731, China, drama, Evil Unbound, Feng Wenjuan, Joyce Wenjuan Feng, Li Naiwen, Lin Ziye, movies, reviews, Sato Takumi, Sun Qian, Tenma Shibuya, Wang Zhiwen, World War II, Yasuyuki Hirata, Zhao Linshan
September 20, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Zhao Linshan
Mandarin, Japanese and Russian with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in China and in Japan in 1945, the dramatic film “731” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: The Japanese Imperial Army’s Unit 731 conducts torturous scientific experiments on people imprisoned in a barbaric institution, where a food service worker/janitor leads a prison escape plan.
Culture Audience: “731” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and historical World War II-era dramas, but the movie makes the grim living conditions look too glossy, and the characters are too shallow.
The misguided movie “731” is an example of a real-life war story exploited for entertainment. This drama might be intended to give a meaningful history lesson about Japan’s horrendous World War II-era biochemical experiments. But the movie’s tacky filmmaking does a disservice to the real victims by turning this tragedy into a garish soap opera. The explicit blood, gore and torture in the movie are depicted in ways that give all of this disgusting violence a somewhat glamorous sheen, which is a very inappropriate look for a movie with this intensely disturbing subject matter.
Directed by Zhao Linshan, “731” was co-written by Zhao and Liu Heng. The movie has the alternate title “Evil Unbound” in some countries. The story in “731” takes place in 1945, in northeast China, with some brief scenes in Japan. With few exceptions, the characters in the movie are mostly fictional. Unfortunately, all the characters in the movie are generic.
The movie begins with a Japanese official name Ota (played by Tenma Shibuya) discussing “new recruits” for a place that is soon revealed to be a torture prison. The captives (mostly Chinese people and some white Europeans) are fooled into thinking they’re getting medical treatment, but they are really the targets of biochemical experiments that kill people. A caption says that poisonous gases were banned in China, but Japan’s invasion and forceful control over parts of China in the 1930s and 1940s have resulted in biochemical warfare against Chinese citizens.
The Japanese Imperial Army’s Unit 731 oversees and inflicts this torture and mutilation of people and animals. The movie’s protagonist is Wang Yongzhang (played by Jiang Wu), a middle-aged Chinese vendor who is captured because he’s suspected of being part of the Chinese resistance movement. However, he gains the trust of the prison officials and is assigned duties of preparing food and doing janitorial services for the prisoners.
Many of the prisoners are unsuspecting people (from infants to elderly people), who arrive by train because they think they’re getting medical treatment. The prison officials continue this ruse by telling the new arrivals that they are “patients.” It’s only after it’s too late that the captives find out the real reason why they are sent to this institution. There are gruesome displays of the torture, such as skin being ripped off of people’s arms, people’s frozen arms being chopped off, people being gassed to death, people being electrocuted, and other gruesome violence.
In addition, there are several scenes of people getting shot to death, for any number of reasons. The most vicious prison official is Yoshiko Inamura (played by Feng Wenjuan, also known as Joyce Wenjuan Feng), who sadistically murders people (usually by shooting or stabbing them), often in front of other prisoners. Another prison official is Ichizawa (played by Sato Takumi), who likes to watch films of prisoners being murdered. One of the movie’s few characters that is a depiction of a real person is Shirō Ishii (played by Yasuyuki Hirata), the microbiologist who was the director of Unit 731. Not surprisingly, he is portrayed as cold-blooded and cruel.
The movie’s production design makes this prison look like a shiny medical facility, where the only things that cause stains are the blood and guts of people being tortured and killed. It’s a very inaccurate depiction of a prison where people were held captive in very unsanitary conditions. Yongzhang also has unrealistic-looking adventure stunts in this heavily guarded prison, such as climbing artistically decorated walls that look like they belong in a museum, not a prison. One of the most irritating aspects of “731” is the movie’s choppy editing. Viewers barely get time to see what’s happening in a scene before the movie quickly cuts to the next scene.
Instead of doing a substantial story about the people who were victims of these war crimes, “731” reduces everything to montages of human suffering and a prison break story. Yongzhang is the mastermind for this escape plan. Other characters in the movie who portray imprisoned civilians are Du Cunshan (played by Wang Zhiwen); Gu Boxuan (played by Li Naiwen) and his pregnant wife Lin Suxian (played by Sun Qian); and Sun Mingliang (played by Lin Ziye), a boy who’s about 7 or 8 years old. Unfortunately, “731” is less interested in depicting these characters as fully formed human beings but rather as props in a movie where torture and murder are presented as stylishly staged parades of carnage.
Well Go USA released “731” in select U.S. cinemas on September 19, 2025. The movie was released in China on September 18, 2025.