Nanking
THINKFilm | Release Date: December 12, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The Hollywood ReporterJames Greenberg
Not only is the film a powerful historical record and a warning for future generations, it is an essential reminder to people, including many in Japan today, who might deny that this massacre ever occurred. As such, Nanking honors the highest calling of documentary filmmaking. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Schickel
I have rarely, if ever, seen a documentary reconstruction of a historical event that is so rich in firsthand (and well-preserved) photographic material. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
What Guttentag and Sturman gain in dramatic immediacy, however, they lose when it comes to historical context, and the chance to offer insight into why such things occur in the first place -- and continue to happen today -- is lost. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Thorough and sadly engrossing documentary. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, does justice to this tragedy even though it makes the mistake of mixing the testimony of actual participants with staged readings from actors subbing for real people. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
In clothes reminiscent of the '30s (but not, strictly speaking, costumes) the performers read dramatically from the letters, journals and diaries of the Western missionaries and diplomats; they "perform" but in the limited sense, using only face and voice to communicate with the camera. And you have to say: Wow. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin Chang
The horrific 1937-38 massacre of more than 200,000 Chinese during the early days of the Japanese occupation gets a polished presentation in Nanking. Read full review
80
The New York TimesStephen Holden
What makes the film bearable is the knowledge that a few people did what they could to hold the line against humanity’s worst instincts. The voices in Nanking speak for the persistence of good in times and places where a moral crevice opens to reveal a vision of hell on earth. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Nanking both calls attention to a horrifying set of war crimes that remains little known in the West and crafts an impossible-but-true hymn to the power of the individual conscience. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Everyone knows about the Holocaust, but few today have heard about what was infamous as the Rape of Nanking, when 200,000 residents of what was then China's capital were massacred by invading Japanese troops. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
It is the devastating testimony from survivors themselves that leaves the most indelible impression. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter Addiego
The stories are harrowing, and because they are delivered by living, breathing witnesses, they move us in deep ways that the archival footage, for all its horror, cannot. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneSid Smith
Whatever the numbers, testimony cited in Nanking portrays the episode as a horrifying chapter in man’s renowned inhumanity to man. Read full review
70
Film ThreatJeremy Mathews
While at times the film begins to feel like a laundry list of bad deeds, the first-person accounts pack a wallop. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMichelle Orange
While the footage and survivors of Nanking are gray and decaying, its unbearable story is not something out of the past; the evil and ignorance it describes are alive and thriving today. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Nanking, a carefully nonpunitive documentary of remembrance, is emotionally draining, as it should be, but it's also overstructured, as it needn't be; the actors are intrusive in a story that isn't theirs. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
A handsome documentary on a brutal subject. Read full review
60
Time OutMark Holcomb
The first-person recollections of Nanking’s survivors are as uncommonly wrenching as their captors were brutally thorough. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Individually these elements are powerful, but they fail to mesh or collide with one another in any satisfying way, and the movie's score only exacerbates the problem. Read full review
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