A Writer’s Odyssey
刺杀小说家
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 3D, 129 mins.
Director: Lu Yang 路阳.
Rating: 5/10.
Ambitious, multi-level action drama takes on more than it can deliver, ending up as another over-long VFX-athon.
STORY
Somewhere in China, the present day. Six years after his young daughter Juzi, aka Tangerine (Wang Shengdi), was kidnapped in the city of Liaoyuan by a man called Yu Changhai (Yang Yi), Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) is still manically searching for her throughout the country. A former bank employee, he is now divorced from his wife Xiaoyu (Dong Jie) and has sold his house; as he wanders alone, half crazed, he’s tormented by dreams of his daughter and a huge, strange city in the clouds. Using special powers he’s developed, he one day attacks a lorry on a mountain road that is carrying kidnapped children but Tangerine is not one of them; the child traffickers escape and Guan Ning is arrested by police instead. He later escapes from the police car and is picked up by a mysterious woman, Tu Ling (Yang Mi), who knows all about him. (In the mediaeval kingdom of Ranliang, Kongwen [Dong Zijian] and his elder sister [Tong Liya] are pursued through a forest by assassins led by Hei Jia [Guo Jingfei], under the orders of Chifa Gui, aka Lord Redmane [Yang Yi], who wants their heads. Kongwen survives and kills Hei Jia, though one of the latter’s eyes welds itself into his chest and urges him to get revenge on Lord Redmane in the City in the Clouds.) In a big metropolis Tu Ling takes Guan Ning to the headquarters of the multinational tech conglomerate Aladdin Group, run by Li Mu (Yu Hewei), who is lecturing an ecstatic audience on how he is revolutionising people’s lives. Tu Ling, who is Aladdin’s chief information officer, tells Guan Ning they’ve already found his daughter – or at least, narrowed the search to five girls who can now be eliminated by DNA testing. As she speaks, a novel-in-progress, Godslayer 弑神, is being broadcast on the internet by its author Lu Kongwen (Dong Zijian), who has been working on it for six years. Set in the mediaeval kingdom of Ranliang, it describes how Kongwen travels to City in the Clouds to avenge the death of his elder sister on the orders of Lord Redmane. The city, which has been taken over by Lord Redmane and his Red-Armoured Warriors, is also the same one that Guan Ning sees in his dreams. As the masked figure of Lu Kongwen reads out the latest chapter, Li Mu faints on stage. Tu Ling tells Guan Ning that the price for Aladdin’s help in finding his daughter is to kill Lu Kongwen, as Li Mu believes that the novel is affecting his health and will eventually kill him. As Lu Kongwen has announced he’ll finish writing the novel in three days’ time, Guan Ning has 72 hours to kill him, using the special powers he’s developed. Guan Ning goes to Twin Rivers city where Lu Kongwen, a young man in his late 20s, lives with his mother. Posing as a fan of his work, Guan Ning meets him and, surprisingly, the two become friends. Despite being constantly urged on by Tu Ling, Guan Ning finds it increasingly difficult to kill Lu Kongwen, especially when the latter starts using Guan Ning’s notebook of his own dreams as inspiration for finishing the novel.
REVIEW
Some complex ideas – such as, can a novel actually change reality? – are tossed around but never answered in A Writer’s Odyssey 刺杀小说家 which, after a teasing first hour following a father searching for his young daughter and a writer whose novel is informing the father’s dreams, just throws up its hands and becomes another over-long, fantasy VFX-athon. It’s a considerable disappointment coming from Beijing-born writer-director Lu Yang 路阳 in the wake of his top-notch martial-arts drama Brotherhood of Blades 绣春刀 (2014) and its prequel Brotherhood of Blades II: The Infernal Battlefield 绣春刀II 修罗战场 (2017). Excluding last year’s Korean War hit, The Sacrifice 金刚川 (2020) – on which Lu was one of three directors – Odyssey has been his biggest box-office success by far, hawling in over RMB900 million in its first three weeks. However, that figure still pales in the face of the two CNY mega-hits, Hi, Mom 你好，李焕英 and Detective Chinatown 3 唐人街探案3, each of which has so far taken well over RMB4 billion. This New Year, Mainland audiences have decisively voted in favour of more human-driven material than VFX-saturated action spectaculars.
Odyssey’s under-achievement is despite being put together by several of Lu’s regular collaborators, including Hangzhou-born writer Chen Shu 陈舒, 38, who’s scripted all of his four previous features, d.p. Han Qiming 韩淇名 and stylist Liang Tingting 梁婷婷, as well as actor Lei Jiayin 雷佳音 and actress Yang Mi 杨幂, both in BoBII, and creative producer 监制 Ning Hao 宁浩, a noted director in his own right. The film’s problems lie largely with the screenplay, based on a 60-page short story by Shenyang-born Shuang Xuetao 双雪涛, 37, that was published in the 2017 collection 飞行家 (literally, “The Aviator”, see cover, left). Shu and her co-writers – Qin Haiyan 秦海燕 (powerful kidnap drama Lost, Found 找到你, 2018), Lu regular Yu Yang 禹扬 and Lu himself – can’t provide a sturdy enough cinematic frame for the parallel narratives of a man searching for his kidnapped daughter and an online fantasy novel that’s not only invading his dreams but also appears to be affecting the health of a Big Tech CEO.
It’s a very ambitious set-up that basically takes on more than it can deliver, with the first 10 minutes packed with background on the manic father and the appearance of a mystery woman before switching (with no explanation) to an eight-minute chunk of the fantasy novel and then, almost 20 minutes into the film, having the mystery woman (a Big Tech exec) gradually explaining what is going on. By the half-hour mark, after she’s said her boss wants the father to kill the novelist in exchange for his missing daughter (whom she claims the company has already found), the film’s ducks are finally aligned for the audience – though the father then rightly exclaims, “You’re all insane! Your boss is afraid of being written to death?!” Well, er, yes.
The remaining hour-and-a-half springs its main twist early on, as the father and young writer actually become friends, thereby delaying any murder. It’s then that the script tries to tackle the Big Theme of whether a novel can actually change reality, as the father starts to influence its final chapters and correspondences emerge between his personal story and the novel’s mediaeval fantasy. To the movie’s credit the human story between the father and the writer is just about maintained as the film skips back and forth between them in the present and the CGI-heavy extracts from the novel. But the structure becomes increasingly trying and the Big Theme basically gets lost as the VFX, as so often, take over in the final half-hour, especially with the eventual appearance of the novel’s main villain.
Generally a fine actor, with much theatre experience, Lei, 37, tries his hardest to evoke some sympathy for the distressed father but isn’t given much chance or downtime amid all the visual noise and unlikely plotting. Ditto for actor Dong Zijian 董子健, 27, here playing an older role than his usual baby-faced ones, but again not allowed to give much personality to the writer beyond the manic. Overall, Odyssey is a pretty heartless movie, best encapsulated by the ice-cool performance of Yang, 34, as the Big Tech exec – even though the writers don’t seem to know what to do with her after the first half-hour. Among the supports, 10-year-old Wang Shengdi 王圣迪 makes a mark as the novel’s tomboy equivalent of the father’s missing daughter.
Visual effects are okay but repetitive, and the musical score by Australia’s Jed Kurzel (Alien: Covenant, 2017; Seberg, 2019) is unmemorable. The film is also known as Assassin in Red, though A Writer’s Odyssey is the English title on the print. The Chinese title means “Assassinate the Writer”.
CREDITS
Presented by Huace Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), Alibaba Pictures (CN), Free Whale Pictures (CN), Horgos United Entertainment Partners Culture & Media (CN).
Script: Chen Shu, Yu Yang, Qin Haiyan, Lu Yang. Short story: Shuang Xuetao. Photography: Han Qiming. Editing: Zhu Liyun, Zhu Lin. Music: Jed Kurzel. Music supervision: Yu Fei. Art direction: Li Miao. Styling: Liang Tingting. Sound: Wang Gang, Liu Xiaosha. Visual effects: Xu Jian.
Cast: Lei Jiayin (Guan Ning; Red-Armoured Warrior)), Yang Mi (Tu Ling), Dong Zijian (Lu Kongwen; Kongwen), Yu Hewei (Li Mu), Guo Jingfei (old monk; Hei Jia/Black Armour), Tong Liya (Kongwen’s elder sister; Banruo), Dong Jie (Xiaoyu, Guan Ning’s wife), Wang Shengdi (Juzi/Tangerine, Guan Ning’s daughter; Shuanzi, orphan girl), Yang Yi (Yu Changhai; Chifa Gui/Lord Redmane), Liu Tianzuo (Electric Man), Li Binghui (Thin Man), Xiao Zimo (Cat Man), Shuang Xuetao (butcher).
Release: China, 12 Feb 2021.