Devils on the Doorstep

During the Japanese occupation of China, two captives are left in the care of a peasant named Ma Dasan in a small village. He is told they will be collected before the New Year and is pressured into holding them until then. One prisoner is an uncompromising Japanese soldier, the other a frightened translator, and the villagers must decide how to keep them fed, hidden and under control. What begins as an obligation placed on ordinary people gradually reshapes the life of the community.

Jiang Wen directed and stars as Ma Dasan, working from a screenplay he wrote with Haiying Li and Xing Liu. The film follows his 1994 debut In the Heat of the Sun and precedes The Sun Also Rises (2007), Let the Bullets Fly (2010), Gone with the Bullets (2014), Hidden Man (2018) and, later, You are the Best (2025). The cast, 42 credited performers in all, includes Jiang Hongbo, Teruyuki Kagawa, David Wu and Yuan Ding.

Released in 2001, the 139-minute drama was a Chinese production. Audiences rate it highly: 8.2 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 9,300 votes, and the same average on TMDB, where the vote count is much smaller. On the critics' side, the rating stands at 7.3 out of 10 from 11 reviews, so viewers rate it noticeably higher than critics do.