Drama

History

东极岛

The Seventh Art Pictures

Tao Piao Piao

Beijing Culture

Beijing Enlight Pictures

China Film Group Corporation

China

普通话

Dongji Rescue

Zhu Yilong

Leo Wu

Ni Ni

Yang Haoyu

Chen Minghao

Ni Dahong

William Franklyn-Miller

Li Jiuxiao

Wang Yiquan

Kevin Lee

Soji Arai

Rovaif Babar

Elaija Chekhov

Barret Coates

Kei Gambit

Austin Hunza

Vincent Matile

Tommy Shanahan

Guan Hu

Fei Zhenxiang

Dong Runnian

Chen Shu

Zhang Ji

Zhu Wenjiu

Liang Jing

Gao Weizhe

Atli Örvarsson

Leo Chen

CinemaSerf

If you saw Fang Li’s documentary from 2023 on the sinking of the “Lisbon Maru” then you’ll know it was a freighter travelling from Hong Kong to Japan carrying over a thousand British POWs. It was torpedoed by an US submarine and to say the treatment of the prisoners by their captors was inhumane would be the mother of all understatements! What this dramatisation does is shift the emphasis more onto the brutality of the occupying forces on a nearby Chinese island. There, the local population were controlled by a small garrison and prohibited from taking their fishing boats out to sea. There are two brothers, reputedly with pirate blood, who ignored this ban though and it was on one such trip that “Bi” (Yilong Zhu) and “Dang” (Lei Wu) discover the malnourished and emaciated “Newton” (William Franklyn-Miller) floating on the water. One thinks they should leave well alone, the other wants to rescue the man and after some scuffling and legerdemain, “Newton” finds himself on the island and the focus of a search by the forces now under the command of a particularly savage young lieutenant. Meantime, the stricken ship is slowly sinking and as the islanders can see the smoke and hear the explosions, they determine to set sail against the overwhelming firepower lined up against them, and try to save the people in the water being routinely slaughtered by machine-gun fire. There is a fair amount of CGI here and it’s not great, but the substance of the story quite successfully manages to mix the actual history with the courageousness of the fishermen and a little magical fantasy - these two brothers have positively Atlantean diving skills and can hold their breaths and fight the currents formidably - and is consistently paced throughout. The calculating violence and savagery of their enemies is well illustrated here and the two sibling characterisations are engagingly presented as their journey takes them, and the feisty “Hua” (Ni Ni) out to sea and into the teeth of a slaughter. The philosophy of the dramatisation reminded me at times of a bit of “Bridge over the River Kwai” meets “Tenko”; epitomised the oppression faced by a community that probably hadn’t changed much in generations and that was in no way equipped to deal with the rifle-armed squad of bullies who took control of their island for no real reason beyond that they could, and that that population was beneath their contempt. It’s a bit long, and clearly has a degree of modern-day jingoism to it’s style and presentation, but it keeps an important-to-remember story alive, and works well enough.

The cast and crew of Dongji Rescue Q&A | BFI IMAX

Wu Lei invites you watch Donji Rescue in cinemas!

Ni Ni invites the audience in the UK, Ireland, and Europe to catch Dongji Rescue on the big screen!

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Dongji Rescue

Cast & Crew

Videos

Cast

Zhu Yilong

Leo Wu

Ni Ni

Yang Haoyu

Chen Minghao

Ni Dahong

William Franklyn-Miller

Li Jiuxiao

Wang Yiquan

Kevin Lee

Box office

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