Four days feels like an eternity in “The Eight Hundred,” mainland Chinese writer-director Guan Hu’s monumental, if sometimes unwieldy epic interpretation of the courageous defense of a warehouse by the Chinese Nationalist Army in October 1937.
For those with little knowledge of the Sino-Japanese War, the bombardment of facts, action and characters in the 147-minute film can be too much to take in at one go.
But the spirit of the mission, like that of “The Alamo,” should be easy for any audience to root for.Since its mainland China release on Aug.
21, the $80 million mega-production by major studio Huayi Brothers has conquered $165 million at the box office, making it a pandemic-era global theatrical top-grosser.
It will go down as a breakthrough not only as Asia’s first film shot entirely with Imax cameras, but also for its audacity to handle a historical chapter sensitive to both sides of the
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