The Whistleblower

吹哨人

China/Australia/Hong Kong/UK, 2019, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 139 mins.

Director: Xue Xiaolu 薛晓路.

Rating: 3/10.

International action-thriller is laughably scripted and barely competent beyond a technical level.

STORY

Malawi, southeast Africa, the present day. In the north of the country, a Force 8.1 earthquake destroys an area outside Livingstonia, killing several hundred people. As the only major company near the site, Grand Power Energy Corporation Australia (GPEC) leads the relief effort, supervised by Peter Wu (Wang Ce), GPEC’s director of public relations. Meanwhile, GPEC CEO James Harrison (John Batchelor), who hopes to secure a lucrative coal/gas-conversion contract with Mainland mining company Lvhan Hanmei Group (LHG), hosts a splashy Sino-Australian get-together at The Twelve Apostles, a scenic site on the coast of Victoria, Australia. GPEC rising star Ma Ke (Lei Jiayin) – a happily married man with a wife and young son, who is due to take over Peter Wu’s job – is surprised to find an ex-girlfriend from 10 years ago among the Chinese guests. Now calling herself Zhou Wen, Zhou Siliang (Tang Wei) is a director of LHG, to whose chairman, Zhong (Xing Minshan), she is married. Apparently tired and emotional, Peter Wu disrupts the party, verbally attacking Ma Ke and repeatedly shouting “Check the gate!” at him. Ma Ke and Zhou Siliang end up in bed, and she has to rush to get to the GPEC jet to Sydney the next morning. The jet, however, crashes in a storm and all are presumed dead. The same morning Peter Wu, who was under scrutiny for possible bribery in the negotiations with LHG, is found dead, from an insulin overdose. As the only other Chinese in GPEC, Ma Ke is sent to Lvhan to finalise the contract; while there, he comes into possession of part of a report written by LHG’s former chief engineer, Gao (Luo Jongmin), for Peter Wu. Arriving back at Melbourne airport, Ma Ke is summoned to a seedy hotel where he finds Zhou Siliang, who says she missed the plane and has been hiding out ever since. A thug appears and tries to kill her; she and Ma Ke flee, and he hides her out in a GPEC warehouse where disaster-relief supplies are stored. She asks him to write her a cheque if she transfers some money to him. Next day Zhou Siliang calls in a panic, saying she’s being chased by the same people; Ma Ke meets her, and the pair narrowly escape being shot at North Melbourne metro station. Ma Ke hides her out in Chinatown, working in the restaurant of a friend (Chen Chuang). Zhou Siliang claims her husband is behind the killers; only he knows where she is, as she had called him asking for US$10 million to keep quiet about all the shady deals she’d negotiated on his behalf. Ma Ke’s wife, Yu Xiaoran (Qi Xi), who’s been suspicious about his strange behaviour, finds a blackmail message on his mobile phone about the night he spent with Zhou Siliang. As his marriage hangs on a thread, and Zhou Siliang is still hunted by assassins, Ma Ke decides to go to Malawi with her to solve the mystery, in which James Harrison seems to be involved.

REVIEW

Historians will ponder how The Whistleblower 吹哨人 ever got greenlighted in the first place, let alone released at a whopping 139 minutes; but in the present day Mainland audiences have voted with their feet, shelling out a puny RMB50 million for this laughably scripted, barely competent action-thriller set in Australia, Malawi and China. As the two leads-on-the-run, Mainland actors Lei Jiayin 雷佳音 and Tang Wei 汤唯 just about manage to keep a straight face while mouthing the dialogue but, between being cast into one after another ridiculous situation and not really convincing as action characters, they don’t generate any screen chemistry to keep the film afloat on a personal level. Blame this turkey entirely on Beijing-born writer-director Xue Xiaolu 薛晓路, 49, who got lucky at the Mainland box office with US-set rom-coms Finding Mr. Right 北京遇上西雅图 (2013) and Book of Love 北京遇上西雅图之不二情书 (2016) and then, for her fourth feature, thought she could do a splashy international thriller. (In the meantime, she’s contributed the weakest segment of all to the PRC 70th birthday compendium My People, My Country 我和我的祖国, 2019.)

The irony is that Xue’s background is basically in writing. But apart from her first outing as a director, Ocean Heaven 海洋天堂 (2010), all her films have signally failed at a screenplay level. Ocean Heaven was an engaging, simply-told story of a widower and his autistic son, and benefited from unmannered performances (Li Lianjie 李连杰 [Jet Li], Wen Zhang 文章) and an avoidance of tearjerker cliches. Apart from heavily referencing the films Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Right and Love were artificially constructed rom-coms with little on-screen chemistry between leads Wu Xiubo 吴秀波 and Tang, and were successful mostly because of their US settings and the lead playing by popular TV actor-singer Wu.

In Whistleblower, Xue and co-writer Jiao Huajing 焦华静, 31 – who did good work for director Cao Baoping 曹保平 on Einstein and Einstein 狗13 (2013) and crime drama The Dead End 烈日灼心 (2015) but then lost her credibility with Love – are clearly out of their depth in an international action-thriller: the generic conspiracy plot is full of holes, has relationships that make no sense, and is full of dull, largely expository dialogue, not helped by some dodgy English delivery by the Chinese cast. If the movie had had a sense of humour and some actor chemistry, and been staged as a fun, Hong Kong-style caper, it could conceivably have worked. The final half-hour, back in Melbourne and with a laughable finale, is barely watchable.

Tang, 40, who has no automatic box-office appeal in the Mainland, must bear some of the responsibility for the failure of Right and Love at a dramatic level – though it’s difficult to argue with the two films’ sturdy income (RMB520 million and RMB787 million, compared with a puny RMB14 million for Ocean Heaven). That’s presumably why she’s back again here in her third film for Xue, with a typically rudderless, unconvincing performance as a whistleblower on the run with a Chinese employee of a shadily-managed Australian company. As her co-fugitive and the dramatic fulcrum, Lei, 36, who’s largely a theatre/TV actor but has made a mark in his relatively few lead film roles (such as black comedy Memento 记忆碎片, 2016; time-warp rom-com How Long Will I Love U  超时空同居, 2018), simply looks defeated by his blandly written role. The same goes for Mainland dancer-turned actress Qi Xi 齐溪, 35 – so good as the sister-in-law in the recent So Long, My Son 地久天长 (2019), as well as in Mystery 浮城谜事 (2012) and Ever Since We Loved 万物生长 (2015) – who can’t do anything except glower as his confused wife. Among the Australian supporting cast, John Batchelor blusters as the chief villain.

On a technical level, the largely Australian key crew (plus some Hong Kongers) turn in a good-looking artifact, with locations around Victoria state convincingly doubling for Malawi, and Melbourne itself showing a seamier side in action sequences staged okay by Chris Anderson (King Kong, 2005), with plenty of flipping cars. (Xue has previous experience in location doubling, with the Seattle-set Right largely shot in Vancouver.) However, music by David Hirschfelder (Shine, 1996; Elizabeth, 1998; Australia, 2008) is routine action wallpaper.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Carving Films Culture & Media (CN), Edko Films (HK), Perfect Village Entertainment HK (HK), Shanghai Tencent Pictures Culture Media (CN), Tianjin TenSpace Media (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Whistle Movie Productions (AU), The China-UK Film, TV & Media Investment Fund (CN/UK), Zhejiang Huomai Film & TV Media (CN), Beijing Harmony & Harvest Communication Media (CN), Zhuhai Intercontinental Jinma Culture (CN), Huawen Picture Group (CN), Author’s Journey (Biejing) (CN), Er Dong Culture (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Beijing Carving Films Culture & Media (CN), Whistle Movie Productions (AU).

Script: Xue Xiaolu, Jiao Huajing. Photography: Marc Spicer. Editing: Andy Canny, Hu Shuzhen. Music: David Hirschfelder. Production design: Xi Zhongwen [Yee Chung-man], Jeff Thorp. Art direction: Adrian Dalton. Styling: Wu Lilu [Dora Ng], Katherine Milne. Sound: Chris Goodes, Andrew Neil. Action: Chris Anderson. Special effects: Peter Stubbs. Visual effects: Lindsay Adams, Li Zhaohua, Jack Mason (Future Associate).

Cast: Lei Jiayin (Ma Ke/Mark), Tang Wei (Zhou Siliang/Zhou Wen), Qi Xi (Yu Xiaoran/Judy), John Batchelor (James Harrison), Wang Ce (Peter Wu), Steve Bastoni (Logan), Chen Chuang (Liu Ge/Old Six, restaurant owner), Fu Hongsheng (thug), Warwick Sadler (killer), Jane Downer (Nyasa), Yang Lixin (Chai Chuyuan, International Energy Alliance secretary-general), Michael-Anthony Taylor (Neo), Carrillo Gantner (Environment & Energy minister), Luo Jingmin (Gao, former chief engineer), Xing Minshan (Zhong, Lvhan Hanmei Group chairman), Wu Yanshu (Gao’s wife), Ma Dongyan (Wang), Lucia Zheng (Angela), Yan Shuqi (Zhuzhu), Patrick Wang (Song, delegation head), Liu Yiwei (forensic officer), Andy Friend (Chris Branagh), Humphrey Chen (Daniel Ma, Ma Ke’s son), Brett Cousins (Tom Baker), Wayne McDaniel (Sand Cafe owner), Wang Qian (hotel-foyer manager), Elisabeth Parisi (James Harrison’s wife), Frank Sweet (Jerry), Joshua Li Hodge (immigration officer), Diana Nguyen (Rose, Ma Ke’s secretary), Lila Abello (Susan).

Release: China, 6 Dec 2019; Australia, 12 Dec 2019; Hong Kong, 12 Dec 2019; UK, 6 Dec 2019.