Air Strike (Chinese: 大轰炸) also known as The Bombing or Unbreakable Spirit is a Chinese action war-drama film directed by Xiao Feng about the Japanese bombings of Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The film stars Liu Ye, Bruce Willis, Song Seung-heon and William Chan, with special appearances by Nicholas Tse, Tenma Shibuya, Adrien Brody, Simon Yam, Fan Bingbing and many others. Mel Gibson and Vilmos Zsigmond acted as production consultants on the film.
Contents
Premise
With the beginning of the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War/World War II (1937–45) at the Battle of Shanghai and Nanjing, the story develops around the Chinese Air Force's resistance against the Japanese invasion and occupation of China; the overwhelming might of the Imperial Japanese war machine taking down Shanghai and the capital of Nanjing, followed by heavy resistance and eventual fall of the interim wartime capital of Wuhan in 1938, and climaxing into the bloody six years-long all-airwar Battle of Chongqing, the wartime capital of China for the remainder of the Second Sino-Japanese War, with the remnants of the Chinese Air Force, the refugees, and the people of Chongqing exemplifying the undying resilience against years of barbaric air strikes by the Imperial Japanese air power.
Cast
Main cast
Liu Ye as Xue Gang Tou
Bruce Willis as Col. Jack Johnson
Song Seung-heon as An Ming Xun / An Ming He
William Chan as Cheng Ting
Fan Wei as Uncle Cui
Wu Gang as Zhao Chun
Ma Su as Ding Lian
Che Yongli as Yaogu
Feng Yuanzheng as Xue Man Guan
Janine Chang as Qian Xue
Geng Le as Jin Xiang
Special appearances
Tenma Shibuya as Sato
Zhang Fan as Cui Liu
Nicholas Tse as Lei Tao
Fan Bingbing as Ye Pei Xuan
Anthony Rogers as Ye Pei Xuan's boyfriend
Chen Daoming as Chief of City Defense
Simon Yam as Air Defense Commander
Adrien Brody as Steve
Ray Lui as Air Force Colonel
Lei Jia as Wan Jia
Hu Bing as Hospital Dean
Huang Haibing as Adjutant to Jack
Rumer Willis as Julia
Liu Xiaoqing as Madam Zhang
Eva Huang as Du Mei
Kenny Bee as Governmental Officer
Jiro Wang as Young Officer
Cao Kefang as Patriot
Niki Chow as Junior Patriot
Production
Mel Gibson served as the art director of the $65 million budgeted film. Principal photography on the film began in May 2015 in Shanghai, China. Filming was completed in November 2015. The film suffered a troubled production, with multiple delays, highly inflated cost that result in the movie to go over budget, and a tax evasion scandal that involved one of the main cast members, that lead to many of the filmed material to be cut from the final release, the planned 3D theatrical version being scrapped from the get go, and the major release in Chinese market to be canceled altogether.
Release
The film was filmed as a memorial for the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory in WWII. Originally scheduled to be released on 17 August 2018, it was later rescheduled to be released on 26 October 2018 in order to have a same-day global release.
In October 2018, it was announced that screening plans of the film had been cancelled in China. Earlier, it was leaked by TV anchor Cui Yongyuan that Fan Bingbing, one of the film's guest actors, was involved in a tax evasion scandal when starring in this film. However, the home video release in the United States went on as scheduled.
Alternate versions
The original cut of the film is 127 minutes long and features a mixture of dialogue in Mandarin and English. However for US release, the film was cut down to 96 minutes, fully dubbed into English and removed the media partners. Different territories have chosen to distribute one or the other cut:
Original version: The UK, The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway
Dubbed cut version: The USA, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, Italy, Spain
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 0% of 5 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.3/10.
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