Stole some time last night to catch the film The Volunteers: Strike of the Mighty Army before it left theaters. What a waste of a superb subject — the director simply didn’t deliver.
The dialogue scenes do capture the weight of difficult decisions — particularly a scene where a returning overseas Chinese presents cold, hard comparative data to the decision-makers, arguing there was no chance of winning. Premier Zhou’s final answer: “Everything you’ve said is true, and it’s scientifically sound — but we can only survive through victory.” And later, old General Peng says: “Every generation must bear its own cost. Our generation is already covered in blood and mud — let us be the ones to pay.” These emotional dramatic scenes work well enough, and the logic of survival competition rings true: if the grandfather didn’t strive, the father must strive; if the father strives but still falls short, the son must work doubly hard just to reach an ordinary standard of living.
Emotional manipulation is the director’s forte — and apparently his only forte. The depiction of warfare itself, especially the battlefield and combat scenes, is painfully amateurish. He’s like a humanities student trying to make sense of hard science fiction built on physics and mathematics. The director clearly wanted to convey a fighting spirit. But any victory of the weak over the strong is a marriage of courage and wisdom — you have to show the audience the courage born of wisdom. Simply hammering on the willingness to sacrifice through emotional manipulation alone ends up looking foolish. It’s the same as claiming that hard work alone is enough to rise above your station. Hard work only pays off when applied to the right strategy — otherwise you’re just a donkey.
And the enemy is made out to be utterly stupid. These were U.S. forces seasoned by World War II, with no shortage of brilliant commanders — even a company-level officer was the kind of battle-hardened, tactically sophisticated soldier you’d see in Band of Brothers. Without the strategic context established earlier in the film, would a two-star divisional commander really order over 7,000 men to assault a small hilltop at any cost, for no apparent reason?
Even more immersion-breaking: the 200-plus men of 3rd Company, tasked with sniper operations, are all bunched together on a single small mound with only one exposed face toward the enemy — while the enemy conveniently ignores the high ground across the road or on their flanks, just funneling soldiers into the guns like a zombie-wave video game. Meanwhile, 3rd Company digs no trenches, no shell scrapes, nothing — 200-plus men just lying flat in the open with zero cover. How were they supposed to survive tank and artillery bombardment? To say nothing of the 500-kilogram aerial bombs that come later.
The director doesn’t even have basic common sense. Rather than inspiring genuine awe and respect for the fighting spirit of those martyrs, the film ends up feeling embarrassing — exactly like the hollow little “good deeds” compositions I wrote in primary school.
Reader Response: The director already carries a comprador mentality at his core — his earlier promotional work drew widespread criticism for exactly this reason. His attempt at grandiosity is deliberate concealment: burying the true fighting spirit and tactical brilliance of our People’s Army, and the great strategic resolve of our founding generation of leaders.