Director Zhang Yimou does not shy away from horrors. He avoids pushing our noses into the violence, The Flowers of War is after all a drama and not a splatter film. And it is a drama, a well-made and thoroughly well-acted one.

Christian Bale notwithstanding, The Flowers of War was not made with American money (and apparently only the second all-Chinese film ever with a Hollywood star in the lead role), which may explain why it never made it to cinemas in Sweden. Because films that are not Swedish or English rarely do. It's certainly not a masterpiece, I don't intend to go that far, but surely there would have been room for a larger audience.

In The Flowers of War, Christian Bale plays a not-quite-clean funeral director, John Miller, who goes to a Catholic church in Nanjing, China, to take care of the dead priest there. But it is not very simple, because it all takes place during the so-called Nanjing Massacre, and there is chaos both on the way to and in the church. Where there is also only a group of children, with one exception consisting of girls, left. The not-quite-clean-haired undertaker decides to stay for a while, he has to get paid, and soon finds himself in a protective position he never asked for.

A history lesson might be in order, if you, like me, have never heard of the massacre in question. There was a six-week period after the then-capital of China, Nanjing, fell into Japanese hands, during a Japanese invasion of the country in 1937 (the Second Sino-Japanese War), when invading soldiers in the most heinous ways raped and murdered mostly Chinese civilians in and proximity to the capital.

Director Zhang Yimou (who has, among other things, fairly well-known Hero and Flying Daggers to his name) does not shy away from horrors. He avoids shoving our noses into the violence, The Flowers of War is after all a drama and not a splatter film, but it is somehow, in or out of picture, ever-present. From the initial attack to the aftermath of inhuman acts. Efficient. Nasty.

And it is a drama, a well-made and downright well-acted one, and without checking numbers I'd venture to guess that it was made on a sizable budget. Then it's a bit of a shame that it falls a few times along the way. There are no deep pits, but various small shortcuts in the story and one or the other forced emotional moments can still disturb. Although it's clear, by all means, it's still a lot better than the average modern Spielberg film.

Comments regarding Christian Bale's effort should be redundant, at least if we assume that people generally think his efforts are shitty. And I belong to these general types.