The media, fearing that the world would not be chaotic, immediately reported on Zhang Ran's counterattack under the title of "Zhang Ran's bombardment of the film critics' circles", in an attempt to lead the war to the entire critics' circles, and they seemed to have really succeeded.

Zhang Ran's article not only angered the critics who criticized "Angel of Justice", but also "angered" many film critics who had not yet watched "Angel of Justice".

Henry Fitzherbert, a film critic at the Daily Express, said that "Zhang Ran, who is poor in donkey skills, has no way to save the film's bad reputation except to abuse the critics"; James Fournier, a film critic at the Boston Herald, ridiculed that "Zhang Ran is a child who needs his mother's praise and does not grow up, but the critic is not his mother"; Kelly Vance of the East Bay Express rebuked Zhang Ran for hyping "Angel of Justice" has a dismal reputation, and in order to save the box office that is about to fall, Zhang Ran can only hype wildly!"......

It's not uncommon for film critics and directors to fight, but it's often between a director and a critic, and a large-scale war of scolding like this hasn't happened for years. Whether it is the media, people in the film industry, or even ordinary audiences, they are watching the follow-up development of things with anticipation.

That's when Zhang Ran's die-hard supporter, David Podwell, stepped up. In an open letter published in Variety, Podwell lashed out at Shelly Kraser's article on Empire attacking Angels of Justice.

In his open letter, Baldwell wrote: "Shelly Kraser's attack on Zhang Ran's Angel of Justice in Empire is the most misread I have seen, and the last time I saw such a misreading was someone saying that Takashi Miike's 'Visitor' Q was a support for the nuclear family. Given that the Japanese right is now trying to prevent Zhang Ran's film from being released in Toei in any way, and is planning to undermine the film's release plans in North America and beyond, I would like to offer a completely different point of view. I don't want to dwell on Shelly's faulty logic and clichés, I just want to save Angel of Justice from his own misreadings, distractions, and insinuations.

Shelly mentioned previous films about the Nanjing Massacre, but did not point out how "Angels of Justice" were different. With the exception of the ironic scenes about Nanking in Fang Lingzheng's brilliant "Yoshiko Kawashima," the other films I've seen about the Nanjing Massacre are terrible: clumsy tear-jerkers, trapped in the identity of the victim — you name it. "Angel of Justice" jumped out of the trap of these films, and even went further than all Holocaust films. Zhang Ran's performance in the film is not the Holocaust itself, not the humanity in the Holocaust, nor the anti-war theme that has been said countless times, he wants to show his attitude towards history and truth, but this does not mean that he is avoiding humanity and anti-war.

Shelly claims that Angel of Justice combines "Spielberg-style cult of war" with "the Chinese martyr film tradition." The three protagonists of "Angel of Justice" are very different from Spielberg, as well as the traditional heroes of Chinese cinema, who consciously or unconsciously defend the truth of history. The Nanjing Massacre took place in 1937, and Zhang Chunru published the book "The Nanjing Massacre" in 1997, exactly 60 years ago. Sixty years represents a cycle in China, and it's important to understand that. During these sixty years, the Dongying government tried to cover up the truth about the Nanjing Massacre, and they almost succeeded. But on the 60th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, Zhang Chunru smashed this plot through his book. Zhang Chunru said that forgetting history is equivalent to the second massacre, the massacre of history. What "Angel of Justice" is really about is that Zhang Chunru and their efforts prevented the recurrence of history and prevented the slaughter of history by the Dongying people. Zhang Ran once said that the faith of the Chinese is history. This is the fundamental reason why Zhang Ran made this movie, not the so-called political propaganda.

Shelly accused "Angel of Justice" as a sneaky soft propaganda film that somehow promoted the attitudes or policies of a particular faction within the party. If this is the case, how could Zhang Ran spend more than a decade polishing the script? Where is the evidence for "Angel of Justice" to sing and harmonize with politicians of any faction? Since "Angel of Justice" is accused of political propaganda, I think Shelly should tell us what the evidence is.

Shelley argues that Angel of Justice has the confidence to use contemporary cinematic techniques and produce fluid images, but criticizes these qualities because the film does not have the introspective qualities of Terrence Malik's The Thin Red Line. He said that "Angel of Justice" is the Chinese version of "Schindler's List", and that the Nanjing Massacre is forcibly portrayed as a Chinese version of the Jewish genocide with symbolic redemption. Shelley doesn't say it explicitly, but he seems to think that "Spielberg" and "Hollywood" are synonymous, and Zhang's fault is to follow in Spielberg's footsteps and shock the audience into a completely passive state, thus passing ideology as history. I don't want to dwell on this, but I have to say it's. This fully shows that Shelly does not understand the history of film, and is ignorant of the language of film.

In fact, Angel of Justice avoids pretentious preaching, and the structure is fluid, with the focus intermittently shifting between the three protagonists and the two planes, while constantly returning to the big picture, making this film completely different from any Hollywood film. Angel of Justice skillfully presents a series of gains and losses, and tries to give the characters psychological depth throughout. The overall style of the film is cold and restrained, with a strong documentary style, reminiscent of Italian neorealist films, while the repetitive, rhythmic montage presents the faces of indifferent onlookers, reminiscent of the Soviet montage experiments of the 20s rather than any American film, even pro-communist films such as Lewis Milesstone's "Star of the North." Leave Shelly with a lesson: take a look at Don Seagal's "Assault on Devil's Ridge" and the director's cut of Samuel Fuller's "Iron Camp" before talking about how Hollywood is recreating war.

Shelly understands neither film history, nor film techniques, let alone Zhang Ran, and his attack on "Angel of Justice" is entirely based on subjective speculation. When attacking Zhang Ran's film, Shelly happened to make the mistake he criticized, full of political awareness, as Zhang Ran said, it was not a film review, more like a political review. My point is that Angel of Justice should be upheld in the face of the stupid and dishonest attacks of these critics. ”

In "The Seven Deadly Sins of Film Critics", Zhang Ran pointed out that film critics do not understand movies and do not understand the language of films, and this article by Bodwell further proves Zhang Chunru's point that Shelly Kratzer understands neither film history nor film language, and that his criticism of "Angel of Justice" is entirely political, rather than starting from the film itself.

Bordwell is an expert in film theory, and his understanding of film, his mastery of film knowledge and theory is beyond the reach of Shelly Kreeser;

Shelly Kratzer and other critics knew this, and they all pretended not to see the Bordwell's article, and continued to lash out at Zhang Ran, continuing to attack "Angel of Justice" as a bad movie.

However, Zhang Ran soon fired again, publishing an article on Fly titled "Uncovering the Skin of Political Film Critics", and indicated that the media was welcome to reprint it. Zhang Ran wrote in the article: "Bordwell is right, Shelly Kreizer They said that Angel of Justice is a political propaganda film and should be evidenced, and in the same way, I said that Shelly Kreizer's comments are political comments and must be proven."

Of course, I have proof, because Shelly Kreizer's film reviews have a clear political leaning, as long as it shows the atrocities of the Japanese army in World War II, they will be labeled as political propaganda films, and anti-Japanese and so on, but the same type of film showing the atrocities of Germany will not be like this, they will even applaud the film. This tendency is so obvious that I have to think that their film reviews are political comments, because I have no evidence that they took money from the Dongying people.

I selected 10 films from a wide range of World War II films, including four films showing the atrocities of the Japanese army, "Angel of Justice", "Nanjing", "Indestructible", and "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling", three films that showed the U.S. military and the Japanese army fighting, but did not involve the atrocities of the Japanese army, "The Thin Red Line", "The Banner of the Fathers", and "Hacksaw Ridge", three films involving the German army and Germany, "Schindler's List", "Life is Beautiful", and "Inglourious Basterds"; Let's take a look at Shelly Kraser's different attitudes towards these films. ”

At the end of the article, a table is made comparing and analyzing ten films led by "Angel of Justice" and five film critics, led by Shelly Kraser. Through these listed data, almost everyone can see that Shelly Kraser, like Zhang Ran, has an obvious bias in their evaluation of the movie.

Take Shelly Kreeser as an example, he gave bad reviews to all four films, "Angel of Justice", "Nanjing Nanjing", "Indestructible", and "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling", and the reason for his bad reviews is almost the same, saying that the movie scandalizes the Japanese army and does not go beyond the stereotypical morality of black and white. "Angels of Justice", "Nanjing, Nanjing" and "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling" are all anti-Japanese films and political propaganda films in Shelly Kraser's review. "Unbreakable" is an American film, and Shelly Kratzer can't say it's propaganda, but he nevertheless stressed that the film "could spur anti-Japanese sentiment in China."

On the contrary, Shelly Kratzer praised all three films, "The Thin Red Line", "Flags of the Fathers", and "Hacksaw Ridge", in fact, there are no good people in these three movies, especially "Hacksaw Ridge", the soldiers in the movie are like orcs who are not afraid of death, but he did not criticize the movie for scandalizing the Japanese army. Films such as Schindler's List also had no good people for the German soldiers, and Shelly Kreizer also said that these films scandalized the German army.

The other four critics were in the same situation as Shelly Kreeser, who labeled the four films, including "Angel of Justice," with political labels that demonized the Japanese army, while some of the other films were more extreme in their portrayal of the Japanese and German forces, but because they did not show the atrocities of the Japanese army, the four critics did not mention the issue.

Zhang Ran's fans and supporters applauded after reading the article, the media was in an uproar, and many filmmakers who had long been unhappy with the critics were rejoicing, believing that Shelly Kreizer was finished!

But it wasn't Zhang Ran's article that really sentenced film critics such as Shelly Kraeser to death, but a report in the British Sunday Times. The report revealed the astonishing news that the embassy in the United States has long provided funds to some film critics to help Dongying maintain its image in film and television productions.