(China) Before you start reading this review, a declaration upfront: I’m Chinese, and so I’m naturally biased against “City of Life and Death.” This dramatization of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese army in 1937 tries to convey one message: that Japanese soldiers following orders to slaughter 300,000 Chinese people and rape countless women on the side might have had a conscience after all.

The story follows the Chinese people working for German businessman John Rabe. Hailed as a kind of Oskar Schindler of China, he sheltered 200,000 Chinese people and kept them from slaughter by the Japanese. Director Lu Chuan presents all this through the eyes of a Japanese soldier (Hideo Nakaizumi), a soldier who—for the first time in a WWII film made in China—shows significant compassion toward the Chinese people that he is ordered to molest, torture and murder.

Lu spent four years and RMB 80 million on this black and white film. Critics have so far celebrated his effort for its non-traditional take on WWII in China. “Non-traditional,” that is, in the sense that it’s not overly patriotic. While I understand the aims of so-called sixth generation Chinese filmmakers such as Lu Chuan (whose previous “Kekexili” is a beautiful depiction of the Tibetan tribe), a Chinese war film isn’t automatically good simply because it dares to “differ from the party line,” or “break the mold” by not being patriotic or nationalistic. Nor is it particularly groundbreaking to suggest that members of the Japanese army might have had a conscience: having a conscience tucked away somewhere tends to be part of the package with any human being.

It’s been 72 years since the Nanjing Massacre and we’ve had plenty of movies and documentaries on the subject so far. A new film about this terrible tragedy —particularly a film heavy with graphic torture and execution scenes—ought to have a damn good reason for existing, and the empty suggestion that the Japanese aggressors responsible might have had a conscience doesn’t cut it.