Muddled narrative, impressive visuals
Those who like the cinema of Diao Yinan and Jia Zhang Ke will not hesitate for a moment to invest six hours of their time for this adaption of a famous Chinese book which has not yet been translated into English.
A crime drama set in a poor city in Northeastern China, Moses on the Plain (the original Chinese title) is about a series of murders and the subsequent investigation that take place over the time span of a decade or so.
Things move pretty slowly in the first couple episodes-think Angelopoulos, think Bela Tarr-but as our protagonist grows from young troublemaker to rookie cop, things start to get interesting.
Unfortunately it's all build up with very little pay-off. The last episode is a big bummer. Writing is all over the place, nothing make sense, large gaps in narrative, and let's not talk about the censorship, which ensures that all of the deaths occur off-screen.
Not much in terms of character depth and motivation. By the time the whole thing was over I still had no idea why the victims were murdered and who did the killing.
This show lacks anything that resembles a logical crime solving procedure where you go from A to B, from B to C, and so on. But if you're a fan of slow European art movies where not much happens, you may likely enjoy this one.
