The defense of Sihang Warehouse by the Eight Hundred Heroes was one of the pivotal early battles of the conflict between Japan and China in the years leading up to World War 2. When Japan invaded China, it was, initially, a route. The Chinese National Revolutionary Army made its first major stand in Shanghai, where fighting occurred for over three months. The Chinese wanted to give the government time to rally resources, but there was another strategic reason to make a stand in Shanghai: The foreign concession just across the Suzhou Creek. There, journalists and advisors from Western powers were stationed. The Chinese believed that if they could hold Shanghai until a treaty meeting in Brussels scheduled for November 1st, the Western powers might provide military aid.
While much of the Chinese army retreated, 452 soldiers were left to defend the Sihang Warehouse in full few of the foreign press, and remains one of the most iconic battles in Chinese military history. Wait, 452? Why is it called The Eight Hundred? Well, the movie doesn’t do a great job at explaining that. Or a few other things, if I’m being honest.
“Fang, you sure are a particular individual.”
Let me be up front: This is a movie with a clarity problem. Some of it comes in awkward dialogue, such as the line above, spoken by an American watching the battle from the foreign concession. Worse still are the attempts at gritty war dialogue. In one such scene, a soldier whose name I don’t know tries to describe to another soldier whose name I don’t know what breasts feel like. Ignoring the immediate way my mind jumped to that scene in The 40-Year Old Virgin, it was still just a scene that rang deeply false to me.
But I hope you noticed a bigger clarity problem in that paragraph. The movie does a terrible job at giving its characters much distinction.Those two soldiers talking, for instance, don’t really have much relationship until that scene… which is their final scene together. All I know them as is Cigarette Guy and Pussy, which I don’t think is what the movie wanted me to leave with. I know the broad strokes — the greasy nerd is a coward, for instance — but the complete anonymity of most of the soldiers surpasses even Dunkirk for “Wait, who was this again?” factor. I can’t count how many war movies I’ve seen that don’t flesh out the crew, leaving the audience adrift in a sea of faces that yearn for meaning. The Eight Hundred doesn’t just fall prey to this; it dives in headfirst.
The closest thing we have to protagonists are a pair of brothers (Hao Ou and Zhang Junyi) who are found as deserters, abandoned by their uncle, and roped in to the defense. Hao Ou in particular excels, selling both his absolute horror at being in war and his eventual decision to join the fight. A movie tethered more strongly to the pair of them would have been more emotionally engaging, at least to me. Instead, the movie floats freely over a too-large cast, refusing to settle.
“Devoting oneself to one’s country is an honor.”
That said, while there are definitely clarity problems, there are also things the movie does exceptionally well. This is among the bleakest and most brutal war films I’ve seen in some time, though at times one that is beautifully filmed. The Sihang Warehouse feels at once like a grave and like a place of infinite possibility. It so easily could have been the kind of drab warehouse that 75% of first-person shooter games take run through, an anonymous, crumbling storage unit. Instead, there are moments of unexpected whimsy, thanks to the underused pool on the ground floor, or the mystery stables inexplicably attached behind a hidden wall. These make the space feel… possible, in a way that helps sell the defense.
Those small bits of hope are necessary, but the movie is far more interested in horror. Perhaps the most horrifying scene in the movie occurs about halfway through. The soldiers are trying to force the deserters to join the fight, so they decide to have the deserters execute some captured Japanese soldiers. Hao Ou has to this point avoided fighting. Watching the way the military attempts to break him of his individuality, to shatter his sense of empathy, is among the most tragically honest scenes I’ve found in a war movie. Heartbreak Ridge was bloodier, but it didn’t have a single second that hit this hard.
And the movie is exceptionally good at reminding you why the soldiers are doing this. We cut far too often to the foreign concession itself, but some of the film’s strongest scenes occur when the soldiers in our drab warehouse look across the river, not even a hundred yards away, at a bustling metropolis. Gambling, dancing, art, food — all of it within reach, all of it completely forbidden to them. It’s so much more powerful than the typical scenes of soldiers staring at pictures from home.
“We were digging graves from the beginning.”
And, of course, there are the effects. I often have trouble with more modern war movies. The point-and-click nature of massive gunfights are impersonal and difficult to follow. The Eight Hundred leans into that chaos. Anonymous soldiers will be horribly maimed in a flash. Because they are pinned down, grievously wounded soldiers aren’t evacuated to a medical tent. They are patched up and handed another gun.
That said, it’s still a war movie — and one on the side of its soldiers. The horrors of war are acknowledged, but despite its bleak attitude, expect to see the standard scenes. A lead is mortally wounded in a heroic action? That’s not someone who is just going to die quietly. He gets a bloody-mouthed goodbye, of course. The film’s tendency towards more typical wartime heroics often undermine its bleakness. War may be hell, but hell is for heroes, I guess.
That said, I want to give special notice to the final scenes of the movie. I won’t spoil much, but I will say that they manage to really nail a queasy, nightmarish tone that I didn’t totally expect. By this point, over two hours in, a more rote battle scene would be tiresome. Instead, we get a scene lit by sickly green flares that hang overhead like a goddamn moon. And kudos to the sound team, who make the flares sound like a gurgle from the pits of hell.
“Your people are the true Chinese people.”
I have some hesitations about the movie’s storytelling, but I can’t deny that it is a gripping story. Soldiers leading a hopeless defense has long been fodder for myth-making, from Thermopylae to the Alamo to, well, the Sihang Warehouse. The fetishization of how outnumbered and outgunned the defenders are is right there in the title!
But it’s fodder for myth-making because it is a damn fine story. All my critiques stand. The movie does a bad job explaining itself, its situation, to viewers unfamiliar with the story. It does a bad job of laying out the space surrounding the warehouse. And cuts made to the film to appease Chinese censors, particularly around one of the film’s best scenes, weaken it considerably.
And yet.
There is a blunt nationalist appeal to a classical war film that The Eight Hundred absolutely nails. Indeed, it surprised me that China’s censors had any issue with it at all. At heart, it’s a story about heroic Chinese soldiers standing up to invasion despite the fecklessness of the West. Ultimately, this is a simple story — doomed heroes giving everything for a cause bigger than themselves — that has a few too many flaws to be truly great, but that still basically works. The core emotional beats of the film still land.
“I just wanted to see what Shanghai was like.”
Could they land better? Absolutely. The movie ties itself to certain historical events that many viewers outside of China may not know. For instance: Why do they keep cutting to a young woman in the concession? Viewers familiar with Yang Huimen’s story will know why, but that’s not good enough. She plays a small but pivotal role, but I honestly don’t know if she has a single line. What motivated her? We don’t know!
Contrast that with Sister Rong, a fictionalized character. Unlike Yang Huimen, Sister Rong has an arc. She starts the movie as the owner of a casino with little interest in the war. As the movie progresses, she starts to care. She learns to sacrifice. And, eventually, she comes to empathize with the soldiers at Sihang. Because the filmmakers weren’t tied to the history of an iconic moment, they told a story.
I wish the rest were as strong. Hell, even the title goes underexplained. Why are they called the Eight Hundred? Because the commander didn’t want the press to report on how understaffed they were. It’s a throwaway bit in the movie, but it’s also something a lot of viewers may not know and could easily miss.
If you have an interest in World War 2-era war films, The Eight Hundred is solid. It’s a story more people should know, and despite its flaws, it is interesting enough that fans of the genre will find a lot to like. But I don’t think this will reach out to folks who don’t already want in a particularly bleak war story. The surface impressed me, an immaculately polished glass case. I just wish something more robust than a history textbook lay inside it.
The Eight Hundred
directed by Guan Hu
written by Guan Hu and Ge Rui
starring Hao Ou and Zhang Junyi
Out now in theaters.