An authorized adaptation of Luo Guanqun’s “Massacre in Nanjing” (1987), “Dead to Rights” follows in the footsteps of Wu Zinui’s “Nanjing 1937” (1995), Lu Chuan’s “City of Life and Death” (2009) and “The Flowers of War,” directed by Zhang Yimou and submitted as China’s international Oscar entry in 2011. Shen and co-writers Xu Luyang and Zhang Ke (“The Volunteers: To the War”) have based their story on the real-life figure of Luo Jin, a teenage apprentice at Huadong Photo Studio who secretly developed and concealed photographs of atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. Suddenly useful to the invading forces, A-Chang is assigned to work for Hideo Ito (Daichi Harashima), a Japanese army photographer ordered to document happy moments of “Japanese and Chinese friendship.” Reporting to sadistic commander Maj. Kuroshima (Shinji Azuma), Ito also takes pictures of atrocities that are strictly forbidden for distribution and intended exclusively for the satisfaction and “glory” of military brass.
Author: Richard Kuipers
Published at: 2025-11-19 00:00:00
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