The Flowers of War Review

Based on a plot of destruction and devastation, Flowers Of War portrays one of the worst atrocities of the 19th century, the Japanese brutality and Nanking destruction in the winter of 1937-38 and the complete massacre of about 300,00 civilians. Directed by Zhang Yimou, one of the China’s most talented film-makers, it has described an appalling happening as a fictionalised plot. Again a superb Christian Bale performance as a mercenary American mortician, who initially poses as a priest to save himself is pretty appreciable. The U-turn of the whole plot arrives in the form of a transformation of John Miller’s (Christian Bale) soul from a show-off priest to a saintly figure helping a dozen beautiful whores to sacrifice themselves in order to protect a group of teenage convent pupils from rape and mutilation. Though the ending is quite a bit off-the-road and is a mere depiction of the Hollywood sentiment as an Anti-Japanese propaganda during the Second World War but one can recommend this as a Must Watch.