Cliff Walkers

This slick but convoluted spy picture follows a group of Chinese spies on a secret mission. There are twists and turns, smart good guys and smart bad guys, some stylish cinematography, and an odd mix of realistic world building and unrealistic James Bond-style action.

Unfortunately, I found it increasingly difficult to follow the story. This was probably mainly because I have difficulty with faces (prosopagnosia) and everyone in this movie looks alike and dresses alike. There are all these men in suits and fedoras who seem to be in their 30s. And all these women in their 20s with ponytails who also wear fedoras. I would just get so confused by who the good guys and bad guys were. The only character I could always recognize was the main bad-guy boss, because he was older than anyone else. And I could usually recognize the pretty teenaged-or-just-past girl. Outside of that, I got more and more lost as more and more lookalike characters arrived and died.

Normally I have other ways to know who's who in a movie, like personality or clothing or voice. But no one in this movie has a distinct personality and they all sound and dress the same. It's as bad as those American sci-fi films where every astronaut is a square-jawed alpha male with a crewcut.

In spite of this, I enjoyed the movie. It's far from Yimou Zhang's best, but it's entertaining. But if you have face blindness be warned that this is going to be a particularly tough movie to make sense of.