Here’s the domestic trailer for The Flowers of War, a movie directed by Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) and starring Christian Bale pretending to be a priest to save Chinese girls and prostitutes from the invading Japanese army during the “Nanjing Massacre” in 1937. The movie will contain 40% English and 60% Mandarin dialogue. It’s the most expensive film in Chinese history, with a budget of $90 million.

Synopsis – Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, Hero, House of the Flying Daggers) tells an epic story of love and sacrifice in THE FLOWERS OF WAR, starring Christian Bale and introducing Ni Ni.

The film, set during the Japanese invasion of China, is told from a young girl’s point of view, not as a history lesson, but as an intimate, elemental and paradoxically universal celebration of the human spirit. Bale stars as a dissolute Westerner who seeks refuge in a Catholic Church. There he meets a beautiful Chinese courtesan who helps him rescue a group of schoolgirls from a terrible fate at the hands of the Japanese.

The film represents one of China’s most ambitious productions, involving the recreation of 1937 Nanking built from scratch over a one-year period and the collaboration of one of Hollywood’s most sought after leading men (Christian Bale).
The Flowers of War will be released in theaters in New York on December 21, 2011; Los Angeles and San Francisco on December 23, 2011; and late Winter in 2012 nationwide