Dongji Island (2025)

A thrill ride into an overlooked story

I'll be the first to admit I know very little about the Pacific Theatre of WWII. This may seem surprising given australia's geographical proximity and involvement in the fighting, but most of our nationalistic myth-making leans more into the WWI imagery than WWII.

And as much as I would like to say a curiosity in history was the reason I chose to watch Dongji Rescue, I'd be lying. I was 98% there for the cast. And damn, did they deliver.

I didn't even recognise Zhu Yi Long, even though I finished a third re-watch of the Story of Minglan earlier this year. Boy, does he have range! Same goes for Wu Lei, who I've seen in a few things, but I felt like couldn't quite shake the child actor background until now. Yet despite their stellar performances, Ni Ni takes the cake. Her character doesn't feature much until the latter half of the movie, but from therein she steals the show.

The storyline is a classic thriller style, mixed with the usual tropes of Chinese films set in this era. Like every Cdrama, the white characters are super cringe. Thankfully, their parts are kept relatively short, and only one pom sticks around long enough to get a name. There seem to be two thematic strands in the movie: the moral obligation to save lives, and the fraternal bond between the male protagonists. The first is executed well, but the latter suffers with the movie focussing more on plot progression than character development.

With that in mind, I think they could've chopped out Ni Da Hong's character altogether. He was simply one character too many and didn't really do much other than give Ni Ni's character substance. Not that her character needed it. She had depth after just a few seconds on screen. The other drag for me was a couple of scenes that verged a bit too close to melodrama. Combined with the cringe poms, they did take me out of the film quite a lot.

That said, the underwater and on-water shooting was the best I've ever seen. I would love to see behind-the-scenes footage of how that was achieved because, in spite of my mild thalassophobia and claustrophobia, my eyes were glued to the screen.

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