Roaring Across the Horizon

Coinciding nicely with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, director Chen Guoxing's Heng Kong Chu Shi ("Roaring Across the Horizon") chronicles China's entry into the nuclear arms race of the 1950s and '60s, and offers a nationalistic look at the attitude towards foreign influences. Heng Kong Chu Shi focuses on the stories of two individuals--Lu Guangda (Li Youbin), a physicist in charge of a group of scientists developing a nuclear bomb, and General Feng Shi (Li Xuejian), whose job is finding an appropriate nuclear testing site. While working on the bomb, Lu (Youbin) is forced to be separated from his wife, and eventually forms a unique relationship with Feng (Xuejian). The title itself comes from Chinese poet Mao Zedong), and the movie implies that China would not have started a nuclear program had they not been concerned about the anti-communist threat coming from America and other countries.