2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

SnoopyStyle It's 1937. John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) runs the Siemens plant in Nanking, China. He dismisses news of Japanese massacres. He is ordered back to Berlin when the Japanese attack. He saved the Chinese workers from the bombings under the Nazi flag. He ignores orders to close the plant. He is selected to organize a safe zone within the city with the help of the other westerners. Dr. Rosen (Daniel Brühl) with a Jewish ancestor is an assistant under German Ambassador Trautmann. Valérie Dupres runs a school for girls. Robert Wilson (Steve Buscemi) is an American doctor. Rabe decides to stay sending his wife on a ship. The ship is sunk and his wife is presumably lost.This is a compelling story of a Nazi saving war victims due to his humanity. The obvious comparison is Schindler's List. It is a straight forward telling. The difference is the emotional arc. Rabe is not quite as emotional and his Germanness keeps the story from elevating higher. It does put the lesser known history on the big screen. The history is compelling with some good tension and needs to be told.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "John Rabe", the title of this film, is a name that not really that many people have heard of so far, so this is already one perspective from which it made sense that Florian Gallenberger made this movie. He is an Academy Award winner and this is one of the reasons why he is still among Germany's most known filmmakers these days. Here he adapted the book by Erwin Wickert and directed as well. I read somewhere that Ulrich Mühe was supposed to play the main character, which also would have been an interesting choice, but Mühe's ill-fated health got in the way and the consequence was Ulrich Tukur taking over in what can be considered a career-defining performance. I believe he was very convincing as the title character. And he also looks quite different physically compared to other roles from his career. The best supporting performance here comes from Steve Buscemi and he is an actor that you would not really expect in a film like this with France, China and Germany being the countries who are listed under producing. This came out shortly before Buscemi appeared on "Boardwalk Empire".After watching this film, I must say that it's nice that Rabe got his own film finally. But I also believe this movie is probably more relevant to Chinese (maybe even Japanese) audiences because of the historic impact depicted in here. Pretty much the entire film is set in China of the 1930s, before World War II when bloody conflicts between Japanese and Chinese (with the former being the aggressor) happened way too frequently sadly. I read somewhere that the character of John Rabe has some parallels to Oskar Schindler and I would agree, but just partially. The context is really entirely different and the location where it all takes place is reason enough already to be careful with such a comparison, even if both men had saved many many innocent lives. This movie here was a huge success at the German Film Awards back then and won the big prize among others. It was another example of Gallenberger combining Germany with an entirely different country far far away in terms of plot and story-telling and it is one of his biggest successes so far.This was not the first time Gallenberger worked with actor Daniel Brühl, but I must say I found Brühl very forgettable here. It is a very stereotypical performance and I have seen pretty much the exact performance by Brühl in many films in terms of mannerisms and approach to the character. He has two or three films where he is pretty great, but he is basically very much the same in everything else. But back to this film here. I think the biggest strength is that it never only relies on the Rabe plot, but brings in several side stories, such as the one with the girl who is about to get raped and her brother saving her. I also don't think it takes away any relevance from Rabe as the main character as Tukur immediately has audiences glued to the screen when he is in the center of attention. I do believe this was a convincing film overall and the good outweighs the bad. It did not make as much of an emotional impact for me as I hoped, but there are still a handful fairly great and memorable scenes and moments. Go see it.

MartinHafer "John Rabe" is a very glossy and well done film about the actions of Rabe and a few other foreigners in saving as many of the residents of Nanking as they could during the Japanese invasion. The airplane attacks and look of the film were absolutely great--and the film is well worth seeing.I am very familiar with the story of John Rabe and used to teach my world history students about him and the Japanese destruction of Nanking (I have since retired). Much of what I'd learned were from the book "The Rape of Nanking" as well as several well made documentaries. So, I am NOT the typical person watching the story for the first time--I am a bit tougher to please. Because of this, I am much more critical that average and to me, the story was flawed because it actually seemed very sanitized. In other words, while the film DID show some of the Japanese atrocities, it didn't do much--probably because it would nauseate most viewers. BUT, by doing so, it minimized the evil that was perpetrated here--making the Japanese troops seem almost normal. It's rare, but I would have included much more blood and talked much more about the rapes and murder of children. Evil must not be minimized and here it just didn't seem as sadistic and wrong as the Rape of Nanking was.

Kong Ho Meng It is well made for a historical/biographical film, but there were a number of critical flaws : overdramatization (the least of its problems as movies need drama anyway) , inclusion of unnecessary scenes of romance, historical or more precisely technical flaws (the existence of such a small hand-held camera was not convincing), Steve Buscemi's overly-americanized character (i don't know if 'balls' or 'f***' were common during those era, but he talked like a modern American), accuracy of the portrayal of the then Japanese soldiers, etc.However i am glad the actors delivered spectacular performances to cover up those said flaws and made the most out of the limited character development, which was another aspect i would give salute for this film as it manages to focus on the big picture of the rescue efforts.