Currently sitting as the second-highest-grossing film around the world in 2020 (just behind Bad Boys For Life), The Eight Hundred is filmmaking on the grandest scale. Guan Hu’s film is the first Chinese production to be shot completely with digital IMAX cameras and the director uses every inch of the frame to dramatise a rear-guard action by the Chinese Nationalist Army to defend a symbolically important warehouse from the invading Japanese troops. In essence, The Eight Hundred is as much a siege movie as a war movie, a plucky rag-tag band of 800 soldiers versus a huge, weaponised army, and it delivers brilliantly crafted if often relentless moviemaking.
The screenplay by Guan and Ge Rui charts the action over four days. Day one is a stunningly choreographed blitzkrieg of action captured by Guan’s sinewy camera moves, be it a mustard-gas frenzy (soldiers piss on towels and cover their mouths to stay safe) or a surprise attack from half-naked Japanese commandos who enter the warehouse through the sewers. Day two sees the ante upped as the Japanese, embarrassed by their failed first onslaught, pledge to take control of the warehouse in just three hours. The third day charts the heroic act of Yang Huimin (Tang Yixin), who wrapped the Chinese national flag around herself and swam across the river to deliver it to the beleaguered troops. What follows is a valiant attempt to raise the flag on the roof of the warehouse as a final act of defiance and patriotism. The final day begins as the end is nigh but spools back 14 hours to fill in the military machinations — offering a level-headed view of the Japanese army — that build up to the final showdown.
Everywhere you turn there is fantastic filmmaking, flitting between grand sweep and quieter moments.
The Eight Hundred is sprawling, and doesn’t do anything in a hurry — the main title appears 20 minutes in — and there are ultimately too many characters to care about, but everywhere you turn there is fantastic filmmaking, flitting between grand sweep (a set-piece involving supplies being run across a river) and quieter moments (soldiers transfixed by an opera singer over the other side of the river; a bewitching shadow puppet show; one last communal bath before battle).
The film also captures the sense that the siege is almost a spectacle for both the initially disinterested Chinese residents who watch from the other side of the river and the international community who take in the battle safely from high-up hotel balconies and an airship offering a God’s-eye view of the action. Sometimes Guan’s predilection for vivid imagery gets the better of him — a white horse galloping around the warehouse is a stunning visual but soon wears out its welcome as on-the-nose symbolism for hope — but given the action is contained within spaces either side of the river, the scope and scale is truly epic — all on a budget of $80 million. Michael Bay take note.