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Assembly director Xiaogang Feng returns with Aftershock, a fictional story told with the backdrop of the real life earthquake that occurred in 1976 near Tangshan in Hebei, People's Republic of China -- an earthquake that is said to be the largest of the 20th century in terms of death toll.
This is a pretty solid drama with some beautiful imagery and moving story-telling and character development. The earthquake in the beginning was pulled off quite well with the CGI they used and you actually feel the agony the poor families are faced with during and after the quake. The flick mostly just depicts the siblings as they grow up apart and without realizing that either are still alive, moving on with their lives.The film starts off with a young family with son & daughter twin siblings that get stuck underneath rubble after their building collapses during the earthquake. The mother (father now deceased) has to choose whether to save her son or daughter, as due to the rubble and position that the two are in will cause one of them to die if they attempt to save the other. Faced with an impossible decision the mother (assuming the daughter is either dead or dying) chooses the son...
Shortly after the mother leaves with her now one-armed son, we skip ahead a bit and see that the daughter has somehow been removed from underneath the rubble and is alive and conscious. She's taken away by military aid, thus starting the beginning of the film's 3-decade journey before the family is once again reunited.
Naturally they reunite by the end due to unforeseen, but understanding circumstances, although the reunion didn't seem as emotional as you'd expect it to be. Never-the-less, the movie is still a pretty top-notch crises drama and should pull at heart strings during key moments. Definitely worth a check, especially if you're familiar with the director's eye with beautiful imagery from his previous effort, Assembly.
A high 7/10
http://imdb.com/title/tt1393746/