January 1, 2026
by Carla Hay
Directed by Kong Sheng
Mandarin with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in China, from 1937 to 1944, the action film “Gezhi Town” (inspired by true events) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Several residents in China’s Gezhi Town fight back when Japanese soldiers invade the town.
Culture Audience: “Gezhi Town” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and action movies about the Second Sino-Japanese War.
“Gezhi Town” is a gripping action film about Chinese refugees of Nanjing who resettle in Gezhi Town, which is invaded by Japanese soldiers in 1944. The movie has some corny dialogue and starts off slow, but once the suspense starts, it’s intense. “Gezhi Town” is not meant to be entirely accurate, since the movie is based on fictional people, but it’s intended to depict some of the brutal horrors of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Directed by Kong Sheng and written by Lan Xiaolong, “Gezhi Town” takes place in China from 1937 to 1944. The movie was filmed in Yichang and surrounding areas in Hubei Province, China. The first half of the movie takes place from 1937 to 1944. The second half of the movie speeds up the timeline considerably and depicts the Gezhi Town invasion over the course of a 24-hour period in 1944.
The story in “Gezhi Town,” which is told in chronological order, begins by showing Chinese soldiers getting air bombed by Japanese military planes in a wooded area in Jinling Town, near Nanjing, China, in 1937. One of these soldiers survives the attack. His name is Kang Lingbao (played by Zhou Siyu), and he will play a crucial role in the story, even though he is not the story’s main protagonist.
Several months later, in 1938, Lingbao ends up on the Yangtze River, in a refugee boat with Chinese people who survived the Nanjing Massacre, which began in December 1937 and ended in March 1938. Also on the boat is the story’s main protagonist: a man in his early-to-mid 30s named Mo Dexian (played by Xiao Zhan), a good-natured mechanic who has the nickname Master Mo. Dexian (whose most recent job was working for the Jinling Manufacturing Company) is traveling with his feisty great-grandfather (played by Yang Xinming), who doesn’t have a first name in the movie and is just called Grandpa Mo.
Grandpa Mo can be cranky and has a habit of pretending to be deaf or asleep when he doesn’t want to deal with communicating with people. Another refugee on the boat is a confident and outspoken woman in her 20s named Xia Cheng (played by Zhou Yiran), who is one of the first people to see a land mine floating in the water. There’s a frantic race against time to steer the boat away from the land mine.
Another mini-crisis occurs when Grandpa Mo jumps off the boat, in a desperate (and delusional) attempt to swim back to Nanjing. Dexian is able to catch Grandpa Mo before Grandpa Mo lands in the water. With help from other people on the board, Dexian pulls Grandpa Mo to safety. Dexian and Cheng start a rapport with each other.
Once they arrive on land, the refugees make a long trek to find a new place to live. They have to be on the alert for Japanese military. They arrive in a rural area and settle down in a place that has abandoned buildings.
Two years later, Dexian and Cheng are now married and the parents of a baby son named Dengxian. Grandpa Mo lioves with them. Tragedy strikes again, when air bombers destroy where the refugees are living. Dexian, Cheng, Dengxian, Grandpa Mo and several others escape. Grandpa Mo says dejectedly, “We’re homeless again.”
By 1940, the refugees are on the move again, as Japanese have taken over the city of Yancheng. The refugees travel to Gezhi Town, which is just a river away from a Japanese military base. The refugees decide to take the risk of settling in Gezhi Town because it is fairly isolated and somewhat hidden by large fields that surround it.
For obvious reasons, the second half of the movie, which begins in 1944, is the more action-filled than the first half of the movie. Dengxian (played by Yan Zhidu) is now a playful and slightly mischievous boy, who likes to play “hide and seek” at inconvenient times that can an frustrate his loving parents. The residents of Gezhi Town, which has a mixture of military veterans (including Lingbao) and civilians, have been living peacefully until one day when that this tranquility is brutally interrupted.
Three Japanese soldiers, led by a vicious bully named Okawara (played by Yin Zheng), find Gezhi Town by accident. The soldiers think they have arrived in Ggun Town. Dexian is the first person whom they encounter. Okawara forces Dexian to do a series of tasks to test how much Dexian is wiling to follow orders. One of these tasks is to get a flagpole, so that Okawara can raise the Japanese flag.
This flagpole task sets off a series of events showing Dexian defying orders and leading the Gezhi Town residents’ battle to fight back against the Japanese invaders. The residents have a certain amount of weapons and ammunition. Although it might seem easy for the residents to win, because they far outnumber the soldiers, the Japanese soldiers are able to call for re-enforcement from other military personnel, including airplane pilots who can drop bombs.
There’s some dark comedy in the movie—particularly with Grandpa Mo, who makes fearless (some might say reckless) decisions that catch the Japanese fighters off guard because they don’t expect this old man to be angry and tough when fighting back in self-defense. Dexian also makes some unexpected wisecracking jokes during the battle scenes. There are also some harrowing moments involving Dengxian. All of the cast members give sufficiently effective performances.
“Gezhi Town” is the type of “underdog” war story that can be somewhat formulaic. But there’s a particular resonance to the story because it’s similar to what many real-life Chinese people experienced from Japanese military invasions during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It’s a movie that has riveting battle scenes but never loses sight of the characters’ humanity and what’s at stake for the refugees in this devastating war.
CMC Pictures released “Gezhi Town” in select U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2025. The movie was released in China on December 6, 2025.
