Xuan ya zhi shang

China's official entry to 2022's Oscars is a very good atmospheric historical spy thriller. Although its story is not my cup of tea, I enjoyed it and was involved in it all the time. The story unfolds interestingly and storytelling is beautiful. Cinematography, production design and costume design are all nice. Some scenes are really thrilling and intense.

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.

The topic is a typical Chinese communists theme, i.e., how nationalists persecuted them and communists sacrificed themselves to win the ruling of the country. The movie was directed by the famous director Zhang yimo, who did it for Chinese communist authority, which is understandable. The directing is ok, and the movie theme is quite tense from the beginning to the end. However, the actors/actresses are mediocre. The ending is also typical Chinese movie technique, i.e. Use crying and background music to stir up emotion of audience.

How this director went from shooting, among other masterpieces, the most fabulously caustic critique of maoism with "To Live!" to erecting cinematic monuments to the glory of the Chinese Communist Party will go down as the most tragic waste in the history of cinema.

It should pain every cinephile out there, to see such genius being employed to such petty ends.

This kind of shameless brainwashing was equally pathetic when the Americans were doing it, but at least they didn't send their best directors to do it. Here Zhang Yimou is just kissing the ring, you can feel it, the guy is too brilliant to sincerely adhere to this hopelessly explicit propaganda.

Apart from that heavy aspect, objectively the movie isn't bad, although the action sometimes moves a bit too fast and the sentimentalism can get a tad too facile and corny.

"Zhang Yi leads the action in the first half, as his character is the traditional hero type who is decisive, vigilant and unflinchingly no-nonsense, an iron-wrought man who doesn't buckle under torture, so when Zhang crumples under his Achilles' heel (the attachment to his own offspring), it is Yu Hewei's Zhou, the surprising foe-to-friend undercover who takes up the gauntlet and resumes the endeavor. The secret mission takes a back seat, it is the "find the mole" game that propels the film to a satisfying if predictable finish in the homestretch. Great sacrifice is potently effectuated, mind game well played, earnest camaraderie emotively honored, the petticoat fighters are safe and waifs reunited with their parent, with the chief mission is accomplished en passant. Everything is well gauged to comply with China's ever-stringent censorship after Zhang Yimou's previous film ONE SECOND (2020), which also stars Zhang Yi and Liu Haocun, hits a bumpy road to get released."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.