The Dead End
烈日灼心
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 137 mins.
Director: Cao Baoping 曹保平.
Rating: 8/10.
Unconventional but involving crime drama centred on two criminals whose time is running out.
STORY
Xiamen, Fujian province, China, the present day. Seven years earlier, three men were involved in a horrific rape-murder in Xilong city that left a family of five dead and still remains unsolved. Since then, the three have lain low in the provincial capital, Xiamen – Xin Xiaofeng (Deng Chao) as an auxiliary police detective, Yang Zidao (Guo Tao) as a taxi driver, the simpleton Chen Bijue (Gao Hu) as a raft fisherman – and secretly cared for Weiba (Xu Xihan), the daughter of the raped victim (Bai Liuxi), as an act of personal redemption. When Xin Xiaofeng gets a watchful new boss – Yi Guchun (Duan Yihong), also from Xilong – he starts to suspect that their days could be numbered. Also, both he and Yang Zidao are unaware that the landlord (Li Xiaochuan) of a remote house in which they’re living is secretly recording their conversations. Xin Xiaofeng and Yang Zidao further become uneasy when Weiba falls ill and requires surgery to live. A chance meeting at the hospital between the two men and Yi Guchun and his younger sister Yi Guxia (Wang Luodan) fuels Yi Guchun’s suspicions that Xin Xiaofeng is not all he seems, though he’s impressed by Xin Xiaofeng’s personal bravery, especially when the latter rescues a gay Taiwan designer (Lv Songxian) who’s threatening to jump from a high-rise flat. Yi Guchun contacts his former boss (Du Zhiguo), who originally investigated the Xilong murder case, and tells him he has a hunch that he’s working on. On Chinese New Year, Yi Guxia calls Yang Zidao for a ride and tells him she likes him. Following a police bust of a gambling den, Xin Xiaofeng admits that he stole RMB4,500 from the pot, but Yi Guchun turns a blind eye. However, when Yi Guchun notices that Xin Xiaofeng has been spending time with the Taiwan man he earlier saved, he becomes suspicious and follows them.
REVIEW
Three men involved in a horrific rape-murder case find their time running out as they continue to lie low in The Dead End 烈日灼心, a psychologically claustrophobic crime drama set in Xiamen, Fujian province, that’s held together throughout its twists and turns by strong performances from its male cast. Cao Baoping 曹保平, a Shanxi-born writer-director in his late 40s who started in TV but has since made a mark with three offbeat features – black rural comedy Trouble Makers 光荣的愤怒 (2006), road comedy The Equation of Love and Death 李米的遭遇 (2008) and coming-of-age movie Einstein and Einstein 狗13 (2013) – this time brings his customary realist approach to much tougher material, and with less of his caustic wit or social observation. Despite a complicated plot that takes its time wending across 137 minutes, the script by Cao and Jiao Huajing 焦华静 is a tough, radical departure from their previous collaboration on Einstein and, though hardly conventional in its direction, the movie is Cao’s most commercially accessible to date, with a nailbiting climax on the edge of a skyscraper that’s a technical tour de force.
The screenplay is adapted from the 2010 novel Sunspots 太阳黑子 by Xu Yigua 须一瓜 – pen name of Xu Ping 徐苹, a onetime reporter on politics and law for Xiamen Evening News 厦门晚报. Her original novel, set in 1998, is a complex stew of Dostoyevskian guilt – described in the blurb as “a duel between crime and punishment” – as three characters try to atone for a horrific crime they were involved in 10 years earlier by caring for the young daughter of one of the victims. The film version preserves some of this theme, and especially the fact that they realise their actions may lead to their eventual exposure (the “dead end” of the English title), as well as a homosexual subplot involving one of the characters. In its length, its subject matter and psychological underpinnings, the movie is quite unlike anything previously in Mainland cinema, though in its combination of character drama and cinematic thrills it sometimes stretches credibility.
Following a B&W flashback to the shocking crime in Xilong city, Fujian, that left a family of five dead, the film switches to colour and seven years later as the participants have “shed their skins” and found different lives in Xiamen, the southern province’s capital. One, Xin Xiaofeng, has joined the police force as an auxiliary detective; another, Yang Zidao, works as a taxi driver, and the third, Chen Bijue, as a raft fisherman. All are secretly caring for a young girl, nicknamed Weiba (“Tail”), who was orphaned by the still-unsolved crime, but when Xin Xiaofeng gets a sharp-eyed new boss, Yi Guchun, who happens to come from Xilong, he realises that their days may be numbered.
The film concentrates on Xin Xiaofeng and Yang Zidao, and relies on building some sympathy for them as they discover their self-styled act of repentance in raising Weiba is in fact useless in the longer term. As Yi Guchun’s hunch grows that Xin Xiaofeng may have been involved in the notorious crime, the movie develops into an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse at the same time as Yi Guchun gains respect for Xin Xiaofeng’s bravery on the job. Things are also complicated by Yi Guchun’s younger sister, Yi Guxia, falling for Yang Zidao.
The fact that the script never explains how Xin Xiaofeng and Yang Zidao came to be involved in such a horrific crime weakens the central drama and, though the pin-uppy, 36-year-old Deng Chao 邓超 (American Dreams in China 中国合伙人, 2013; The Breakup Guru 分手大师, 2014) carries the bulk of the action in a sympathetic way, it’s never really believable that his Xin Xiaofeng could have committed such a horrific rape of Weiba’s mother. As Xin Xiaofeng’s police boss and dogged nemesis, older co-star Duan Yihong 段奕宏 (Wind Blast 西风烈, 2010; I Do 我愿意, 2012), is much more believable and essentially powers the drama as he’s torn between suspicion and professional respect for his younger colleague. Their scenes alone are worth the price of admission, with Duan’s watchful gaze nicely contrasted with Deng’s more open features.
In a straight role for a change, comedian Guo Tao 郭涛 is solid as Xin Xiaofeng’s partner-in-crime but is overshadowed by the central relationship between Xin Xiaofeng and Yi Guchun, as well as being lumbered with an awkwardly written relationship between himself and Yi Guchun’s younger sister (played just okay by Wang Luodan 王珞丹, the kooky reporter in Caught in the Web 搜索, 2012, the wife in Lethal Hostage 边境风云, 2012). A longish coda, which includes an explanation of much of the plot, is also structurally clumsy. But in general the movie grips the attention both on an acting and directing level, with handheld camerawork by d.p. Luo Pan 罗攀 (Old Fish 千钧。一发, 2007; Einstein) and a tense, ambient score by progressive Sichuan composer Bai Shui 白水 (Einstein) intensifying the personal drama.
Actor Gao Hu 高虎, who plays the third member of the group, has had his role almost entirely eliminated, following his arrest on drug charges in Aug 2014. (Prior to the re-edit, the running time was about five minutes longer.) The film is also notable for showing in detail China’s process of death by lethal injection, previously seen only in Drug War 毒战 (2012), directed by Hong Kong’s Du Qifeng 杜琪峰 [Johnnie To]. The original Chinese title means “Hot Sun, Burning Heart”.
CREDITS
Presented by Dream Sky Film (CN), Bona Film Group (CN). Produced by Dream Sky Film (CN), Beijing Standard Image Culture Communication (CN).
Script: Cao Baoping, Jiao Huajing. Novel: Xu Yigua. Photography: Luo Pan. Editing: Cao Baoping, Li Yongyi. Music: Bai Shui. Art direction: Lou Pan. Costume design: Liu Shuxia. Sound: Gu Changning, Li Wen. Action: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law]. Visual effects: Yi Chen (Timaxis Digital Media). Executive director: Fan Jinxuan.
Cast: Deng Chao (Xin Xiaofeng), Duan Yihong (Yi Guchun), Guo Tao (Yang Zidao, cabbie), Wang Luodan (Yi Guxia, Guchun’s younger sister), Xu Xihan (Weiba/”Tail”), Lv Songxian [Jackie Lui] (Taiwan designer), Gao Hu (Chen Bijue, raft fisherman), Li Xiaochuan (Zhuo Shengfa, landlord), Du Zhiguo (Yi Guchun’s former boss), Yan Bei (He Song, detective), Wang Yanhui (murderer), Bai Liuxi (Weiba’s murdered mother).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Competition), 19 Jun 2015.
Release: China, 27 Aug 2015.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 29 Jun 2015.)