In 2005, Japan published textbooks playing down the scale of destruction their country inflicted upon Nanking (the former capital of China now known as Nanjing), leading to a flare up of hostility between the citizens of the two nations. CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH tells the story of “the Rape of Nanking”, in which 300,000 innocent Chinese perished at the hands of a brutal military regime.

Of course, this being 2009 (at least it was when the film was made) and with the Chinese government evidently not wanting to fan the flames any further, there are some concessions to the old enemy – the story is partly told through the eyes of a young idealistic Japanese soldier called Kadokawa (Nakaizumi Hideo). When Kadokawa accidentally kills a group of civilians at the start of the movie, his conscience begins to trouble him, and as he sees more atrocities, his innocence is lost forever.

The film prefers to leave the brutal military largely faceless, instead concentrating on the victims and those trying to stop the massacre. One of which is German businessman John Rabe (John Paisley), a full member of the Nazi party but who, it has to be said, was a thoroughly decent man, even using his Nazi credentials to try to halt the slaughter (try to get your head around THAT).

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH is a very well made film, but it flies too close to cliché in its characterisation, script and even visual style (it’s all in black and white). Furthermore, director Lu Chuan uses on-screen postcards to update the viewer on events between scenes – a very clumsy and detracting device indeed (not to mention that fact that some of the cards are extremely hard to read). There’s no doubting that the film’s subject is extremely horrific, but the cumulative effect is numbing. There is only so much suffering you can watch without becoming unaffected by what you see – which may be why such atrocities are possible in the first place. That being said, the victory dance through the ruined city of Nanking is truly chilling.

Although it may never be possible to know for sure the extent of the devastation of Nanking, one only has to look at the documented facts of other atrocities to realise that the events depicted in CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH are only too plausible.