Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

ironhorse_iv Honestly this movie is very, very upsetting. It's like going back into time, and watching old nightmares come back alive. It was powerful, raw, and just downright depressing. Few movies has made me felt so angry and emotional than this film. There was nothing good about it. It was a borderline snuff film. There are some exploitative gross out moments, like an unborn baby being pulled out of a pregnant woman's stomach via bayonette or scenes with children getting rape. The scene of hundreds of bodies being burned on the beach is truly haunting. Unlike films like 2009's City of War: The Story of John Rabe or 2007's Nanking that shows disturbing historic scenes, but also uplifting real life accents or stories of heroic figures trying to save them. This film is pure negatively exploitation with no linear storyline. Instead, the film has a small handful of overlapping vignettes detailing the horrors and atrocities inflicted on the citizens. There isn't any scene in the movie where you can rest from the amount of violence, gore, and disturbing imagery. You don't come out of watching the film feeling like there is any hope for mankind. You just feel sick in your stomach. Men Behind the Sun 4 or Black Sun: the Nanking Massacre is about the real life accents of what happen in 1937, when Japanese troops raid the Chinese city of Nanking to execute a planned massacre by subjecting over 300,000 helpless civilians to various tortures, rapes, and atrocities before slaughtering them all. The director's depiction of the Japanese is as heartless and soulless savages, while the Chinese are shown as meek and submissive is interesting to say. I think in real life, there had to be some Japanese soldiers that felt that what they were doing to the Chinese was wrong, and I doubt the Chinese would have been that submissive. There is only a few scenes of Chinese trying to fight back, while no scenes of Japanese soldiers questioning their actions. There is no clear main character in the film, as it follows the story of many men and women trying to survive. Too bad, none of them, survive that long to get the audience hook on them. The movie desensitizes the audience by not having a main character to root for. There is little or no any educational value behind seeing people die. The movie seems to follow step with Iris Chang's book, "The Rape of Nanking" and is, as far as I can see, historically accurate. I don't know how much exploitation it has for exploitation's sake. Still, It's very factual and very well filmed. The backdrop is so intricate, I can only imagine how much time and money went in to its production. Mixed with real film footage and photographs of the actual events, the film really shows the atrocities of war. The movie was directed Tun Fei Mou who known for disturbing movie such as 1988's "Man Behind the Sun". Don't worry, the Men Behind the Sun's Saga has nothing to do with each other, so you wouldn't miss anything if you don't watch the original or the Godfrey Ho's films "Man Behind the Sun 2: Laboratory of the Devil" and "Man Behind the Sun 3:Narrow Escape". There seems to be a few shots cut from the Hong Kong version against the U.S version. There is a Film tear 20 minutes in the film and another 41 minutes later. I heard that this was due to Chinese censorship, but I'm not for sure. It doesn't affect the movie U.S release version. The movie comes across as blatant anti-Japanese propaganda. Black Sun is not a documentary, and the emphasis is on shock rather than historical accuracy. Also, the connection between Black Sun to the rest of the exploitative "Men Behind the Sun" films doesn't help the film's credibility. Overall: Too much gore, lack of empathy to the characters portray in the film make this nothing, but an open wound between the relationship of Japan and China. This movie isn't no Chinese Schindler's List, there is void of no hope for anything good to come out of this film.

t_atzmueller The original "Men behind the Sun" – the Chinese "Schindler's List", as it is often described – was no doubt a sordid little piece of propaganda and it is unlikely that many people watched it because they were historically interested in the topic of Japanese occupation of China during World War 2. No, most viewers watched it for one purpose and one purpose alone: the violence, the splatter and the (often) realistic and (often) even un-simulated gore. Among the audience were usually horror-fans who had become too jaded to enjoy "harmless" flicks like "Friday the 13th" or "Evil Dead" and had move on to harder stuff like "Cannibal Holocaust", the Japanese "Guinea Pig"-films or pseudo-documentaries like "Faces of Death" (and worst).Those who stayed with the "Men behind the Sun"-series through two sequels, stayed with it for the same reason.Trouble however was, watching hardcore splatter-films has the same effect as working in a slaughterhouse: it desensitizes the viewer. There are so many ways to portray a mangled carcass before the variations run out and the viewer is left with the "I've seen this before, so what"-syndrome. Sure, "MBtS 4" offers some pretty gruesome stuff, both authentic illustrations of atrocities and re-enactments. Perhaps the goriest scene in the movie is the "forced abortion" via a Japanese bayonet but where can you go from pierced plastic-fetuses? You may have noticed that IMDb has among the genre-descriptions "war", "drama" and "history", all which is true but in all that's right, it should have added another: "exploitation". It is that sense of glee with which the atrocities are depicted that sets it apart from above mentioned film by Steven Spielberg (and now just imagine if Mr. Spielberg had used real body parts and the general "reaction" that would have followed).We could say that "MBtS 4" was a prime example of a genre eating its own children. It happened to the Italian Zombie-films, it happened to the Cannibal-genre, it's happening to the SAW-franchise and the whole torture-porn-sub genre right now.As said: this film isn't for those people who are historically interested – plenty of documentaries on the topic for those. This film is for the dissolute gore-hounds among the audience; at least those that haven't moved on to watching shock-sites on the internet.As to giving it points or a rating: always difficult for those kinds of films. One the gorehound-scale it would probably get a 7 or even 8 out of 10, as a "real" film it would probably receive a lot less, maybe somewhere in the range of 3 or 4 points.Truly depraved stuff, so just don't say I haven't warned you.

brasil60 This film is truly shocking, not in the sense in that its a bad movie but in the sense that the events that took place during the war were truly disturbing. The film also includes true footage taken including old black and white photographs which in part are more disturbing than the film its self.More shocking is the fact that at the end of the movie they tell you the grand total of number of people that were killed during the invasion of Nan king and that the film footage is not as bad as what really went on during the war.Overall i wouldn't say that this movie is all that great, but its worth checking out if you enjoyed men behind the sun or other exploitation movies or if you are just interested in the history of the Japanese invasion of China.

Mahatma Fabrizi Arriving at my door, this video, which I had procured from E-Bay.com has many extras and features and is very-well put together, but the film itself, unbeknownst to me at that time, would prove to be my undoing: Quite by accident I'd come upon a dread vision more fantastic than anything from out of Dante; putrified, bodies piled in heaps on beaches in the Chinese province of Xixioung, a, like so many flesh-balloons ripening and bursting in the afternoon sun. On this the camera lingers, unflinchingly -- Pop! a corspe, bursting at the seems, abruptly inflates and then pops open strewing it's organs amid a splash of half-uncoagulated blood, and then another, and then another...Finally, toward evening, this ranch of carnage is set ablaze and we are treated to a symphony of sickening popping sounds and the abysmal sight of what can best be described as a field of human popcorn yielding it's unwholesome fruits. The heat from the resulting conflagration, you see, creates pressure within the floury endosperm of corpse-meat, causing it to explode, and, horrific to relate, turn itself inside out.In addition to a severe case of panic/anxiety disorder, a screening of these terrors, celebrated in this film, "Rape of Nanking-- Solar Disc of Umbra" (literal translation) resulted in something my doctor has told me is called "restrcutring cognitive distortion", a condition wherein brain fluid backflows (refluxes) into the lobular cavities, sometimes getting into the ears, occasionally, I understand, even into the mouth. It produces ultra-intense headaches at least twice a week. Actually. before I started taking Pantroprazole, it was occurring not just twice a week, but more than twice a day. In addition to the nightmares, in a very small percentage of people, including me, it produces nearly impossible to describe creepy feelings like something besides just brain fluid is crawling around in my head.Additionally, it also seems to produce, or, at least, trigger creepy feelings and pressure in my head that vaguely resemble the anxiety I experienced when first watching the terrific imagery presented in this title, but are unlike any headache I've ever had. My doctor says that those headaches have nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre, but I don't believe him.And when dead bodies start erecting themselves, and march out of their graves, or people with crippled skeletons are restored to perfect form, CNN will be there ...