City of War: The Story of John Rabe

Florian Gallenberger's stately TV-movie-ish feature attempts to confer proto-Schindler status on John Rabe, another "good German" of the Nazi era. Decently played by Ulrich Tukur (the feudal baron in Haneke's White Ribbon) Rabe was an employee of the German industrial giant Siemens in the Chinese city of Nanking and in 1937 was an intimate, appalled witness to the invasion and civilian massacre by the Japanese, Germany's axis partners. He set up a civilian "safe zone", which though trampled on by the invader, still made him a hero to the Chinese. It's an expensively mounted production with an impressive international cast and some earnest attempts to convey the brutality. But everything seems glossy and muted, like a romantic novel without romance and Rabe's tragically forlorn and unappreciated existence after the war is not shown.