City of War: The Story of John Rabe (15)

Honourable but stodgy and overlong tribute to the eponymous industrialist who earned himself the epithet "the Schindler of China" for his heroism during the infamous Nanking massacre of December 1937.

Ulrich Tukur plays German factory manager (and card-carrying Nazi) John Rabe who, about to quit a city under siege from the Japanese Imperial Army, instead forms an international safety zone and manages to save tens of thousands of lives. Anne Consigny, Steve Buscemi and Daniel Bruhl play colleagues in this desperate consortium, for much of the time wincing at the senseless atrocities (murder, rape), which the Japanese visit upon the population. It has the lumbering pace and self-importance of epic, though as a testament to courage unrewarded (Rabe died, forgotten, in 1950) this is long overdue.