Cliff Walkers

悬崖之上

China/Hong Kong, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 119 mins.

Director: Zhang Yimou 张艺谋.

Rating: 6/10.

Period spy adventure, set in Japanese-occupied northeast China during the 1930s, is largely formulary fare.

STORY

Southern Heilongjiang province, far northeast China (then Japanese-occupied Manchuria), mid-1930s, winter. Four Communist agents are parachuted across the border with the Soviet Union into the snowy wastes southeast of Harbin city, Heilongjiang province. They are Zhang Xianchen (Zhang Yi), leader of the group; his wife Wang Yu (Qin Hailu); Chu Liang (Zhu Yawen); and his wife Xiaolan (Liu Haocun). Following orders, Zhang Xianchen pairs off with Xiaolan and Chu Liang with Wang Yu. Their mission is codenamed “Dawn”, and they are unaware that it has already been betrayed to the puppet Chinese authorities in Harbin by Xie Zirong (Lei Jiayin), whose life was spared when several anti-Japanese subversives were rounded up and shot by a special task force led by Gao Bin (Ni Dahong). The Code 暗号. Zhang Xianchen and Xiaolan are met in the forest by Feng (Sha Yi) to take them to the train for Harbin. However, Zhang Xianchen suspects Feng and his men are working for the authorities; he kills Feng and manages to escape with Xiaolan. On the train the two groups stay apart but Zhang Xianchen leaves a message in the toilet that the operation has been compromised and that their local contacts are working for the authorities. Chu Liang and Wang Yu get off the train at Mudanjiang but Zhang Xianchen and Xiaolan stay on it, as Xiaolan has been detained by a special agent on the train. Zhang Xianchen rescues her and they throw the body of the special agent out of the window. At Hengdaohezi, Gao Bin and his men board the train but Zhang Xianchen and Xiaolan manage to elude them and separately leave the station. Meanwhile, Chu Liang and Wang Yu have been met by one of Gao Bin’s men, Jin Zhide (Yu Ailei), posing as a local contact, and taken to a vacant old house with minders who are also working for Gao Bin. Chu Liang and Wang Yu still don’t realise their local contacts are working for the authorities, as Zhang Xianchen’s message in the train’s toilet was altered behind his back. In Harbin, Zhang Xianchen and Xiaolan meet up and await instructions on how to fulfil their mission: to contact Wang Ziyang (Chen Yongsheng) – the only survivor of a breakout in 1934 of prisoners in Beiyinhe, a Japanese biological research centre using humans as guinea pigs – whom they have to smuggle across the border into the Soviet Union in order to expose the crimes of the Japanese on the international stage. However, one day Zhang Xianchen is captured by agents on the street. The Shadow 底牌. Zhang Xianchen is tortured by Gao Bin’s men but manages to escape, helped by Zhou Yi (Yu Hewei), one of Gao Bin’s senior officers who is actually a Communist spy. The Puzzle 迷局. Zhang Xianchen says he’s now useless to the mission and hands over his responsibilities to Zhou Yi. After trying to commit suicide heroically, Zhang Xianchen is recaptured and interrogated again, this time using drugs.

REVIEW

Veteran Mainland director Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 ticks another genre box in his career with Cliff Walkers 悬崖之上, an okay but unremarkable spy adventure set in the Japanese-occupied northeast of the 1930s. Largely formulary fare, with Communist agents ducking danger and betrayal as they try to extract a witness to Japanese biological experiments, it’s another of Zhang’s dramas of individuals operating under pressure of extraordinary events; but as a period espionage yarn it lacks the sheer intensity of classic outings like The Message 风声 (2009) or East Wind Rain 东风雨 (2010), or even resistance dramas like Railway Heroes 铁道英雄 (2021). However, it easily outperformed all seven other movies during the May Day holiday period of 2021, hawling in a tasty RMB1.19 billion, making it Zhang’s second biggest grosser in his career at the time (and top grosser in purely Mainland income).

The script, by Quan Yongxian 全勇先, Zhang and Pan Yiran 潘依然 (in her first major screen credit, prior to working again with Zhang on Snipers 狙击手, 2022, as a script planner), is basically an elaboration of a TVD written by Quan called The Brink 悬崖 (2012), from which Cliff Walkers even derives part of its Chinese title (see poster, left). The 40-part series, directed by Liu Jin 刘进 and also set in northeast China during the 1930s, centred on a married couple of Communist agents (played by Zhang Jiayi 张嘉益 and Song Jia 宋佳) whose mission was to inflitrate a department of the puppet Harbin police. In Cliff Walkers two married couples of Communist agents are parachuted into snowy northeast China to extract a witness to Japanese biological experiments on humans who has escaped from the prison camp and is on the run. Loosely based on real events, the film itself is vague about the time setting but is clearly set in the winter of 1934-35, when several prisoners, including one called Wang Ziyang 王子阳 (as in the film), managed to escape from the camp at Beiyinhe and spread word of the occupying Japanese Kwantung Army’s crimes against humanity. (The news was ignored by the KMT then ruling China, and the Japanese simply closed the camp down and built another nearby, the notorious Unit 731.)

The purpose of the agents’ mission only emerges around the half-hour mark; until then, and largely thereafter, the script is more interested in the logistics of betrayal as the group of four journey into town, unaware that their mission has already been betrayed. The device of the four agents being two married couples, but then splitting them into two separate teams, adds a frisson of interest to all the mutual suspicion that’s being generated; but it also means that the film has no consistent leading characters. Dramatically, too, the film’s second half is very different from the first – much more atmospheric and built out of longer sequences. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear exactly what is going on – not helped by six meaningless chapter headings that pop up for no reason and by several jumps in the narrative that raise suspicions the two-hour movie may have lost up to half-an-hour in post-production.

Lantern-faced TV actor Yu Hewei 于和伟, top-billed, is good as an undercover agent in the Harbin police and character actor Yu Ailei 余皑磊 is as good as ever as his sadistic and suspicious colleague. The scenes between the two of them are among the best in the film, as are the cat-and-mouse scenes between Yu and veteran Ni Dahong 倪大红 (underplaying very effectively as their ruthless police boss). The four secret agents cut less of a profile, with Zhang Yi 张译 (The Sacrifice 金刚川, 2020; Zhang Yimou’s One Second, 2020), just okay as the titular leader and the excellent Qin Hailu 秦海璐, as his wife, not given much to do until the second half. As the other wife in the group, Liu Haocun 刘浩存, so good as the ragamuffin in One Second, is hardly convincing as a trained secret agent. Apart from a claustrophobic flight in a train compartment, action sequences are just so-so.

An earlier English title was Impasse. The original Chinese means “On the Precipice”. The film shot for 159 days around Mudanjiang city, Heilongjiang province, northeast China, from Dec 2019 to May 2020, a couple of months after Zhang had completed reshoots on One Second.

CREDITS

Presented by China Film (CN), Emperor Film Production (HK), Shanghai Film Group (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN). Produced by China Film (CN).

Script: Quan Yongxian, Zhang Yimou. Final shooting script: Pan Yiran. Story: Quan Yongxian. Photography: Zhao Xiaoding. Editing: Li Yongyi. Music: Jo Yeong-uk. Art direction: Lin Mu. Styling: Chen Minzheng. Sound: Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Jeong Du. Visual effects: Wang Xinghui.

Cast: Yu Hewei (Zhou Yi), Zhang Yi (Zhang Xianchen), Qin Hailu (Wang Yu), Liu Haocun (Xiaolan), Zhu Yawen (Chu Liang), Li Naiwen (Lu Ming), Ni Dahong (Gao Bin), Yu Ailei (Jin Zhide), Fei Fan (Xiaomeng), Lei Jiayin (Xie Zirong), Sha Yi (Feng), Wang Naixun (Xiaozheng), Chen Yongsheng (Wang Ziyang), Yan Lei, Liu Chao, Yuan Hongyang (male prisoners), Ding Zidi (female prisoner), Cao Rui (train conductor), Bai En (spy on train), Feng Li (middle-aged man), An Dong (young lady), Xue Huashu (Zhang, older house helper in Harbin), Niu Xiaoning (bookshop employee), Han Haolin (Zhang Xianchen’s son), Song Tianshuo (Harbin taxi driver), Lu Chang’en (old shoemaker), Zhao Yi (Han, driver), Chen Yutong (Zhang Xianchen’s daughter).

Release: China, 30 Apr 2021; Hong Kong, 30 Apr 2021.