Best movies like City of Life and Death

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like City of Life and Death Starring Liu Ye, Gao Yuanyuan, Hideo Nakaizumi, John Paisley, and more. If you liked City of Life and Death then you may also like: 5 Days of War, When Taekwondo Strikes, Nanking, The Resistance, John Rabe and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

In 1937, during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Army has just captured Nanjing, then-capital of the Republic of China. What followed was known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, a six week period wherein tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed.

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5 Days of War

An American journalist and his cameraman are caught in the combat zone during the first Russian airstrikes against Georgia. Rescuing Tatia, a young Georgian schoolteacher separated from her family during the attack, the two reporters agree to help reunite her with her family in exchange for serving as their interpreter. As the three attempt to escape to safety, they witness--and document--the devastation from the full-scale crossfire and cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.

When Taekwondo Strikes

The story is about the Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II. A Korean patriot played by Carter Wong gets into a fight with some Japanese people and is chased into a church. The priest there is captured and tortured. Trying to secure his release, the leader of the resistance, Jhoon Rhee is himself captured and tortured by the Japanese. Carter Wong, Angela Mao and Anne Winton have to now try and rescue him. This leads to an explosive climax with the heroes having to fight the likes of Wong In Sik (Hwang In-Shik), Sammo Hung and Kenji Kazama.

Nanking

The story of the rape of Nanking, one of the most tragic events in history. In 1937, the invading Japanese army murdered over 200,000 and raped tens of thousands of Chinese. In the midst of this horror, a small group of Western expatriates banded together to save 250,000. Nanking shows the tremendous impact individuals can make on the course of history.

The Resistance

In 1937, Japan began their invasion of China by murdering over 300,000 people in the capital of Nanjing. The atrocities committed against women and their daughters are especially barbaric. One of them is Xiaoyun, a peasant girl who fights with the Chinese resistance group. On her way to freedom she must fight against Japanese soldiers, ninjas, a killer geisha, Nazis, and the evil General of the Japanese imperial army.

John Rabe

A true-story account of a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937-38.

The Bridge at Remagen

In March of 1945, as the War in Europe is coming to a close, fighting erupts between German and American troops at the last remaining bridgehead across the Rhine.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson , the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

China Sky

During World War II, an American mission hospital is headed up by Dr. Gray Thompson and Dr. Sara Durand. Sara is secretly in love with Gray but hides her feelings as his new wife, Louise, arrives at the hospital. Sparks fly, however, when Louise becomes jealous of Sara, and then tries to convince her husband to leave war-torn China behind for a calmer life in the United States. But Thompson is attached to both Sara and the people who need his help.

Flags of Our Fathers

There were five Marines and one Navy Corpsman photographed raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. This is the story of three of the six surviving servicemen - John 'Doc' Bradley, Pvt. Rene Gagnon and Pvt. Ira Hayes - who fought in the battle to take Iwo Jima from the Japanese.

Empire of the Sun

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

The Flowers of War

A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.

Platoon

As a young and naive recruit in Vietnam, Chris Taylor faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.

Letters from Iwo Jima

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

Hotel Rwanda

Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.

Fist of Legend

Chen Zhen, a Chinese engineering student in Kyoto, who braves the insults and abuse of his Japanse fellow students for his local love Mitsuko Yamada, daughter of the director, returns in 1937 to his native Shangai, under Japanse protectorate -in fact military occupation- after reading about the death of his kung-fu master Hou Ting-An in a fight against the Japanese champion Ryuichi Akutagawa.

Devils on the Doorstep

During the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town. The owner is bullied into keeping the prisoners until the next New Year, at which time they will be collected. The village leaders convene to interrogate the prisoners. The townspeople then struggle to accommodate the prisoners. One is a bellicose Japanese nationalist, the other a nervous translator. Will the townspeople manage to keep the prisoners until the New Year?

Magnificent Warriors

A daredevil airplane pilot and spy, who fights against the occupying Japanese forces in China, must rescue the ruler of the city of Kaal from the hands of a ruthless Japanese general and his advancing army.

Don't Cry, Nanking

In December 1937, during the Second Japanese-Sino War, a Chinese doctor, his Japanese pregnant wife, their teenage daughter and their young son travel from Shanghai to Nanjing seeking shelter in the Capital during the Japanese invasion. The family faces the Rape of Nanking by the Imperial Japanese Army, with rapes, mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians including women, children and elders, and disrespect of international conventions.

Men Behind the Sun

The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.

The Message

After a series of assassinations in Nanking, a Japanese spy master gathers a group of suspects in a mansion, then a tense cat-and-mouse game erupts as the Chinese agent tries to keep his or her identity a secret.

Purple Butterfly

Ding Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.

The Sacrifice

In 1953, the Korean War is entering the final stage. The People's Volunteer Army of China has launched the last major battle in Kumsong. In order to arrive at the battleground on time and deliver enough force to the Kumsong front line, the soldiers have to defend themselves against the never ending bombing of enemy bombers and race with time to repair bridges, all under the circumstance of supply shortages and inferior equipment. The rarely told history slowly unfolds.

Savior

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.

Not Scared to Die

Historical movie set during the Japanese occupation of China during WWII. Jackie Chan is one of the good guys but has nothing much more than a supporting role.

Pacific Inferno

After the fall of the Philippines in World War II, the Japanese discover that Gen. MacArthur ordered millions of dollars in silver dumped in Manila Bay in order that it not fall into enemy hands. Among the prisoners the Japanese have taken are two American U.S. Navy deep-sea divers, whom they then force to dive in search of the sunken treasure.

The Children of Huang Shi

About young British journalist, George Hogg, who with the assistance of a courageous Australian nurse, saves a group of orphaned children during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937.

Burning Harbor

At the end of WWII, the Japanese decide to build a secret submarine base in Hong Kong for a last point of resistance. The mariners on a Chinese cargo boat are interned and forced to be labourers. When the Japanese commander orders that the laborers are to be killed on completion of the base, the captain of the cargo boat leads his crew in a fight for survival.

The Eight Hundred

In 1937, eight hundred Chinese soldiers fight under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army.

Air Strike

An American pilot is sent to a Chinese province to teach a crew of would-be pilots how to fly war planes against the Japanese during World War II.

Sky Hunter

An elite group of Chinese pilots must take part in a dangerous mission to thwart a terrorist plot and resolve a hostage situation.

Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre

Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre depicts the brutal events behind the Nanking Massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese army against the Chinese people during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes

The movie follows the perspective of several characters (such as Japanese victims, soldiers, American prisoners of war and others) and how they lived or tried to survive the effects felt during the aftermath of the Atomic Bomb dropping by the Enola Gay at Hiroshima, during World War II.

Scars Of Nanking

During the brutal invasion of China in 1937 by Imperial Japanese forces, tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are murdered and women raped in what is known simply as "The Rape of Nanking." This docudrama is a stirring account of a small band of courageous American missionaries who choose to stay in Nanking to try and protect a quarter million vulnerable Chinese civilians who are trapped in a city ruled by a savage, out of control army. Their stories are brought vividly to life through actual real-time letters and diaries as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.

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