Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Bille August, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Cast: Emile Hirsch, Crystal Liu, Vincent Riotta, Gallen Lo, Fangcong Li, Jin Zhu.
A wartime romance based on true events, this epic World War II drama will touch the heart. An aircraft pilot Jack Turner (Hirsch, Lone Survivor, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Into The Wild) crash lands in China – and survives – in the 1940s, after the retaliatory bombing of Tokyo in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack.
The injured American pilot is offered shelter and is saved by a young Chinese widow named Ying (Liu, Disney’s Mulan, The Assassins, The Forbidden Kingdom). Liu is better known as Liu Yifel. When the Japanese military launches a relentless manhunt to find him, she risks everything to save him and offers him shelter. She ends up falling in love with him while keeping him alive and concealed from the Japanese.
Jack is an American Air Force pilot with a mission to carry out the first US bombing run on Tokyo. After the mission’s success, his plane gets detached from the rest of the squadron due to bad weather. With low fuel, he is forced to crash land in China’s Zhejiang Province.
Ying hides him in a nearby cave with the help of childhood friend and village head Kang. Soon after, the Imperial Japanese Army (who already have captured and executed the rest of Jack’s crew) come in search of Jack and capture the village, holding Kang at gunpoint to tell where the pilot is. Soon the army sends search patrols in the jungle, and Ying is forced to bring Jack into her house. What follows shows how one woman’s choice defines a nation.
Directed by Danish filmmaker, two-time Cannes Palme D’or winner, August’s movie has also gone under other international titles including In Harm’s Way and The Chinese Widow.
