Assembly

Been feeling sick lately. My throat hurts which is good. Maybe I can channel it all to write and make an update.

My friend and I are kind of war freaks. We like war movies. My friend let me borrow his copy of Assembly, a Chinese war film made back in 2007.

The first part of the movie is action packed. Guts and blood flying everywhere and people's tiny pieces being blown to tiny pieces. Our hero, Captain Gu, is fighting the Nationalists (bad guys for China) in China's civil war. Anyway, you can tell he's a pretty emotional guy after he loses it and almost shoots POWs when his political officer gets evaporated. Anyway his superiors send him over to defend a strategic location and hole up in a mine to resist the Nationalists. They order him to defend it to the last man or until the assembly bugle is sounded. You meet his crew of cheerful and interesting soldiers who all die horribly and the first act is finished with everyone in a smoldering heap except the captain.

The story then gets a little hazy. Gu jumps through time and ends up in the Korean War and then jumps through time again to retire as a soldier and then just wanders about aimlessly...through time. This movie skips through years like a fatty skips the salad bar. He gets pissed and loses it again when he hears his men, who defended the mine, were simply listed as MIA instead of heroes and their final resting spot turned into a quarry. So he runs around crying manly tears, throwing chairs, kicking gravestones and fighting bureaucracies. Some chick gets married I guess... Anyway, its revealed that his men were sacrificed so the rest of the battalion could escape so that's why the order never came to retreat. In the end, the bodies of his men are conveniently found, are honored posthumously and the assembly bugle is sounded over their monument all poetic and shit. More manly tears.

I like simple war movies like this. At first I liked it for all the bloody carnage but when it turned to drama I had my doubts. Fortunately, the drama was okay enough. Come to think of it, we don't really know much about Captain Gu. His character was never developed that much. I mean, we don't know his history, his politics and whatnot but that's the beauty of it. It became easy to just label him the righteous grizzled war hero and feel his pain. This movie is best if you don't think of it too much. Gu fights Nationalists(bad guys for China), he and his men are heroes, his men are forgotten, he feels alone and pissed, he fights for his fallen comrades, they are found and honored, pack it up and we are done.

Not bad.