Mark Reviews Movies: THE EIGHT HUNDRED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 27, 2020

Patriotism is love for one's country, particularly its ideals, and the willingness to argue, not only how it succeeds in reflecting those principles, but also how the country does not. Jingoism is simply defined as an extreme form of patriotism, but such a definition doesn't seem to communicate the full meaning. It's blind devotion to one's country, assuming its greatness, not because of what it stands for or does or could be, but because of its mere existence. Patriots will fight and, in the extreme, die for the ideals of one's country. Jingoists are more eager to kill—others and even oneself—for the mere idea of the country.

As for where The Eight Hundred stands in this distinction, one of the movie's most "heroic" moments features a soldier strapping a bundle of grenades to his chest. He pulls the pins and leaps out of a demolished wall, plummeting toward a group of opposing soldiers carrying impenetrable shields. One could witness this and see an act of extreme loyalty to the fight and the soldiers fighting alongside this man. The act, though, is immediately followed by other soldiers, grabbing more grenades, strapping them to their own chests, and forming a line to take turns making the suicidal leap.

This specific event, as far as we can tell, actually happened in a battle during the Second Sino-Japanese War, a precursor to World War II, when the Japanese military invaded China in 1937, following a series of battles beginning in 1931. This particular story takes place near the end of the Battle of Shanghai, the first major conflict of the war between China and Japan, and focuses on a regiment of Chinese soldiers, who take a final defensive position in a warehouse next to the creek that divides the city proper and an international settlement, which has been declared off limits to combat and combatants.

There's a lot of history here. Some of it is vaguely or quickly explained (through on-screen text), while most of it left unspoken. The history and context of this battle and, indeed, this entire war is clearly intended to be previously known by the audience. The movie comes from China, and as the long story of authoritarian governments has always proven, history is always presented in the context of the greatness and glory of the country, its rulers, and its heroes.

Director Guan Hu has certainly made a most ambitious movie about combat. Its production is impeccable—from the re-creation of Shanghai in ruins, to the stark juxtaposition between the devastation and the neon-lit splendor of the international concession, to the sheer scope and intensity of its multiple combat sequences. The whole movie was filmed using large-format IMAX cameras.

In terms of the actual narrative, though, the screenplay (written by the director, Rui Ge, Huang Dongbin, and Kun Hu) takes on far too much, leaving its characters as mostly anonymous figures who constantly fight and occasionally die. Their, as well as the movie's, repeated displays of pure jingoism certainly don't help matters.

The story is entirely about the battle at Sihang Warehouse, which occurred from October 26 to November 1 of 1937. Amidst the chaos of the surrounding city, a single regiment of about 450 soldiers (The title comes from the commander's lie about how many men he had, in order to throw off the Japanese) has assembled in the warehouse, protected from bombing or artillery fire due to its close proximity to the international settlement, to await reinforcements.

There are repeated skirmishes. Japanese soldiers attempt to take the warehouse from the front (where they're met with landmines and other traps), from a waterway into Suzhou Creek (where a group of attempted Chinese deserters see them and warn their comrades), through the windows (resulting in a bloody firefight), and through the walls (leading to those multiple suicide attacks). Such action is certainly Guan's forte. Even if the camera moves and choreography of these various fights don't always effectively communicate the logistics of the combat, there is an undeniably visceral quality to these often bloody sequences.

Logistics probably should have figured more into Guan's filmmaking, though, because the story doesn't provide much in terms of its characters. We meet a lot of them, who talk about their homes and families (or the lack thereof), and oddly, the ones who stick out the most are accused deserters, who either don't want to kill or have been separated from their own squads. Indeed, one of the story's key focal points is the treatment of deserters, who are summarily executed in the streets before the warehouse defense, ordered to fortify the warehouse, and, in a scene that's rather horrific, forced to execute Japanese prisoners under threat of being killed themselves.

What's strange about such actions—from the executions to the suicide attacks—is that Guan's position either leans toward understanding (in the case of the forced executions) or engages in actual glorification (the suicide attacks). The Eight Hundred, then, has a definite moral problem, and the movie's jingoism is most definitely at the core of that problem. It justifies and honors a lot that's worthy of neither justification nor honor.

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