In its dry and forceful way, it delivers the same message as Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains and Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land.

A wild ride that effortlessly combines devilish dark humor, slapstick comedy, extreme violence and bitter satire.

Shot in rich, shadowy black-and-white, Devils chronicles, with increasingly amused irony, the relationship between reluctant captors and befuddled captives.

Jiang Wen's sprawling study of life in an isolated Chinese village in the last days of the Japanese occupation provides a fascinating insight into a forgotten aspect of the Second World War.