Reviews of Assembly

Assembly

Posted : 11 months, 3 weeks ago on 11 January 2009 06:55 (A review of Assembly)

Assembly is a war film with a difference in that it does not follow the events of the Second World War. It portrays the events of the Chinese Civil War in the post-1945 battles. The opening scene is a blinder, and throws you into a bloody street battle with blood and dismemberment coming at you from all angles. However from this memorable opening scene, it is all downhill.

The general in charge of the opening attack is then given a mission to defend an old mine from enemy attack - right down until the last man. The mine is of no military importance but serves as the flank for the main land army involved in the conflict. General Gu Zidi is told that he must remain at the mine until he hears the Assembly bugle call from down the valley which will signify their retreat. With just under 50 weary men, a defensive perimeter is established and the company repel wave after wave of enemy attack. Their numbers dwindle rapidly, to the extent that some men claim to have heard the trumpet call. Gu ignores these claims and ends up the only human being to survive the battle.

Up to this point the action was spectacular. The film seems to be shot with a saturated pallet in which everything is grey, dead and dreary coloured. The men fight with unwavering zeal and this makes the battle scenes all the more realistic. But then the film takes a turn for the more mundane as Gu spends the rest of the movie trying to prove that his platoon were ever on the hill in the first place. The mine has been reactivated after the war and the dead are buried deep beneath tonnes of coal. He makes it his personal mission to recover their identities and grant his men official government recognition.

I've no doubt that - if this really is a true story - then Gu's exploits would have been desperate and fraught with sadness and frustration. However, these emotions don't really come across in the film as the years progress rapidly and you often get lost in the time scale. Gu's actions are of a man possessed with recovering honour for people who deserve nothing but, yet every other character or his own periods of down time are simply tiring and uninteresting to watch. What started off as an intense action film sadly petered out into a predictable and uninteresting ending, which was regretful considering the natural skill the director possessed for depicting epic wartime battles.

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