Dongji Rescue (13+)
Directed by Zhenxiang Fei and Guan Hu
★★★★

THE Lisbon Maru was a Japanese freighter torpedoed by a USS Grouper submarine on October 1 1942 while sailing through the East China Sea. In its holds, in appalling conditions, the Japanese were transporting 1,816 British prisoners of war captured in the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941.

Of those on board 828 either drowned or were shot in cold blood by Japanese soldiers as they attempted to escape from the sinking ship, and while 973 of the survivors were recaptured, another 384 were rescued by fisherfolk from the adjacent islands of Dongji in the Zhoushan Archipelago. This later group was rounded up by the Japanese army with only three evading capture, hidden by the fishermen of Dongji.

Hot on the heels of the Chinese documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (2024), produced and directed by Fang Li, comes a feature version of the events.

Dongji Rescue, regrettably, sacrifices the historical and momentous collectivism of the rescue on the altar of a quasi-Marvel “superhero” individualism embodied by the island’s outsiders, foundling orphan brothers, Abi (Zhu Yilong) and Adang (Wu Lei), descendants of pirates.

The morally at odds brothers rescue from the sea and protect a fictional British PoW, Thomas Newman (William Franklyn-Miller), blown off the deck of Lisbon Maru during the torpedo explosion. Their decision sets in train a whole number of confrontations between themselves and the village elders when Japanese murderous brutality unveils multiple crises of conscience.

This potent device of a narrative where the population is caught between the odious Japanese and the “deep blue sea” of moral doubt and self-preservation literally never arose because the island was never occupied.

However, the homicidal mindsets of the Japanese who land in search of Newman and include the bayoneting of a child distraught at its parents’ slaughter, epitomise the factual horrors they had inflicted on hundreds of thousands throughout WWII.

The rescue culminates in a Danteian spectacle of ultimate confrontation between humanity and evil — hats off here to cinematographer Weizhe Gao and the innumerable CGI team whose collective virtuosity is a wonder to behold.

Truth be told, the often dragging and simplistic narrative does rescue, albeit with sentimental overkill, a moment in history that is particularly poignant today when the unscrupulous cranking up of enmity towards and demonisation of the Chinese risks repeating the ghastly mistakes of the past.

In cinemas August 22.