DONGJI RESCUE - Mark Reviews Movies

Dongji Rescue, Well Go USA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 21, 2025

Directors Guan Hu and Fei Zhenxiang's Dongji Rescue is based on a true event during World War II, likely overlooked or ignored by history because of the history that has followed it. Whatever the reasons this incident isn't as widely known as other stories of courage during that war may be, the filmmakers here present it as a story of decency and moral necessity in the face of inhumanity. It's bombastic and almost certainly a melodramatic account of the real-life event, too, but its inherent strengths easily overcome any misgivings about historical accuracy.

The entirety of the tale is set on and off the coast of the tiny, mostly insignificant Dongji Island, part of Japanese-occupied China in the autumn of 1942. It's an island filled with fishermen and divided in two, where one part is basically ruled over by a miniscule team of Japanese soldiers, who have banned the locals from engaging in their trade.

The other part only seems to be inhabited by brothers Bi (Zhu Yilong), the elder, and Dang (Wu Lei), the younger. The two men were saved from the sea as children by the island's leader Old Wu (Ni Dahong), but after the Japanese military took over the island, the brothers left the village in order to continue fishing, offering bribes of booze and whatever else they can obtain to keep the soldiers from getting in their way.

On the first day of October, a Japanese ship, carrying hundreds of British prisoners of war from Hong Kong to Japan, is hit by a torpedo from a U.S. submarine. Such incidents were surprisingly common, as some text informs us, because many Japanese prisoner transports did not provide markings to identify themselves as such.

The screenplay by Chen Shu, Dong Runnian, Zhang Ji, and Fei paints a rather merciless picture of each and every Japanese military member here, portraying them as either pitilessly cruel or incompetent. Even the ones who are established as the victims of harsh leadership lose any sense of potential sympathy in this story by the end. Because the setup and approach of the filmmakers do firmly plant this in the realm of wartime melodrama, it's easy enough to accept that depiction as part of the film's method, but still, it is worth noting.

As for the plot, it begins when Bi and Dang, on their boat to fish in the sea, witness the attack on the Japanese ship Lisbon Maru. Dang, the more reckless of the brothers, swims towards the damaged ship but is stopped by the cautious Bi. When a British prisoner floats toward their boat, Dang dives in the water to save him, but knowing that the presence of a member of the Allied Forces on the island could anger the occupying Japanese military, Bi ties up his brother and leaves the British man a basket on which to float.

As soon as he can free himself, however, Dang returns to save the man, named Thomas Newman (William Franklyn-Miller). That leads to a larger debate among the locals on the island, from teacher Mr. Chen (Chen Minghao), an army deserter who wants to protect the stranger, to village negotiator Yuanxing (Yang Haoyu), who knows that the Japanese military will stop at nothing to find their prisoner and punish anyone who tries to hide him. Meanwhile, Thomas just wants to find a way to help his fellow prisoners, who are still aboard a ship that will sink in less than a day with them on it.

The dilemma here is pretty clear and shown to be a nearly impossible one to confront. After all, what are the villagers, unarmed and up against an increasing number of Japanese military personnel on the island, supposed to do in this situation if they actually do want to help Thomas? There's an especially brutal scene of a sort of mass interrogation of the village, as soldiers pull random locals from the crowd, threaten them, and ultimately stab the captives with bayonets—including a young child simply checking on his family members. Eventually, the soldiers take a group of hostages, including a volunteering Dang, to the sinking ship until the matter is met to the military's satisfaction. Once they're aboard, though, it becomes painfully clear that the only satisfaction for the military heads will be when the ship is gone, the prisoners are drowned, and there are no witnesses to what has happened.

Guan and Fei stage this with appropriate outrage, as the atrocities continues—from shooting at a funeral procession to the summary execution by immolation of the one person who tries to fight back—and the villagers realize there is no way out of this situation. The whole thing builds, obviously, to a series of action setpieces, many of them revolving around revenge on the island and the ship, and they, too, possess a sense of urgency that keeps us from actively realizing how unlikely this part of the story must be as an accurate account of the historical record.

The climax of the film, though, is the eponymous rescue mission, and in addition to the sequence's impressive staging that involves dozens of boats and different layers of action, the moral core of the moment comes through just as strongly. Dongji Rescue might be overblown at times, but it's portrayal of bravery and humanity in the face of death and doom is ultimately a potent one, especially with the sheer scale and skill of the filmmaking in that climactic sequence.

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