Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

John Woo presents this action-filled slice of early 20th Century Taiwanese history in which an indigenous rebellion is met with a stern military response from Japanese colonial forces.

Between 1895 and 1945, Taiwan's Mount Chilai was a Japanese colony inhabited not only by a Han Chinese immigrant majority but also by remnants of the aboriginal tribes who first settled the land. In 1930 Mouna Rudo (Lin Ching-Tai), the leader of the Seediq tribe, forged a coalition with other Seediq tribal leaders and plotted a violent uprising against their colonial masters. But the Japanese soon sent in their army to crush the rebellion, using aircraft and poison gas in a military counter-attack that came to be known as the Wushe Incident.

Less