Xin li zui: Cheng shi zhi guang (2017) Reviews

• Average thriller that offers little freshness to the genre

  samzzz-694482017-12-25

  This is the second feature film release in 2017 to be based on the popular IP "Xin Li Zui", and has an even bigger cast than the earlier one, with A-Lister Deng Chao starring. Sadly, most aspects of the film can best be described as "average", or to be expected. The film attempts to utilize (thought about using the word exploit, but then decides against such a cynical expression) various controversies of yesteryear (referencing plenty of infamous cases that any adult living in China should be familiar with) to make the film appear "up-to-date", relevant, and socially conscious, and it more or less works. Other than this, however, the story has little that hasn't already been done to death by other filmmakers. *spoiler alert* My major complaint about this film, is the similarity of the last 15-20 minutes of Act II to genre classic Se7en. Really, swap the identity of the poor victim from the male protaginist's wife (Gwenyth Paltrow in Se7en) to his adopted daughter, and you will have yourself an almost scene-by-scene, plot point-by-plot point repeat of the final 20 minutes of Se7en. I don't know about movies, but if you do something like this when writing an academic paper, your dissertation perhaps, those anti-plagarism softwares will be flagging like crazy and you will likely get caught for doing something that is really lame. *spoiler alert ends* The technical departments are mostly fine with one exception, the editing. The editing in this film is absolutely terrible, to the point of being actively disruptive to my normal moviewatching process. Either cutting away from a scene-ending shot too soon, or ending a scene-starting shot too soon, or making a random cut out of nowhere, the editing is often clueless and I actively complained to my friends multiple times during the screening, and they were also annoyed by it. Granted, it is not AS consistently awful as in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but that's not saying much, is it? Most of the characters are built in your typical cookie-cutter fashion. The female lead delivers a particularly wooden performance that fails to measure against the even second most important female character in this film -- a 13 year old school girl played by an early teenage actor, which is quite something when you think about it. Overall I would have rated this a 6/10, ie. okay to decent, if not for the obviously similarity to Se7en in the final 15 minutes of Act II. As it stands, a slightly disappoiting 5/10.

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• Another blindly invested Chinese film

  BasicLogic2018-02-05

  Very disappointed again. I just couldn't understand why the Chinese movie industry never realized that a generic screenplay would never work. All the actors in this film were miscast, the female leading role as a detective was too young, the psychiatrist, another laughable role who looked more like a young guy in a school drama class, playing an role by dying his hairs to look more authentic as a matured scholar. The screenplay was so ridiculous, the soundtrack so annoying, everything just looked over-the-top dramatized and so pretentiously shallow. Nothing looked real, everything looked fake. The casted the popular young actors to play some ridiculous roles with fancy make-up just for the teenagers to buy tickets for box office. Exactly as most of the Chinese TV drama series, making them look like modeling school with heavy make-up and funny fancy costumes, both appeared so modern and unrealistic. These are the productions mainly targeted on the Chinese teenagers who are crazy about the over-the-top ridiculous make-up and the custom made fancy costumes, watching these drama series or this kind of movie are just like watching fashion shows. This film, inevitably is one of them. This film is for the Chinese teenagers, a video game playing generation, but not for the matured adults. Yes, if you are matured enough, avoid this film, don't waste your time.

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