Chairman Mao, who is bathed in golden light and is portrayed as a benevolent father figure and compassionate leader. Yeah right.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19274218\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/aa89ab9677c45816946c90d1aef2a0a9.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19274218\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/aa89ab9677c45816946c90d1aef2a0a9.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Alibaba Pictures<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B4\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>In a line that blatantly re-writes history, a hawkish official advises Mao: \u201cBy being stationed in Taiwan, the U.S. army has already invaded our territory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mao\u2019s antithesis is Gen. Douglas MacArthur, played by American expatriate actor James Filbird as a shameless buckaroo with all the humanity of a rock. The movie similarly generalizes U.S. forces as callous murderers and gluttons who stuff their faces at a Thanksgiving feast while their virtuous Chinese counterparts starve in the snow.<\/p>\n<p>War movies don\u2019t have to humanize the enemy to be good. <em>The Thin Red Line<\/em> didn\u2019t and <em>Black Hawk Down<\/em> definitely didn\u2019t. A meaningful war movie turns battle into a state of mind and <em>Changjin<\/em> fails because the only thing on its mind is ennobling Mother China.<\/p>\n<p>The battle scenes begin promisingly. A brief U.S. air attack forcing Chinese forces to seek shelter amid a plain of boulders is visually striking. But the major battles disappoint with their lack of visual coherence, making it difficult to tell where any character is in relation to others as the movie piles on gun fire, explosions, and blood spray with no sense of pacing. You\u2019d think the filmmakers just shot a whole bunch of coverage and pieced it together haphazardly in the editing room. And it all goes on forever. And ever.<\/p>\n<p>Did Chinese audiences really line up in the tens of millions for this crap? Possibly, though you have to wonder if fear and coercion also played a role. Show your ticket stub and you get good social credit from Uncle Xi! As China prepares to celebrate the Beijing Winter Olympic Games and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP is putting on a show of strength for the world and the movie\u2019s \u201crecord\u201d grosses feel like a part of that publicity blitz.<\/p>\n<p>A special medal of dishonor goes to the movie\u2019s three directors \u2014 Chen Kaige, Dante Lam, and Tsui Hark \u2014 all of whom were once internationally respected auteurs but who, either by choice or duress, have become communist handmaidens. It\u2019s especially depressing in the case of Chen Kaige, whose 1993 Palme d\u2019Or winning <em>Farewell My Concubine<\/em> feels like a long time ago. That movie was a work of art that was banned by Chinese officials for portraying the tragic human toll of the Cultural Revolution.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Battle of Lake Changjin<\/em> is about as far from a work of art as you can get. It is also, unfortunately, the perfect movie for our time. A weakened U.S. under a frail (and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2021\/11\/23\/exclusive-laptop-from-hell-documents-show-hunter-biden-using-family-leverage-in-prospective-deal-to-sell-louisiana-natural-gas-to-chinese-firm\/\">compromised<\/a>) President Biden can only sit back as China walks all over us and asserts its dominance on the world stage.<\/p>\n<p>As a defeated Gen. MacArthur says in the movie\u2019s final moments:&nbsp;\u201cFighting against such strong men as this, we were not ordained to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow David Ng on Twitter&nbsp;<a class=\"x5l\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HeyItsDavidNg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">@HeyItsDavidNg<\/a>. Have a tip? Contact me at&nbsp;<a class=\"c-link x5l\" href=\"mailto:dng@breitbart.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">dng@breitbart.com<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, the bad news. China\u2019s super-sized propaganda The Battle at Lake Changjin is one of the highest grossing movies of the year, raking in more than $900 million in less &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}