Animal World

动物世界

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 130 mins.

Director: Han Yan 韩延.

Rating: 3/10.

Thinly scripted showcase for gaming theory and show-off VFX ends up as just boring in the long run.

STORY

A city somewhere in East Asia, the present day. Zheng Kaisi (Li Yifeng) works as a clown in an amusement arcade but spends the time daydreaming about saving the world from monsters. His mother (Li Yijuan) is in a coma in hospital, where his kind-of-girlfriend Liu Qing (Zhou Dongyu) is a nurse. Zheng Kaisi cannot go on paying his mother’s hospital bills for ever, and neither is he in a situation to provide any kind of life for him and Liu Qing – a fact she sadly acknowledges, knowing that he’s a born slacker. In desperation, Zheng Kaisi decides to join a friend, Liu Jun (Cao Bingkun), a salesman with Good Guys Real Estate, in a supposedly hot property deal that Liu Jun claims cannot fail. Zheng Kaisi’s investment involves him mortgaging his family’s flat, which is in his mother’s name; for the transfer document, he and Liu Jun take her thumbprint off her unconscious body. Liu Jun then hands the documents over to a mystery man, Ando (Che Jia). Too late, Zheng Kaisi learns that Liu Jun was sacked two months earlier, stole the company’s seal, and has now vanished. Zheng Kaisi is then contacted by Ando, who takes him to meet Anderson (Michael Douglas), an American businessman who tells him his company loaned Liu Jun RMB6 million with Zheng Kaisi’s flat as collateral. Of that sum, RMB2.75 million was interest on a previous loan and the rest, some RMB3.75 million, Liu Jun has just lost at a casino in Macau. Zheng Kaisi’s family flat is worth RMB2.75 million; Anderson offers him the chance to pay off the rest of the debt by joining his company’s cruise ship Destiny and playing a game along with others in a similar indebted situation. Zheng Kaisi has no choice but to agree; he tells Liu Qing he’ll be back in a week’s time. Three days later, along with others, he is drugged and taken on board the ship, where, once they are in international waters, they are introduced to a kind of electronic version of Rock-Paper-Scissors that will last four hours. Those players who are eliminated are taken away by Anderson’s men. Another Chinese man, Zhang Jingkun (Su Ke), tells Zheng Kaisi the game is being observed by super-rich gamblers specially flown in by Anderson; he proposes to Zheng Kaisi a way to win and get off the ship alive. When that doesn’t work out, Zheng Kaisi discovers that Liu Jun is also on board. The two of them team up with the geeky Meng Guoxiang (Wang Ge) to work out a way of beating the odds and surviving, while dark experiments go on in the ship’s bowels.

REVIEW

Gamers, gamblers and manga nuts may get a kick out of Animal World 动物世界, but anyone looking for a good slice of escapist entertainment will soon end up terminally bored by the lack of any kind of drama. Thinly written, anonymously directed, and acted with no distinction, this mishmash of gaming, monsters and sci-fi crime – all aimed squarely at a young audience – tries really, really hard to be copycat Hollywood and ends up looking more like a cynical experiment that’s gone horribly wrong. Though it’s hardly been a flop in the Mainland – making some RMB470 million in two weeks [for a final tally of RMB510 million] – the 3-D wannabe blockbuster has hardly been a huge success, either. It’s notable that the concurrently released 2-D drama Dying to Survive 我不是药神 (2018), with no monsters, VFX or international ambitions, has made around four times the amount in about half the time and not yet run out of puff. [Its final hawl was RMB3.1 billion.]

It’s a special disappointment coming from Shandong-born director Han Yan 韩延, 34, who’s been making shorts and mainly youth-centred movies for a decade or so. After co-directing the rote motor-racing drama Racer Legend 赛车传奇 (2011) under the pseudonym Han Zhixia 韩之夏, he first attracted attention with the meet-cute genre-bender First Time 第一次 (2012), starring Taiwan’s Zhao Youting 赵又廷 [Mark Chao] and Mainland actress-model Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy] in an extensive re-working of a South Korean weepie. Though First Time only took a tiny RMB36 million, it did lead to the equally offbeat rom-com Go Away Mr. Tumor! 滚蛋吧！肿瘤君 (2015), starring Mainland actress Bai Baihe 白百合, which took a tasty RMB512 million and remains Han’s biggest hit to date.

Significantly, Han, who usually takes a script credit, had none on Mr. Tumor!, which, though it relies a lot on its strong cast, is his best written film so far. Like Mr. Tumor!, Animal World is based on a manga, in this case the first part of the long-running Ultimate Survivor Kaiji 赌博默示录カイジ (1996- ) by Fukumoto Nobuyuki 福本伸行, whose works frequently focus on gambling and crime. Unlike on Mr. Tumor!, Han takes sole script credit and doesn’t seem to fully comprehend that a plot based on gaming strategies in Rock-Paper-Scissors isn’t enough to drive a two-hour-plus film, especially one with such an un-nuanced cast and dialogue as here. Perhaps that’s why, to liven things up for the kids in the front row, daydreaming sequences are regularly thrown in for no reason, with the main character battling imaginary monsters. In much the same way, to underline the movie’s international aspirations, Hollywood veteran Michael Douglas, 73, pops up now and then to push the story forward or remind everyone about the rules, but it’s not so much an integrated performance as a series of solo turns.

As in past roles (Forever Young 2015 栀子花开2015, 2015; Mr. Six 老炮儿, 2015; Guilty of Mind 心理罪, 2017), popular youth draw Li Yifeng 李易峰, 31, holds his own in the lead role as the slacker who steps into bigger shoes without making much impression on his own. Too often, he’s simply a trigger for another burst of VFX, and in the short term is outclassed by more flavoursome supports like Cao Bingkun 曹炳琨 as a duplicitous friend and Su Ke 苏可 as a duplicitous ally. With the only sizeable female role in a very male movie, petite Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨, as the lead’s putative girlfriend, can’t give much more than her usual gamine performance.

Shot in Haikou, Beijing and Tianjin, the film is technically slick, with lots of flashy camerawork, design and editing, further masking the lack of any human drama or real suspense. The title, which also happens to be the same as a long-running CCTV-1 wildlife documentary series, refers to the cruise ship (here renamed Destiny, rather than the original manga’s Espoir, i.e. Hope) being a self-contained world free of borders, nationhood and morals where basic survival instincts can flourish – though the theme is never developed apart from having a tiger in a cage above the gaming casino.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Ruyi Xinxin Film Investment (CN), Shanghai Huolongguo Film & TV Production (CN), Khorgos Youth Enlight Pictures (CN), Shanghai Tencent Pictures Cultural Diffusion (CN), Gravity Pictures Investment (CN), Ear East Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Lian Ray (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Beijing Wishart Communication (CN), Khorgos Jixiang Yingfang Entertainment (CN), Beijing Lehe Pictures Media (CN), Sanyue Guyu (Beijing) Media (CN).

Script: Han Yan. Manga: Fukumoto Noboyuki. Photography: Wang Dayong [Max Wang]. Music: Neal Acree. Theme song music: Michael Tuller, Yu Fei, Annalise Morelli. Vocal: Li Yuchun. Styling: Zhang Shijie [Stanley Cheung]. Action: Chen Chunkun. Special effects: John Dietz. Visual effects: Martin Hill, Malte Sarnes, Chen Sha, Chris Spry, Stuart White, Wil Manning, Danop Dharmaraksa (Weta Digital, Rising Sun Pictures, The Third Floor).

Cast: Li Yifeng (Zheng Kaisi), Michael Douglas (Anderson), Zhou Dongyu (Liu Qing), Cao Bingkun (Liu Jun), Wang Ge (Meng Guoxiang/Xiaopang), Su Ke (Zhang Jingkun), Che Jia (Ando), Alberto Lancellotti (Luca), Archibald C. McColl (cheat), Lei Han (Zheng Kaisi’s father), Li Yijuan (Zheng Kaisi’s mother), Zhang Junyi (scarred man).

Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Opening Film), 16 Jun 2018.

Release: China, 29 Jun 2018.