General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Bravest (烈火英雄)

The Bravest (烈火英雄, also known as 烈火·英雄) is a 2019 Chinese disaster drama film directed by Chen Guohui (陈国辉) and starring Huang Xiaoming, Du Jiang, Tan Zhuo, Yang Zi, and Ou Hao, depicting firefighters battling a catastrophic oil-tank fire at a coastal port¹. It was adapted from the long-form reportage The Deepest Water Is Tears (《最深的水是泪水》) by the writer Bao'erji Yuanye (鲍尔吉·原野) and is based on the real Dalian "7·16" oil pipeline explosion and fire². Released in mainland China on 1 August 2019, the film earned a cumulative box office of 1.689 billion yuan and was later named an Outstanding Feature Film at the 18th Huabiao Awards²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Release	1 August 2019 (mainland China); 120 minutes; drama/disaster; Mandarin¹
Director and writers	Directed by Chen Guohui; screenplay by Yu Yonggan and Chen Guohui; produced by Liu Weiqiang¹^•⁴
Cast	Huang Xiaoming, Du Jiang, Tan Zhuo, Yang Zi, Ou Hao¹
Source material	Adapted from Bao'erji Yuanye's 2013 reportage The Deepest Water Is Tears; based on the Dalian "7·16" oil fire²
Box office	1.689 billion yuan cumulative, ranked 18th on the domestic film box office chart (Maoyan data)²
Awards	Outstanding Feature Film, 18th China Huabiao Awards (2023)³
Legal dispute	November 2019 copyright infringement suit by a novelist seeking 3 million yuan against the film's eight production and distribution companies²

Spoilers

Story and real-event basis

The film's plot follows a pipeline explosion at the harbor of the fictional city of Binhai, where crude oil flows out of the A01 storage tank into a sea of fire and successive explosions that threaten the city, the province, and even neighboring countries; as panicked residents flee, fire trucks drive into the flames¹.

The prototype event was the fire that broke out at Dalian on 16 July 2010, after an explosion on an oil pipeline in the Dalian bonded zone; the producers describe the film as an artistic and dramatized adaptation made on the basis of respecting the facts⁵. One press account dates the "Dalian 7·16 fire" to 2011 rather than 2010⁴.

Real details in the script. According to the Beijing film bureau's account, most of the dialogue and plot points came from interviews with firefighters. The line spoken by Du Jiang's character Ma Weiguo in the fire, "Firefighting sooner or later means sacrifice," has a real source: the prototype commander, who appears in the film's end-credits footage, shouted at the scene that the squadron leader's death was unwilling but that firefighting sooner or later means sacrifice and his men must carry on the leader's work⁵. The death of Ou Hao's character Xu Xiaobin, entangled and unable to free himself, also had a real basis: the real firefighter was overcome in water contaminated by oil and drowned, and his rescuers could not pull him out because the oil was too slippery⁵. The manual valve-closing sequence at the center of the film also had a real prototype: CCTV's Face to Face program interviewed Sang Wu, the firefighter on whom Huang Xiaoming's character Jiang Liwei was based⁶. Chen Guohui said in an interview that the prototype of Huang Xiaoming's character survived but was badly injured, unable to hold chopsticks or make facial expressions because the flesh had been burned⁷.

Production

Chen Guohui, previously known for romantic comedies such as The Wedding Battle, insisted the film not be a special-effects picture and demanded real fire⁴. The production built a 1:1 set of the port oil-tank farm, hired a specialist team, and spent half a year studying how to set and control fires on camera, including flowing fire, fire whirls, and background fire; most of the fires on set were switch-controlled so they could be shut off when actors were in danger⁴. The opening hotpot restaurant explosion was a real demolition of a three-story set built in Hebei at a cost of several million yuan, using 50 explosion points filmed with 12 cameras; the oil-tank explosion scene used 60 explosion points⁴. The studio reportedly spent six to seven million yuan on fire suits for the crew⁴. For the port fire, the crew built an oil-tank exterior set the size of a soccer field and used 2,890 fifty-kilogram fireproof gas canisters, 3,000 kilograms of burning liquid, 2,000 sheets of environmentally friendly cardboard for smoke, 7,600 kilograms of special-effects fire powder, and 30 tons of explosion props⁸.

The film was positioned as the opening work of Bona Pictures' "Chinese Pride" trilogy and as a continuation of the studio's line of commercially successful mainstream films after Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea⁹^•¹⁰.

Reception and box office

Before release, preview audiences rated the film 9.4 on Taopiaopiao and 9.6 on Maoyan⁷. Maoyan professional data put the cumulative box office at 1.689 billion yuan, 18th among domestic films at the time of the report, and the Ministry of Education and the Central Propaganda Department included it in the 39th batch of recommended films for primary and secondary school students². In North America it earned about US$280,000¹¹.

Critical response was mixed. Commentators praised the realistic fire sequences and called the film a step forward for the Chinese disaster-film genre, while critics including the Shanghai Film Critics Association vice chairman Shi Chuan judged that the film's lyricism was insufficiently restrained, with music laid on too thickly and tear-jerking handled too deliberately¹². A Douban review argued that the film centered on a firefighting story rather than on firefighters as a professional group and that its dramatization distorted the real event's logic¹³. The film nonetheless won Outstanding Feature Film at the 18th Huabiao Awards in 2023³.

Plagiarism lawsuit

On 10 November 2019, the Beijing Haidian District court's website announced that a plaintiff identified as Li had sued the film's eight production and distribution companies, including Bona Pictures Group, for copyright infringement, claiming that the film copied the plaintiff's work Flamingo (《火烈鸟》) in story background, character relationships, main plot arrangement, and ending, and seeking cessation of distribution, a public apology, and 3 million yuan in damages².

Bona Pictures responded the next day that the film was adapted from real events, that the screenplay was adapted from Bao'erji Yuanye's reportage published in March 2013, that the company obtained the author's film adaptation and production rights in December 2016, that it signed a screenwriter contract with Yu Yonggan in September 2017 under which the screenwriter bore the copyright warranty obligation, and that the screenplay was completed in January 2018; the company also said it had received no notice from the court⁶. Reporting at the time noted that the plaintiff's novel was serialized online in 2018 and its print edition published in July 2019, after the film had finished shooting at the end of 2018, and that the case was still pending².

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Disaster films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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