Lost in White

冰河追凶

China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 102 mins.

Director: Xu Wei 徐伟.

Rating: 5/10.

Poorly written whodunit is short on atmosphere or tension, despite a name cast.

STORY

Yixi, Heilongjiang province, northeast China, winter. A masked man stops his car on a frozen river, drags out his prisoner, and dumps him under the ice to drown. Some time later, local villagers discover a body in the same area, and Zhou Peng (Liang Jiahui), a police captain, and his deputy Wu Xue (Deng Jiajia) arrive to investigate. In his stomach is a mercury compound – found in industrial waste – which leads Zhou Peng to the abandoned Jin Yuan Refinery, long closed following a pollution scandal. The police find tracks leading from there to the river, where they find another body under the ice – that of the more recent murder victim. Meanwhile, Wang Hao (Tong Dawei), an impulsive Shanghai police detective, arrives in pursuit of a lead in the case of a missing person, Wang Jianshe, who said he was going to Yixi to meet some old friends. Zhou Peng and Wu Xue are assigned to help him. Wang Hao recognises the name of Jin Yuan Refinery, which Wang Jianshe co-founded with three others, but neither of the two corpses is his. They turn out to be those of two other co-founders; meanwhile, the fourth, Weng Jie, is still missing, following his long-ago disappearance after the death of his family in a fire. Zhou Peng concludes that the killer must be either Wang Jianshe or Weng Jie, or a local seeking revenge for the refinery pollution scandal which resulted in several handicapped births in the village. Over Chinese New Year he and Wang Hao visit the village to question locals. To their surprise, Zhou Peng’s daughter, Zhou Xinyi (Zhou Dongyu) – who is soon to visit her mother in the US – also turns up, both for her father’s birthday and to see Wang Hao, whom she met earlier. Also around are the village head (Wang Zhigang) and Li Yongsheng (Wei Chen), a young local who’s been helping the police and also likes Zhou Xinyi. Zhou Peng and Wang Hao find someone imprisoned in an outlying farm and pursue a man seen running away; he escapes but the prisoner is rescued and taken to hospital. Though he dies, the police spread the word that he will wake up soon and identify the killer.

REVIEW

A name cast does a lot of running around in the snow in Lost in White 冰河追凶, a serial-killer mystery set in wintry Heilongjiang province, northeast China, that’s poorly plotted as a whodunit and signally short on atmosphere or tension. The writing-directing debut of Xu Wei 徐伟, a Sichuan-born d.p. just turned 40, it has a believably frozen look thanks to filming in genuine -40°C locations; but the script, credited to four writers including Xu, remains equally deep-frozen, with only flecks of life given it by the actors, notably Tong Dawei 佟大为 as a loose-cannon detective from Shanghai.

Xu has worked on a wide variety of films as a d.p., from genre stuff through mainstream to artier material, with no personal signature: Weekend Plot 秘语拾柒小时 (2001), Thirteen Princess Trees 十三棵泡桐 (2006), Unfinished Girl 第三个人 (2007), Esquire Runway 时尚先生 (2008), Dooman River 두만강 (2010), Lethal Hostage 边境风云 (2012), The Deadly Strands 咒•丝 (2013), to name only a few. That’s fine, but as a director he’s similarly invisible, bringing no special stamp to the material. The moody opening, as a car traverses a frozen river and a killer stuffs a still-living victim under the ice, has a dark sense of dread – courtesy the photography by French d.p. Thierry Arbogast, known for his work with Luc Besson – that doesn’t recur elsewhere in the movie. Instead of the moody slasher film hinted at by this opening, the viewer gets an uninflected police procedural with very few twists, several plot lacunae, and a script that jumps around giving its leads things to do. The writers seem to have no idea how to construct a whodunit, how to drip-feed the audience information, or how to lead it up and down pathways to the conclusion. The one twist will not be much of a surprise to fans of the genre.

Surprisingly, it’s second-billed Tong, now in his late 30s, who manages to breathe the most life into the writing, as an impetuous Shanghai cop who’s introduced in a long sequence chasing kidnappers down south. Tong, who’s improved by leaps and bounds the past few years (American Dreams in China 中国合伙人, 2013; Hollywood Adventures 横冲直撞好莱坞, 2015), has okay chemistry with Hong Kong veteran Liang Jiahui 梁家辉 [Tony Leung Ka-fai], but the latter is pretty low-key here and largely looks cold and miserable when he should be wise and proactive. (An attempt to create a backstory for him with a troubled marriage is left dangling, half-developed.) As his character’s pouty daughter, elfin Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨 is stuck in a thankless role that the writers have a hard time justifying until the finale (from which she’s largely absent, anyway). As a deputy detective, Deng Jiajia 邓家佳 (the accused in Silent Witness 全民目击, 2013) carves out a more convincing female character in bits and pieces. Among other supports, veteran Wang Zhigang 王志刚 makes a convincing village head and Wei Chen 魏晨 is suitably bright-eyed as a young guy who helps the police. But none of the characters are ones the viewer really cares for.

Apart from the opening, the widescreen photography by Arbogast – who previously worked in China on the drama Inseparable 形影不离 (2011), with Kevin Spacey and Wu Yanzu 吴彦祖 [Daniel Wu] – is just OK, faithfully reflecting the wintry, snowy setting but bringing little extra mood. (In this respect, simply compare Lost in White with another Heilongjiang-set wintry whodunit, Black Coal, Thin Ice 白日焰火, 2014, which at least had real visual atmosphere.) More seriously, the score by Japan’s Iwashiro Taro 岩代太郎 (Red Cliff 赤壁, 2008) is a positive liability, generating no tension or drama in the chases and over-cooked in more intimate scenes between Tong and Zhou. Action by South Korea’s Choi Dong-heon 최동헌 | 崔东宪 is routine, including a couple of car chases. For the record, Liang is not revoiced in the film; his Cantonese accent is explained away by his character originally being from Guangdong, down south.

CREDITS

Presented by Fuxing Quanya Media (Shanghai) (CN), Gravity Pictures Film Production (CN), iQiyi.com (CN), SMG Pictures (CN), C2M Media (CN), Shanghai Lezai Qizhong Entertainment (CN), Jiangsu Zhuci Pictures (CN), Changchun Film Group (CN), Beijing Tongyuemingxin Media (CN), Beijing Reach-Gloria Media (CN).

Script: Xu Wei, Ping Hui, Bu Wei, Tian Bo. Photography: Thierry Arbogast. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Li Dianshi. Music: Iwashiro Taro. Art direction: Zhang Xiaobing. Costume design: Chen Leqin. Sound: Li Tao. Action: Choi Dong-heon. Visual effects: Wang Naipeng.

Cast: Liang Jiahui [Tony Leung Ka-fai] (Zhou Peng, police captain), Tong Dawei (Wang Hao), Zhou Dongyu (Zhou Xinyi), Deng Jiajia (Wu Xue), Wei Chen (Li Yongsheng), Cao Weiyu (Weng Jie/Han Ming), Wu Jinxi (Li Jingyi), Wang Zhigang (Wang Shuihe, village head), Li Bin (barefoot man), Li Qiang (Tang, pathologist), Wu Renyuan (Zhang, police captain), Wang Qingwei (doctor), Teng Fei (Wang Hao’s partner), Li Lei (policeman), Han Kexin (thief), Guo Haijiao (Huang Mao), Li Jiaxuan (nurse).

Release: China, 15 Apr 2016.