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Nanking
Metascore
77 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
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  1. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: James Greenberg
    90
    Not only is the film a powerful historical record and a warning for future generations, it is an essential reminder to people, including many in Japan today, who might deny that this massacre ever occurred. As such, Nanking honors the highest calling of documentary filmmaking.
  2. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    90
    I have rarely, if ever, seen a documentary reconstruction of a historical event that is so rich in firsthand (and well-preserved) photographic material.
  3. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    88
    What Guttentag and Sturman gain in dramatic immediacy, however, they lose when it comes to historical context, and the chance to offer insight into why such things occur in the first place -- and continue to happen today -- is lost.
  4. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    88
    Thorough and sadly engrossing documentary.
  5. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    83
    Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, does justice to this tragedy even though it makes the mistake of mixing the testimony of actual participants with staged readings from actors subbing for real people.
  6. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    80
    Nanking both calls attention to a horrifying set of war crimes that remains little known in the West and crafts an impossible-but-true hymn to the power of the individual conscience.
  7. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    What makes the film bearable is the knowledge that a few people did what they could to hold the line against humanity's worst instincts. The voices in Nanking speak for the persistence of good in times and places where a moral crevice opens to reveal a vision of hell on earth.
  8. Variety
    Reviewed by: Justin Chang
    80
    The horrific 1937-38 massacre of more than 200,000 Chinese during the early days of the Japanese occupation gets a polished presentation in Nanking.
  9. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Sid Smith
    75
    Whatever the numbers, testimony cited in Nanking portrays the episode as a horrifying chapter in man's renowned inhumanity to man.
  10. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    75
    It is the devastating testimony from survivors themselves that leaves the most indelible impression.
  11. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    Everyone knows about the Holocaust, but few today have heard about what was infamous as the Rape of Nanking, when 200,000 residents of what was then China's capital were massacred by invading Japanese troops.
  12. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    75
    The stories are harrowing, and because they are delivered by living, breathing witnesses, they move us in deep ways that the archival footage, for all its horror, cannot.
  13. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Jeremy Mathews
    70
    While at times the film begins to feel like a laundry list of bad deeds, the first-person accounts pack a wallop.
  14. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    70
    While the footage and survivors of Nanking are gray and decaying, its unbearable story is not something out of the past; the evil and ignorance it describes are alive and thriving today.
  15. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    67
    A handsome documentary on a brutal subject.
  16. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    60
    Individually these elements are powerful, but they fail to mesh or collide with one another in any satisfying way, and the movie's score only exacerbates the problem.
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User Reviews

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User Score
8.8 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 8 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. JanschieD
    5
    This documentary is well made. However, another exactly similar documentary was already made and shown sometime ago concerning Japanes "war crimes". (There were many). Somehow, this film doesn't have any of the impact of the former - nor does it carry the impact or inspiration of its precursor book, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. It hardly explains the why's of the atrocity. It does a good job of presenting the chronology of the events- and most of these are done so in a very moving way. The narrating actors are generally good to superflous - but, on the whole, they really add nothing to the story. The interviews with Chinese victims are very poignant - the ones with Japanese soldiers are repugnant - not one of these old men demonstrate a drop of remorse - and this is manipulation. Other records show that there was and is a great amount of rethinking on the part of these common soldier perpetrators. Lawrence Rees's recent book on the World War 2 Japanese armies is a good starting point. In summary, a satisfactory attempt about a difficult and relatively unknown terrible crime among many that has gone mostly unpunished. Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking" is a much better introduction to this compelling subject.… Full Review »
  2. ChadS.
    8
    In Atom Egoyan's "Ararat", the Canadian filmmaker depicted the Armenian massacre at the hands of Muslim Turks, as a film within a film, a reenactment in front of a Armenian director's rolling cameras. To show the true face of genocide without some sort of distnaciation is unfilmable. "Nanking" knows this. That's why "Nanking", narratively, bears a striking resemblance to Mario Van Peebles' "Badassssss!"". And like Louis Malle's "Vanya on 42nd Street", the filmmaker shows the actors' arrival at the set before they settle into their respective characters. And sure enough, "Nanking" can't help but feel like theater(or more to the point, performance art), when recognizable actors such as Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway deliver dramatic readings of their real life counterparts, alongside newsreel footage of war atrocities, and the testimonies of actual witnessess to said war atrocities. They're a necessary evil. So deal with it. Without names, however, "Nanking" wouldn't get the funding, or make the art-house circuit, or receive a proper DVD release. But because the story of Japanese occupation in China's capitol is such a horrific account to stomach, the actors do eventually disappear into character. Ultimately, what matters is that the story gets out to the uninitiated. Knowing what you now know about the Japanese during wartime, you'll never look at their national cinema in the same way. Especially the films of Yasujiro Ozu. Now that you know, they'll look like propaganda films.… Full Review »
  3. HarrisL.
    9
    Saw this deeply moving and difficult documentary on Christmas Eve. And a movie depicting the slaughter of several hundred thousand Chinese by invading Japanese seems hardly the move to see on Christmas Eve. But the courage and clear moral choices made by 20 westerners to do what they could to save the lives of innocent victims of war, rape and oppression answered for me better than anything else I've seen this holiday season the question "What would Jesus do?" He'd have stayed behind, as every other western national fled, to take a moral stand against brutality and war. Hard to watch but a reminder about how people can make a profoundly moral decision to stand up, and back against, the force of evil. I highly recommend this film.… Full Review »
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