Film Forum

China, 2018
Directed by Lou Ye
Starring Zhang Songwen, Ma Sichun, Jing Boran, Qin Hao
Music by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Jonas Colstrup
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Approx. 129 min. DCP.

“A crime story in a noir-like mystery key set in the ever-growing city of Guangzhou and amongst its real estate tycoon elite. In the midst of the turmoil about an urban development project that would leave a number of poor people homeless, the supposed leading man behind it Tang Yijie (Zhang Songwen) is found murdered. The hotshot police detective Yang Jiadong (Jing Boran) is assigned to the case and his investigation leads him in a number of counter-intuitive ways that might concern the murdered man's business and personal ties. He is a man of a peculiar past connected with the town's most influential businessman Jiang Zicheng (Qin Hao) in ways that exceed just business partnership... a very complicated plot, masterfully written by Mei Feng, Qiu Yujie and Ma Yingli...[showcases Ye’s] perfect sense of rhythm and the ability to control the tempo, profiting on perfectly timed shocking revelations, sharp left-turns and nicely packed flashback moments that provide the key information about the characters and relationships…An essential watch for genre lovers with a special taste for contemporary Chinese cinema.” – Marko Stojiljkovic, Asian Movie Pulse

Reviews

“Lou delves into the sociocultural realities of his characters as a means of capturing the environments and the illicit activities of an era, and invokes pop music of the time that has a familiar connotation to its hopes, dreams, and the potential bound-up in China’s reform period — a dimension that, for those who recognize it, gives the subsequent plot, its conspiring and murder, a potently tragic dimension.”
– Matt McCracken, In Review Online

“A crackerjack whodunit thriller in which a young Mainland detective finds himself up against powerful business interests. Lou’s ninth feature, it’s his first with an outwardly commercial flavour, though his raw, noirish, hard-driven direction is as usual hardly conventional... Complexly structured via multiple flashbacks, and full of powerfully drawn characters by regular writers Mei Feng and Lou’s documentarian wife Ma Yingli, plus Beijing Film Academy graduate Qiu Yujie, it grips from head to tail, with no emotional downtime across two hours. Though the main role is played (in a major change of image) by young actor-singer Jing Boran, 29, like many of Lou’s movies it’s a truly ensemble work and one in which the production itself is the star... Starting with swooping shots across urban landscapes — which return prior to the final confrontation — much of the film is shot in gritty, noirish, handheld images, superbly assembled by Mainland editor Zhu Lin. Her editing of the final action set-to is a showpiece alone.”
– Derek Elley, Sino-Cinema