If you want to see War and Peace fought by Chinese and Americans, watch Sand Pebbles on The History Channel. Directed by Robert Wise, who also did West Side Story and The Sound of Music, and filmed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, it was set on the gunboat San Pablo, which protected American interests in China while forces gathered to expel the Western powers that dominated China. As the film alternated between downtrodden Chinese heathen savages and racist American jerks, I was split between cheering and booing both the Chinese and the American sailors.
The film came out in 1966 as the Americans were ramping up involvement in Vietnam. The current mess in Iraq and Afghanistan came to mind when American sailors marching back through the city are turned back by nationalist troops and pelted with garbage by angry mobs. As seen in movies about General Custer and in Blackhawk Down, there is a limit to what a few servicemen can do when surrounded by many people who want to hurt them.
The troubled hero, Jake Holman, is played by Steve (“Lightning”) McQueen. It seems for him that no good deed goes unpunished. He finds the Navy ship is actually run by Chinese coolies who do the dirty work for peanuts, but insists on working on the engines himself. When Holman tries to fix a broken part, the Chinese engineer is crushed in the giant piston. Po-Han, played by a young Mako, is trained as a replacement. Holman sticks up for Po-Han against a bully and sets him up to win in a prize fight against his tormentor.
Frenchy uses the money to pay for the freedom of a Chinese hooker (why does every movie about Westerners in Asia revolve around the oldest profession?) played by Thailand-born Eurasian Emmanuelle Arsan, who was infamous for her novel about exploring her sexuality in France (there’s another book to look into). James Hong, who seems to be cast in every American movie with a Chinese part, is the pimp who loses his bet. But Frenchy dies of cold in bed with her, and her former associates find and kill her. Po-Han gets kidnapped and tortured by a Communist mob, and begs McQueen to shoot him, which he does.
More Americans get shot as the gunboat boarding party wipes out a blockade of junks manned by the very boys educated at the missionary school. When they arrive to rescue the missionary, he decides to stick by the Chinese, who then shoot him anyway. The skipper and McQueen get shot holding off the bad guys: “I was home. What happened? What the hell happened?”
The remaining sailors and Candace Bergen slip away, and the boat steams away to freedom. Of course, after that, China descends into a living hell, embraces Communism, endures famine and political repression, and by the 21st century, becomes a producer of Thomas the Tank Engine and Dora recalls and killer tires.