Devils on the Doorstep was written, directed and stared by Jiang Wen. As director, it's Jiang Wen' s second film and I think it's the greatest Chinese film in recent years, though forbidden by Chinese government. .
The plot is very simple. During the war of Anti-Japanese, two Japanese captives, one Japanese officer the other Chinese translator, are dumped into a remote Chinese village by a mysterious man. Chinese peasant Dasan are asked to keep them for five days until the man come again, but five days later nobody come. So the whole village gets into an awkward situation: they cannot find Chinese military to send the two captives, they dare not report them to Japanese occupier, dare not kill them. So they have to keep them, to avoid the Japanese captive's suicide, avoid them being found by Japanese army. They even feed them with their best food. At last they decide to send them to Japanese occupier to get rid of the burden and get the reward. At the end, Japanese kill the whole village and then Chinese government kills Dasan. .
The whole film is presented with Rabelaisian humor. Jiang wen shows his audience a tragedy by series comedies. No film ever give such a deeply animadversion to the national character of Chinese as Devils on the Doorstep. Jiang Wen exposed the servile nationality of Chinese with his unique way of black humor. For example, the mysterious man who leaves the captives threatens Dasan with a gun, said: "If you lose them, I will kill you."" And Dasan tells the whole village immediately: "If we lose them, he will kill the whole village."" So it is not his own but everyone's duty. The Japanese officer refused to eat; those peasants induce him with incredible patience even greasiness to make the two captives eat their foods, which were very scarce in their poor area. Nobody wants to take the responsibility of killing the aggressor and the betrayer. They just shift the duty on each other until they hand in them to Japanese army.
