Movie Review: The Resistance, a Chinese movie from 2011!

Chinese movies are very rare to find on worldwide DVD marketing, most of the time one finds Asian movies from Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan. But those Chinese movies that do come out to the world make a strong impact to the audience, for instance "Still Life", "Beijing Bicycle" and "Shanghai Triad". The Resistance made an impact with a different style of movie, a story plot from a samurai movie, but setting takes place during World War II. Directed by the 32nd generation shaolin monk Peng Zhang Li, who became a movie director and actor tells a story of revenge, genocide, and protection of a young peasant girl who must choose between death or resistance.

 Story:

In 1937, the Japanese imperial army launch an occupation attack on south China. A ruthless general by the name of Takeshi (Peng Zhang Li) is the conqueror of the south east Chinese state Shichen, and brutally execute the peasants living there. One of the victims is Xaioyun (Hu Sang) who survived the invasion attack on her family. Three years later she return to the City of Shichen, she is now part of the Chinese resistance group lead by Chen (Zhao Jun Long) and General Takeshi has signed a deal with the German Nazi commander Schultz (Johan Karlberg), now the Axis is working side by side. However there is one new comer to the city, an assassin dress head to toe in black and has murdered over 1500 Japanese soldiers, and the next target is the general himself, the assassin is called "the Black Dress Killer". The general order the towns people to capture the killer and bring him/her to the general or the city will be burned down. Meanwhile the Chinese resistance group manage to rescue an American journalist who call himself Steven (Jeremy Marr Williams), he reveal to the resistance and Xiaoyun that the Americans don't know what is happening in Shichen and he must return to report to his country. Now Xiaoyun has two options, one is to help the America escape China, or two help the resistance to avenge the general...

Reception:

The Resistance was released in November 10th in 2011, and got special screened at Cannes Film Festival 2012, and early 2013 it was released on DVD worldwide.

In USA the movie was successful, best seller in several shops and in Comic Con it was 6th place of 20 in the top hot sales list.

However in the U.K. The critics were very harsh on the film, the NEO magazine gave it 2/5. And most complaints was it wasn't a war film. Also the CGI effect on the U.K. DVD is different from the American DVD.

DVD comparison:

With a free region DVD player, I bought both the U.K. version and USA version, and they are different.

The U.K. opening starts with CGI blood text and old documentary footage while blood is coming out of the pictures, but in the USA opening starts the old video footage freezes and white text is coming into the screen that explains the history.

The blood CGI is different also, in the U.K.  Blood CGI is bobble blood (which was also used in Mortal Kombat X) but in the USA blood CGI is more realistic and sometimes the blood spit on the camera.

The colors in the U.K. are at present time blue grey scaled, past time when it's good green grey scaled, past time that is bad is red grey scaled. In the USA version the color is allways brown grey scaled no matter time line.

And one scene is different, in the U.K. when the Japanese Sergant capture some of the Chinese resistance, the light turns of by the black dress killer, and we see all soldiers panic and shoot everywhere, we even see two shots that miss the black dress killer. But in the USA, it's not the soldiers that panic, instead we see the Sergant panic and he see four of his soldiers get killed one by one.

Overall:

The movie is brilliant for its time, use only CGI when it's necessary, filmed in beautiful location of Tao Hua Dao Islands near Taiwan, and real set and props in the scenes, real village, real emperor palace, and with a plot that tells the history differently. It's unique to tell the history of World War II in a samurai style instead of what we are use too. Instead of soldiers and bunkers and explosion like "Saving Private Ryan", we see soldiers with ninja fighters against a resistance group with the same disappearing skill and Kung fu, and the black dress killer, same style as Zorro but with two blades and not a sword. I will recommend this movie for those who are fans samurai films and ninja adventure and those who are interested in a new story telling of World War II.

I reward this movie with 7.3/10