The Chinese Islanders Who Risked Everything to Save POWs from a Ruthless War Crime: RESCUE AT DONGJI

Based on a true story of wartime heroism, Rescue at Dongji tells the story of Chinese islanders that challenged the Japanese Empire to try to save hundreds of British POWs trapped and left to die in the holds of a sinking battleship.

Dongji is an island off the Chinese Coast, populated with a small village. A cruel unit of Japanese soldiers maintains an outpost there, exerting oppressive control over the islanders, who are grounded from their normal lifestyle of boating and fishing. The film centers on a pair of brothers, both incredibly capable free-divers, who observe the attack on the Japanese ship Lisbon Maru, and later encounter an British POW who managed to escape the ship. Sharply divided by the moral disagreement over their clashing imperatives, they can either help the man or protect the people of their village, but not both. Humanitarian Ah Dang (Wu Lei) is compelled to offer protection, while realist Ah Bi (Zhu Yilong) understands that harboring the fugitive puts their entire village in peril.

Through these interactions the brothers also learn that hundreds of British POWs remain trapped aboard the sinking ship, intentionally locked in and abandoned by their captors to drown, and what began as as question of saving one life becomes an entire village’s mission to save hundreds from a horrifying fate.

The film’s back half is a hugely scaled, action-packed sustained series of escapes and rescues: an attack on the Japanese outpost, claustrophobic underwater sequences in the bowels of the sinking ship, unarmed POWs fighting against patrolling gunboats, and a massive naval rescue by civilian fishing vessels, reminiscent of the Battle of Dunkirk (and the movie it inspired).

What’s most compelling about the islanders’ act of rescue was its defiance. Defiance against the Japanese in control of the island. Defiance against the edict to keep their boats locked away. Defiance against the voices of those who argue to lay low and not cause trouble. Defiance among the women, prohibited from the men’s work of boating, to lead the charge.

Visually, the $80 million film is beautifully shot with IMAX cameras and full of massive aquatic and naval sequences with impressive practical and CGI effects. The film was actually shot on location on the very island where it took place, with the production recreating the old village for a result that’s as close to the historical reality as possible. In nocturnal scenes it strikes quite an evocative beauty that’s hard to describe.

While I assume the film’s primary characters are fictional, the true story of a village’s heroism is harrowing and inspiring. Politically, there’s some stuff to consider – a welling sense of Chinese pride, and depictions of the Japanese army of this period as mercilessly cruel and sadistically violent – but I find no fault or falsehood in either of those things.

That said, I must advise that the violence in this film is extreme and upsetting, and the ruthless slaughter of innocents and drowning of POWs might take viewers by surprise if they’re expecting a rousing adventure or sanitized vision of war.

The film’s end credits are set to real accounts historical accounts of survivors and descendants of the conflict, offering a sobering and emotional remembrance of the true events that anchors the narrative in its real-world context.

The Package

Rescue at Dongji is released in Well Go USA’s new MOD (burned) format, packed in a standard blue Elite case. The film’s audio is in Mandarin with English subtitles.

Special Features & Extras
The disc features several interesting extras highlighting the creative and historical aspects of the film.

These featurettes are actually super interesting, thanks to the film’s true story origins, massive and intense aquatic and boating sequences, and shot-on-location bonafides.