Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre crosses the line between accurately & unflinchingly portraying atrocities Japanese inflicted upon the Chinese during WWII to using a historical event as a rationale for elevating torture porn. Though it was made in 1995, the film feels dated and uses documentary footage and photographs to elevate clumsy exploitative scenes. Simply trying to recreate the past doesn’t mean that you have done so successfully, especially if few characters resemble a real person. The characters are two dimensional from the Japanese characters who are solely there to utter elaborate prose about their plans to kill & rape everyone to the Chinese characters who are solely there to ask questions that the audience is thinking. There are about five minutes of interesting character development, a great story arc about how Chinese Buddhists wonder how Japanese Buddhists could kill each other and a brief nod to Chinese Muslims fearlessly standing up to the Japanese soldiers, but not enough to make a good movie. For once, I was amused that the Western characters were stereotypical token caricatures. Skip it & see City of Life & Death.