The Eight Hundred

Shanghai, October 1937. As the Chinese army withdraws from the city, one battalion stays behind in the Sihang Warehouse and holds it. Across the river is the international settlement, where people watch the fighting from lit bars and balconies. The two banks are the real idea of the film: soldiers dying on one side, an audience on the other. Guan Hu built the production at enormous scale. The warehouse and its surroundings were constructed from nothing, and it became the first Chinese film shot entirely on IMAX cameras. Its route to release was not smooth. A screening was pulled the night before it was to open a festival, and the film only reached cinemas after being cut by thirteen minutes. It then became a huge commercial success and the highest grossing film in the world in 2020, with almost all of that money earned in China. Its flaws: too many characters, a heroic register that turns heavy, and a last act that repeats itself across two and a half hours. Who it is for: viewers who like large scale war films. Who it is not for: anyone put off by a nationalist frame.