The hull groans, a metallic shriek against the crushing pressure of the sea. Below deck, in the hellishly lit hold of a Japanese cargo ship, hundreds of British prisoners of war are trapped as water pours in. This is the catastrophic moment in 1942 that sets the stage for Dongji Rescue. The film recounts the sinking of the Lisbon Maru and the subsequent, extraordinary effort by Chinese fishermen to save the drowning men.
On the nearby Dongji Island, a community of seafarers lives under Japanese control, forbidden from taking their boats out to the water. They are grounded, effectively caged on their own shores. The film promises a spectacle of immense scale, a story of profound peril and courage rooted in a forgotten act of wartime humanism.
Fictionalizing a Heroic Act
The narrative centers on two brothers, the rebellious fisherman Abi and the younger Adang, who are introduced as descendants of pirates, outsiders among the stoic island community. This distinction immediately signals the film’s focus on exceptional individuals over the collective.
While the island’s inhabitants have been reduced to “turtles” by the Japanese fishing ban, simmering with a quiet desperation, Abi plots his escape to Shanghai with his lover, Ahua. Their personal desires are violently interrupted by world events. The plot ignites with the discovery of a lone British POW washed ashore, an act of mercy that triggers a swift and brutal response from the occupying Japanese forces.
To ensure the remaining prisoners on the sinking ship are left to their fate, the Japanese commander takes Adang and other villagers hostage, threatening a massacre. It is in a desperate attempt to free his brother that Abi discovers the hundreds of malnourished men confined within the ship’s waterlogged coffin. This entire dramatic framework, from the direct occupation of the island to the hostage crisis, is a cinematic invention.
The screenplay makes a deliberate choice to reshape a historical act of spontaneous compassion into a conventional resistance and revenge story, complete with lashings of gore and rampant savagery. While the action is relentless, this structural change leaves the plot feeling shallow, moving through familiar beats without affording deep characterization to anyone beyond its hero.
A Study in Transformation
The film is anchored by Zhu Yilong’s portrayal of Abi, a performance of remarkable physical commitment and emotional depth. Recalling his psychologically fractured turns in films like Only the River Flows, Zhu here builds a different kind of man, one forged by the sea. He charts Abi’s evolution from a self-interested individual planning his escape to a hardened savior, a warrior awakened by circumstance.
His physical preparation is evident in every frame; he trained to achieve a lean, powerful fisherman’s physique and performed his own breathtaking underwater stunts. This commitment lends a visceral authenticity to the action, where every gasp for air feels earned and viscerally real.
His genius is in his subtlety, using micro-expressions and tense body language to convey a storm of internal states. In his eyes, we see a primal survival instinct at war with a burning rage, all layered over a deep, protective compassion for his kin.
He refuses to play Abi as a simple hero or a nationalist symbol. Instead, the performance presents a profoundly relatable man whose courage is ignited by his love for his brother. This choice grounds the sometimes-overblown spectacle in a powerful, undeniable human connection, making the extraordinary stakes feel personal.
Spectacle and Craftsmanship
Dongji Rescue is a magnificent production, and its eighty million dollar budget is visible in every meticulously composed frame. The technical craftsmanship is superb, creating an immersive and often harrowing experience. The extensive underwater sequences, shot with IMAX cameras, are both visually gorgeous and deeply suspenseful.
Light filters through the murky depths, illuminating swirling debris and the desperate faces of the trapped, creating moments of terrifying beauty. The major set pieces are triumphs of staging and logistical complexity, especially the final rescue. The sequence builds to a kinetic crescendo as the sinking ship creates a massive whirlpool, a thrilling blend of physical and digital effects that pulls the audience into the vortex.
The choreography of small fishing boats battling the churning water is stunning. Painstaking recreations of the island village and the hellish cargo ship provide a sense of immense scale. The sound design is equally impressive, layering the splintering of wood, the roar of the waves, and Atli Örvarsson’s thunderous musical score into a symphony of chaos. First-rate editing maintains spatial clarity amid the pandemonium, ensuring the escalating action is always coherent.
Individualism Versus Collective Action
The true story of the Lisbon Maru is a powerful example of collective civilian action, of a community spontaneously rising to uphold a simple code: “Those in peril at sea must be saved.” The film, however, reframes these events through the lens of a traditional hero’s journey, transforming Abi into a nautical superman.
By focusing on the near-herculean efforts of this outsider, the screenplay renders the fishing community passive, even cowardly, for much of the running time. They are stirred to action by his singular example, not by their own shared code or inherent decency. This individualistic focus, combined with the fictionalized Japanese atrocities that paint the enemy in the broadest, most savage strokes, diminishes the pure humanism of the original story.
The flagrant invention turns a tribute to borderless compassion into another full-blooded revenge story. In its effort to stoke audience fervor with a familiar action-hero narrative, the film places itself squarely within China’s typical war-movie output. It chooses the well-worn path of spectacle over the more challenging terrain of historical truth, and in doing so, loses the singular, quiet power of the event it seeks to honor.
Dongji Rescue is a Chinese historical film that tells the story of Chinese fishermen rescuing over 300 British prisoners of war from a sinking Japanese ship during World War II. The film premiered in China on August 8, 2025, and was released in select US theaters on August 22, 2025. It is available to stream on platforms like Netflix and Apple TV.
Full Credits
Directors: Guan Hu, Fei Zhenxiang
Writers: Chen Shu, Dong Runnian, Zhang Ji, Fei Zhenxiang, Zhou Chen
Producers: Liang Jing
Executive Producers: Guan Hu
Cast: Zhu Yilong, Wu Lei, Ni Ni, Yang Haoyu, Ni Dahong, Chen Minghao, William Franklyn-Miller, Kevin Lee
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Gao Weizhe
Editors: Yang Hongyu, Li Weiwen
Composer: Atli Örvarsson
The Review
Dongji Rescue
Dongji Rescue is a stunning technical achievement, a war epic that delivers breathtaking spectacle and features a commanding lead performance from Zhu Yilong. Its visual and visceral power is undeniable. The film's flagrant disregard for historical fact, reshaping a story of collective humanism into a standard-issue revenge plot, leaves it feeling emotionally hollow. It’s a magnificent vessel with a compromised core.
PROS
- Magnificent production values and technical craftsmanship.
- Visually stunning underwater cinematography.
- A powerful and physically committed lead performance by Zhu Yilong.
- Thrilling and expertly choreographed action sequences.
CONS
- Significant deviations from the historical event.
- A shallow screenplay that favors spectacle over character depth.
- Undermines the story's theme of collective action by focusing on a single hero.
- Relies on generic revenge and resistance tropes.
