I saw "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East" aka Welcome to Long Restaurant 欢迎来龙饭馆 (they put and 'Long' and not 'Dragon' in the subtitles)
It's the Chinese movie about the Iraq War, sort of, that you might have seen the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuloUbTZaSU
I say "sort of" because they never actually say Iraq in the movie, though based on the time period and the fact that they repeatedly mention the Ba'ath party, it's pretty obvious what it's going for. This is fairly common for Chinese movies, which leave nations unnamed or fictionalized if it's going to be a negative portrayal (such as earlier this year when The Furious was set in an unnamed Southeast Asia country that was clearly meant to be Thailand). The plot is about a Chinese man who becomes a chef in a restaurant overseas shortly before the US invades. At first, he tries to stay uninvolved but over time both the occupying US forces and the insurgency end up inflicting violence on him and the people around him. It's a different portrayal of the Iraqi people than you'd see in an American war movie, which might feature some doe eyed kids for the soldiers to feel bad about but wouldn't invest so much time in making them central characters like this. It also lacks the yellow filter that these countries normally get. The Shock and Awe moment of invasion feel like something out of a sci fi action film, a horrifying moment. However it's also a bit fantastically depicted and it doesn't read as very realistic, even a bit like Slop. I won't do a play-by-play of the plot but here are some things that stood out:
- The chef's friend and local business partner is a member of the Ba'ath Party, a position that leads to him receiving violent reprisal by the American aligned militia (?). This is portrayed as a negative thing and the character is sympathetic.
- American soldiers are shown to be a mixed bag. Usually shown to be aggressive and sometimes cruel depending on the soldier and their position of power. Most of them just seem tired of the war and want to go home. The chef protagonist meets an American Chinese soldier, who conveniently speaks fluent Mandarin, and through him starts selling alcohol to the occupying soldiers.
- The chef takes in a bunch of "war orphans" and trains them to work in his restaurant. Given their age, it's obvious that they were orphaned by the first Gulf War, even if, again, it's not said outright.
- The chef, his employee and one of the children are held in an American prison camp after his Ba'athist friend turns into an insurgent and bombs an American checkpoint, which kills the Chinese American soldier. His connection to the Ba'ath Party leads them to detaining him. You see some Abu Ghraib style torture in the camp but it's not too graphic. They have the chef make chili sauce to force feed a tortured prisoner with but he swaps it out with something mild.
- After the prison camp is attacked by insurgents, he is taken prisoner by them and there's some sort of clerical leader training the kids to be suicide bombers. Religion isn't really present, but he does mention Allah a couple of times. The last bit of the film is focused on the chef trying to get the kids out of there and across the border before they all die.
- There was some on screen text at the end. I couldn't read it all because it went by quickly and there was no English subtitles for them but I did get the basic gist that it was talking about the number of children killed in conflicts worldwide and how China supports some United Nations program that deals with it. This is pretty similar to the end of the Chinese version of The Furious, where there was some information about child human trafficking and international law enforcement at the end of that movie, not present in the international cut. This is the real propaganda of the film, which varies different from how many people online seem to think Chinese propaganda would look like. Rather than demonizing a nation or advocating for war etc, Chinese messaging in popular media like this is usually in favor of some kind of liberal internationalism and a focus on bilateral cooperation to end [X] problem.
Anyways it's interesting to see a movie like this from the Chinese perspective. There some violence and blood but it was pretty tame compared to most war movies you'd see, which is in keeping with how most Chinese films are. Similarly, a lot of the emotional beats of the film are heightened and a melodramatic, but I will admit some of the stuff with the kids did move me. I give a 3/5
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