At last, a realistic epic - maybe even a blockbuster - about China's civil war. The heroes are quite human and some are even afraid to die. Director Feng Xiaogang remarked, "The stuff we saw in the past was a bit fake."

This film is China's answer to Saving Private Ryan. Formerly an urban comedy director, Feng Xiaogang's (A World Without Thieves, Big Shot's Funeral) 80-million-yuan (US$11 million) movie Ji Jie Hao (Assembly) is the country's first commercial war epic covering China's civil war.

It's tough and realistic, portraying some Chinese soldiers who are afraid of death - not like the perfect cardboard heroes of many films. The movie aims to be entertaining, patriotic, and a box-office success.

"The stuff we saw in the past was a bit fake. We have to overcome this problem. It must be realistic," Feng said recently.

The film will be released by the end of the year.

The famed director says Assembly is a significant step away from other Chinese mainstream movies of that genre, in which the good guys are mostly too good and too noble to be true.

Shot in northeast China, Assembly revolves around the heroics of a People's Liberation Army unit during the civil war in the 1940s, but Feng said the movie also shows soldiers' human feelings and fears in battle.

In one scene, a soldier urges his superior officer to order a retreat when the unit comes under heavy fire, despite orders from higher up to stay put.

"It's understandable if people become weak and afraid in the face of war. It's a normal condition. To not fear death is abnormal," Feng said while in Hong Kong to promote the movie.

The director also said he avoided demonizing the enemy. His focus wasn't on the enemy, he explained. Feng tried not to dwell tediously on "the meaning of sacrifice" in this film that features realistic, bloody gun battles.

The movie's upbeat ending - a posthumous recognition of fallen soldiers in the unit – "...was partly to please audiences and partly to please Chinese censors," Feng explained. Not surprisingly, he is one of China's most successful commercial directors.

He said that he watched English-language war films, including Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, along with The Thin Red Line, Enemy at the Gates and John Woo's Windtalkers.

While Feng doesn't think he matched the technical sophistication of Saving Private Ryan, he does believe that the quality of the war scenes in his movie are better than those in Eastwood's.

"We were figuring things out as we were shooting," he commented.

Feng added that he hopes the movie will be shown in Taiwan, although he hasn't yet heard of any Taiwanese distributors expressing interest in buying the film.

Backed by Huayi Brothers, one of China's leading private film companies, Assembly premiered at the recent Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea.

(Shanghai Daily October 14, 2007)