A or B

幕后玩家

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 110 mins.

Director: Ren Pengyuan 任鹏远.

Rating: 4/10.

After an OK set-up, this psychodrama becomes more and more silly, with Xu Zheng miscast in the lead role.

STORY

China, the present day. Zhong Xiaonian (Xu Zheng), CEO of deal-making/money-laundering/share-manipulating company Tengyuan Capital, is rich and famous and successful, partly thanks to Tengyuan’s chairman, Tang Wenyuan (Wang Yanhui). However, his wife Wei Simeng (Wang Likun), fed up with his arrogant treatment, wants a divorce and one day walks out of their modern, high-tech house in the countryside. After some heavy partying, Zhong Xiaonian wakes up at home next morning to find his safe emptied of all its secrets and the house’s panorama window boarded up. He cannot escape, and on the TV news he’s reported as holidaying in Alaska after resigning his job. A voice on a walkie-talkie tells him he’s been lucky so far in life from making the right decisions; from now on, every morning at 09:30, he will be presented with two choices, A or B, and will have to choose one. Today’s choice is between: A, announce your divorce, and B, expose your tax evasions. The TV news continues to broadcast bad news – that Zhong Xiaonian has a lover, Zhuang Yi (Zhu Zhu), and that his wife is in hospital after trying to commit suicide. The temperature in the house is manipulated up and down and the water cut off. Next morning Zhiong Xiaonian manages to break out but finds he’s been trapped in a replica of his home inside a sealed mountain cave. At the same time, Tang Wanyuan visits Zhong Xiaonian at his real home home and finds no one there but the safe empty. Meanwhile, by changing the circuitry on the walkie-talkie, Zhong Xiaonian manages to reach a financial reporter (Duan Bowen) who’s in the area, and with his help manages to escape from his prison. He calls Wei Simeng in hospital and she agrees to meet him secretly at their home.

REVIEW

A paranoia mystery-thriller with a moral fable attached, A or B 幕后玩家 doesn’t know where to go after an intriguing set-up. A drama centred on an arrogant financial dealmaker who’s humbled by one of his enemies in a series of mind-games, it’s a disappointing return to a leading role by bald Mainland comedian Xu Zheng 徐峥 after a string of hits that climaxed with Lost in Hong Kong 港囧 (2015). Wearing some hair this time, and in a serious role, Xu, 46, who also produced, never convinces in his role beyond the stereotypical behaviour of a Mainland nouveau riche; and, as in The Great Hypnotist 催眠大师 (2014), another drama that he starred in and produced, his performance has a wink-wink quality that makes one expect him to crack a joke at any moment. That’s partly the fault of the uninvolving screenplay by Beijing-born writer-director Ren Pengyuan 任鹏远 (period thriller The Deadly Bullet 刺夜, 2013), which doesn’t create a believable world of its own, either on a realistic or fantasy level, and starts to go completely off the scale after the first hour. Largely thanks to Xu’s popularity, it’s taken a solid but not at all starry RMB357 million in three weeks. [Finally tally was RMB358 million.]

As a psychodrama in which the corrupt main character is put in a kind of public court by a mystery-man – the Chinese title literally means “Behind-the-Scenes Game-Player(s)” – the film is one of those that comes with a moral message attached, in this case a warning to China’s nouveaux riches that money can’t buy happiness, plus the fact that one must always face the consequences of one’s crimes, both financial and emotional. Skirting a thin line between drama and parody in the early scenes, Xu plays a super-rich dealmaker-cum-market manipulator who’s on a roll – big house, rich mistress, industry awards etc. – but is brought crashing to the ground one morning when he wakes up to find he’s a prisoner inside his high-tech luxury home and is being character-assassinated on the TV news. A voice tells him that every morning he’ll be posed an either/or pair of questions – example: (a) announce your divorce, or (b) expose your tax evasions – from which he has to choose one.

It’s a neat set-up that comfortably occupies the first half-hour. But the idea of the daily questions isn’t developed in any dramatically meaningful way and, when Xu’s character finally escapes his prison thanks to the help of a financial journalist who happens to be nearby (er, right…), his revenge-cum-investigation into who has it in for him becomes more and more ridiculous, with no underlying tension and even less logic as it leaps from one development to another. (The plot is still being explained during the end titles.) Added to which, Xu’s character, whose background is hardly shown – beyond the fact that he’s basically a simple guy who likes yuntun soup (ahh!) – is difficult to identify with and is only tokenly redeemed by the end.

Other characters also engender variable sympathy as they’re drawn and moved around at the convenience of the writer: a supposedly strong wife who’s talked round too easily (Wang Likun 王丽坤, okay in a serious role for a change), a decorative mistress (Zhu Zhu 朱珠, standard), a suspicious chauffeur (Zhao Da 赵达, ditto), a bluff company chairman (Wang Yanhui 王砚辉, in a substantive performance) and a journalist (Duan Bowen 段博文, mask-like) who reluctantly helps out.

Shot in cool, steely colours and set in an equally cool, modern-minimalist house during the first half, the film later opts for a grungier but equally cold look which doesn’t encourage any emotional engagement. The film has no connection with the 2016 Hong Kong TVD series Two Steps from Heaven, centred on the PR industry, which has the same Chinese title.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Hairun Pictures (CN), Beijing Joy Leader Culture Communication (CN), Beijing United Entertainment Partners Culture & Media (CN), Beijing Yingmei Times Media (CN).

Script: Ren Pengyuan. Photography: Liu Yizeng. Editing: Li Nanyi. Art direction: Li Jianing. Styling: Tan Xiaomei. Sound: Tu Hao. Action: Yi Hong-pyo. Car stunts: Jo Weon-cheol. Visual effects: Ding Yanlai. Executive direction: Li Songyun.

Cast: Xu Zheng (Zhong Xiaonian, Tengyuan Capital CEO), Wang Likun (Wei Simeng, Zhong Xiaonian’s wife), Wang Yanhui (Tang Wanyuan, Tengyuan Capital chairman), Duan Bowen (Tian Yu/Zeng Yu, reporter), Zhao Da (Zhu Nan, Zhong Xiaonian’s driver), Yu Hewei (Liu Wenshi, Dami Technology chairman), Zhu Zhu (Zhuang Yi, Zhong Xiaonian’s lover), Ren Dahua [Simon Yam] (Zeng Guangwen), Xie Nan (female MC), Guo Jinglin (yuntun-shop owner).

Premiere: Beijing Film Festival (Opening Film), 15 Apr 2018.

Release: China, 28 Apr 2018.