Gezhi Town

得闲谨制

China, 2025, colour/b&w, 1.85/1.5:1, 121 mins.

Director: Kong Sheng 孔笙.

Rating: 8/10.

A motley group of Chinese refugees hiding out in an abandoned village are suddenly faced with the realities of war in this character-driven WW2 comedy-drama.

STORY

Somewhere near Nanjing city, eastern China, 1937. Mo Dexian (Xiao Zhan), a fitter from the Jinling Manufacturing Bureau assigned to battlefield maintenance, has been attached for some time to a small anti-aircraft artillery unit which has never fired a shot at Japanese planes thanks to the hopeless leadership of its commander, Xiao Yan (Peng Yuchang). In Nov 1937 the Nationalist government announces the relocation of the capital to Chongqing, and a huge migration of government agencies, factories, schools and tens of millions of refugees takes place westwards into Sichian province. In Oct 1938 the cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan fall to the Japanese, and that same year Mo Dexian finds himself on a ferry on the Yangtze river heading west to Chongqing with his great-grandfather (Yang Xinming). On the same boat, by chance, is Xiao Yan with the few remaining members of his tiny artillery unit, asigned to help protect Chongqing. Mo Dexian helps to repair the anti-aircraft gun they have in order to blow up a mine floating towards the boat. At Yichang, Xiao Yan and his unit are ordered off the boat by a local deputy regimental commander (Zu Feng) in need of their gun. And at the last moment Mo Dexian decides to get off the boat after meeting a friendly young woman, Xia Cheng (Zhou Yiran), who lives there. Two years later, in Jun 1940, he’s still there and married to her, with a young son. So, too, is Xiao Yan and his small unit. When Mo Dexian’s home is bombed by the Japanese and the city falls, he and his family, including his great-grandfather, join a group of refugees that also includes Xiao Yan and his unit – as well as the same gun that Mo Dexian has refitted yet again. The refugees eventually settle in Gezhi township, an abandoned old settlement in a valley between some mountains. Three years later, the group of some 40 refugees and 14 soldiers have formed a community in Gezhi. Mo Dexian lives in the biggest house with his wife, son (now aged four) and 90-year-old great-grandfather, and pits his skills as a machine fitter to use in varying ways. On day, during a walk alone in the mountains overlooking the township, he comes across three Japanese army scouts. One wants to shoot him, but another, Ogawara (Yin Zheng), who speaks some Chinese and mistakes the name Gezhi 戈止 for Wu 武 (which almost looks like a combined version of Gezhi’s two Chinese characters), thinks the township is composed of just peaceable people, so Mo Dexian is spared. However, they accompany him back to town, where Ogawara asks him for a bamboo flagpole to place in the township’s square. Mo Dexian tries to discreetly convey to his family and others that the strangers are Japanese soldiers, not always successfully. He crafts a flagpole that will explode when the Japanese flag is raised. When it fails to work, and Mo Dexian punches Ogawara in the face, all hell breaks loose. Xiao Yan and his men happen to be out of town, bathing in the river; but one soldier left behind, Mei Defu (Gan Yunchen), finally goes to alert them.

REVIEW

The last of several movies in 2025 marking the 80th anni of the end of WW2, Gezhi Town 得闲谨制 maintains the high standard set by earlier releases that year, especially in having a personality of its own rather than being just a production-line flag-waver. Set in an abandoned village that throws together war refugees, a Chinese artillery unit and some nosy Japanese soldiers, it pits war and survival against everyday human fallibilities in a mixture of comedy and drama that remains gripping throughout, despite a two-hour running time. Local box office was a warm RMB421 million, a surprising figure for a relatively modest production.

After Dead to Rights 南京照相馆 (the Nanjing Massacre), Dongji Rescue 东极岛 (set on the East China coast), Survival 生还 (guerrillas in Northeast China) and Against All Odds 营救飞虎 (resistance in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong), the bar was already set high for 2025, especially by the first two in the group. However, unlike those films – all of which are based on actual events – Gezhi Town is basically fictional, despite referencing a real period during the Sino-Japanese War. The script, by war-movie specialist Lan Xiaolong 兰晓龙 (The Battle at Lake Changjin 长津湖, 2021; The Volunteers: To the War 志愿军    雄兵出击, 2023), was originally written 10 years ago, and Kong Sheng 孔笙, a Shandong-born d.p.-turned-TV director, was one of the main forces in getting it into production. Now in his mid-60s, Kong had directed numerous TVDs since 1996; Gezhi Town was only his second full-scale theatrical feature, following the earthquake drama Reviving of Beichuan 北川重生 (2011).

The film’s set-up is somewhat jerkily established but the opening 20 minutes do establish the mildly anarchic tone that pervades the whole film, starting with fake b&w documentary footage establishing the main character’s background. Mo Dexian is a fitter from the Jinling Manufacturing Bureau who, as part of his job of battlefield maintenance, is assigned to a small artillery unit with a big anti-aircraft gun that, thanks to its incompetent leader Xiao Yan, has never actually been fired at any enemy planes. In late 1937, during the mass evacution from Nanjing, Mo Dexian gets separated from the unit but later bumps into it on a ferry taking him and his great-grandfather along the Yangtze river to Chongqing, central China, where the Nationalist government has established a new capital away from the invading Japanese.

After saving the boat from a floating mine, Mo Dexian & Co. disembark in Yichang city, Hubei province, where Mo Dexian marries and settles down with a young woman he met on the boat. However, Japanese bombing in mid-1940 forces them all to evacuate the city and make for the mountains – from were they spot an abandoned township called Gezhi tucked away by a river in a valley. Here the group of 50 or so lead a tranquil life for three years until a trio of Japanese scouts happen upon the township by chance.

It’s here, about half-an-hour in, that the film really starts – though things like Mo Dexian’s practicality, his 90-year-old great-grandfather’s knowing dottiness, his wife’s down-to-earth attitudes, and Xiao Yan’s uselessness have all been established. As the Japanese soldiers check out the township, and Mo Dexian tries to showcase its peacefulness while clandestinely organising some resistance – Xiao Yan and his men are having a swim up-river – the brutal realities of war suddenly take over. However, the magic of Gezhi Town is that it doesn’t suddenly turn into a gung-ho war movie, with brave Chinese fighting nasty Japanese. There’s some heroism and some self-realisation; but mostly the film is a black comedy, almost a satire, on the whole WW2 genre, with Mo Dexian trying to organise a motley group of people who couldn’t resist an enemy even if they seriously wanted to.

Though there’s a fair amount of explosions as some passing Japanese military enter the township, the film is primarily driven not by action but by its characters, with Mo Dexian the only one with any guts or inventiveness and Xiao Yan at the opposite end of the spectrum with his incompetence and cowardice. But whatever people’s individual faults, they’re all drawn with warmth by Lan’s screenplay and engagingly played by a fine, unstarry cast. As in his previous lead roles (Jade Dynasty I 诛仙I, 2019; Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants 射雕英雄传    侠之大者, 2025), Mainland boybander Xiao Zhan 肖战, 34, manages to be both believable and ingenuous at the same time as the artillery fitter. As the self-centred Xiao Yan, the versatile Peng Yuchang 彭昱畅 makes a perfect co-star, balancing humour and seriousness, while dancer-turned-actress Zhou Yiran 周依然 avoids her usual kookiness as the wife and veteran character actor Yang Xinming 杨新鸣 is both amusing and touching as the nutty great-grandfather.

Juggling screen ratios and b&w with colour, d.p. Zeng Jian 曾剑 serves up a typically realistic look with a restrained colour palette that’s almost monochrome at times. The film was shot in and around Yichang, Hubei province, during Jul-Oct 2024. The film’s Chinese title is the four characters that Mo Dexian imprints on the exploding bamboo pole he prepares for the scouts, and means “Made with Care by Dexian”.

CREDITS

Presented by Daylight Entertainment (Hubei) Film & TV (CN), Tianjian Maoyan Weiying Culture Media (CN), China Film Group (CN). Produced by Daylight Entertainment (Hubei) Film & TV (CN).

Script: Lan Xiaolong. Photography: Zeng Jian. Editing: Lin Zhuangyu, Meng Peicong, Li Tianming. Editing advice: Xu Hongyu [Derek Hui]. Music: Guo Sida. Art direction: Wang Jing. Costume design: Yu Yi. Styling: Chen Tongxun. Sound: Wu Jingjing. Action: An Wande. Visual effects: Wang Lei. Executive direction: Li Jing, Xiong Bo.

Cast: Xiao Zhan (Mo Dexian), Peng Yuchang (Xiao Yan), Zhou Yiran (Xia Cheng), Yang Xinming (Mo Dexian’s great-grandfather), Aruna (Ma Guofu), Gan Yunchen (Mei Defu), Zhou Siyu (Kang Lingbao), Yan Zhidu (Mo Dengxian, Mo Dexian’s son), Yin Zheng (Ogawara), Zu Feng (deputy regimental commander at River Defence Army), Liao Fan (street peddler), Xu Juncong (captain), Gao Xuanming (Menya/Toothy), Xu Juncong (ferry captain), Jiang Qilin (Liu, carpenter).

Release: China, 6 Dec 2025.