Death Stranding

困兽

China/Hong Kong, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 96 mins.

Director: Peng Fa 彭发 [Danny Pang].

Rating: 5/10.

Generic, Hong Kong-style crime drama is poorly scripted, but watchable thanks to some of the performances.

STORY

Abi, a Chinese-speaking region in Southeast Asia, 2000. Jiang Wenfeng (Zhong Hanliang), a senior CID inspector from Tiger City, collects the belongings of his younger sister Jiang Wenqi who was found dead under mysterious circumstances. He vows to find her killer. In Tiger City, a Chinese-speaking former Portuguese colony, a man tries to type a farewell letter on a computer. Tiger City, 2002. Reforms designed to clean up the entertainment and gaming industry have stirred up new problems as a flood of international money has arrived to take advantage of the legislative changes. The police and gaming authorities are on high alert and launch Operation Storm to impose the clean-up changes. Gaming Inspection Bureau head Zuo Junzhe (Wu Zhenyu), a former policeman, privately alerts someone that a plan they drew up two years earlier can now be put into action. Jiang Wenfeng, who’s spent two years investigating his sister’s death in Abi, tells Tiger City’s police chief, Li Ruiming (Zhang Guoqiang), that her death may be linked to Huasen Group, based in Tiger City, which had money dealings with Abi’s gambling crimelord. Meanwhile, Huasen chairman Wu Xin arranges the kidnapping of Yan Zhengyang (Chen Baoyuan), head of the Market Promotion Association, who wants to promote Tiger City under the new legislation and has compiled a companies blacklist that includes Huasen. Wu Xin puts eager-to-please flunky Yang Qi (Gu Bin) in charge of the kidnapping but Yang Qi ends up killing Yan Zhengyang in a fit of temper. Finally back at work in Tiger City, Jiang Wenfeng raids Huasen’s offices for evidence of money-laundering and finds his old childhood friend and former policeman, Zuo Junzhe, in Wu Xin’s office. Jiang Wenfeng visits his former girlfriend Zhu Li (Hu Xing’er) – now wife of Wu Xin – and asks her not to get involved in forthcoming events. She tells him she can take care of herself. Yang Qi gets ready to take over as head of the Market Promotion Association; but at the reception announcing the appointment Wu Xin publicly shops Yang Qi for Yan Zhengyang’s murder. Wu Xin tries to convince Zuo Junzhe to take the job, but the latter equivocates, arousing Wu Xin’s suspicions. Jiang Wenfeng secretly meets Zuo Junzhe and says he suspects his sister’s death had something to do with him. (Jiang Wenqi was then Zuo Junzhe’s girlfriend and on the night of her death she was at a boozy party with him and his associates, and later fell off the balcony of the flat.) The meeting between Jiang Wenfeng and Zuo Junzhe is interrupted by gunmen sent by Wu Xin to tail Zuo Junzhe. Jiang Wenfeng survives the shootout, only to find himself suspected of accepting bribes from Wu Xin and suspended from the police force.

REVIEW

After several years of schlocky horror and Mainland-funded duds (climaxed by the inept drug-busting drama Icebreaking 利刃破冰, 2019), Hong Kong’s Peng Fa 彭发 [Danny Pang], the younger and less interesting of the film-making twins (Bangkok Dangerous บางกอกแดนเจอรัส เพชฒฆาตเงียบ：อันตราย, 1999; The Eye 见鬼, 2002; Out of Inferno 3D 逃出生天3D, 2013), finally comes up on his own with something that’s at least watchable, if not at all original. A generic, very Hong Kong-style crime drama that just squeezes an extra point thanks to some of the main performances and an all-stops-out action finale in an airport concourse, Death Stranding 困兽 is his most respectable undertaking since the Mainland-funded 3-D psycho-horror The Strange House 六世古宅 (2015), even though the utterly generic script doesn’t make the most of its promise. At RMB21 million, Mainland box office was pretty paltry – but bigger than Peng has been used to of late.

Peng, 58, is credited as co-writer on both the original script as well as the final one, along with another name, Mainland TV actor-turned-writer Wang Qian 王骞, 31, though the lead writer on the finished version appears to be Deng Andong 邓安东, 37, a Guangdong-born writer-director with experience in TVDs who has at least a couple of above-average horrors to his credit (Nightmare Call 诡梦凶铃, 2016; Bunshinsaba 笔仙咒怨, 2017). Whoever is mainly responsible for the script, there’s a visible disconnect between its central idea – a falling out between childhood friends when the sister of one of them is found dead – and its dramatic exposition. The main characters are inter-linked in interesting ways: the cop’s dead sister was the girlfriend of his longtime friend, who also once was a policeman; the villain’s wife used to be the girlfriend of the cop; and the longtime friend seems now to be in cahoots with the villain. But relatively little is made of these connections beyond the most literal: the cop has one heart-to-heart with the villain’s wife, there are several flashbacks to the childhood friends playing football together, and there’s a brief scene of the longtime friend and the cop’s sister together. The connections are also clumsily introduced and generate little dramatic tension.

Peng’s strengths have always been elsewhere than the scripts of his movies, and so it is here, with many of the actors and technicians working way above the level of the screenplay. Death Stranding is a good-looking film, thanks to d.p. Jian Liwei 简立威 (Go Lala Go! 杜拉拉升职记, 2010; A Busy Night 情况不妙, 2016; Papa 学爸, 2023); the score by Wang Jianwei 王建威 (Out of Inferno 3D; The Strange House) is both inventive and progressive; and some of the performances are very watchable. Especially notable is the textured playing by Hong Kong’s Wu Zhenyu 吴镇宇 [Francis Ng] as the old friend (with a subtle weariness recalling his cop in Death Notice 暗杀风暴, 2023, another genre exercise lifted by its actors) and the pure assurance of fellow Hong Kong veteran Zhang Zhaohui 张兆辉 [Eddie Cheung] as the silkily arrogant villain. As the hero, top-billed actor-singer Zhong Hanliang 钟汉良 [Wallace Chung], more used to TV, is a somewhat soft in such company.

Action, staged by Luo Yimin 罗义民 [Norman Law] with advice from his dad Luo Lixian 罗礼贤 [Bruce Law], is old school but effective enough, with a big shoot-out at the 60-minute mark of the hero escaping from the villain’s gunmen. Finally, however, the film comes up with something memorable in the nine-minute finale of car action, flying bodies and more gunplay staged in an airport concourse. It’s totally o.t.t. but the best thing in the whole picture. (As the extensive behind-the-scenes footage in the end titles reveals, the sequence was actually shot in a large studio with green screen, to totally believable effect.)

The film’s Chinese title means “Trapped Beast”. The meaningless English one appears to be a direct appropriation of a 2019 Japanese video game’s, even though the two have nothing at all in common.

CREDITS

Presented by Sichuan Monster Pictures (CN), Shanwei Film (Hong Kong) (HK), Shenzhen Lanqiong Film & Media Culture Communication (CN), Guangdong Tiger Pictures (CN), Sichuan Chengcheng Movie Culture & Media (CN). Produced by Sichuan Monster Pictures (CN).

Script: Deng Andong, Wang Qian, Peng Fa [Danny Pang]. Original script: Wang Qian, Peng Fa [Danny Pang], Zhang Yang. Photography: Jian Liwei. Editing: Peng Fa [Danny Pang]. Music: Wang Jianwei. Art direction: Shan Yishou. Costumes: Lv Chunmei. Styling: Feng Shasha. Sound: Nie Jirong, Ye Zhaoji. Action: Luo Yimin [Norman Law]. Action advice: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law]. Car stunts: Luo Yimin [Norman Law]. Visual effects: Zheng Wenzheng, Fan Chongzheng. Executive direction: Zhao Qizong.

Cast: Zhong Hanliang [Wallace Chung] (Jiang Wenfeng, senior CID inspector), Wu Zhenyu [Francis Ng] (Zuo Junzhe, Gaming Inspection Bureau head), Zhang Zhaohui [Eddie Cheung] (Wu Xin, Huasen Group chairman), Hu Xing’er (Zhu Li, Wu Xin’s wife), Zhao Yanguozhang (Kunca), Zhang Guoqiang (Li Ruiming/Li Sir, police chief), Ji Li (Li), Gu Bin (Yang Qi), Wang Keru (Jiang Wenqi), Zhou Kai (Qing), Yan Xiang (Feng Kun), Fei Qiming (Mu), Chen Baoyuan (Yan Zhengyang), Zhu Jianjun (Zhang, assistant), Zhang Yaotian (Xiao, councillor), Liu Yingyi (Yang Qi’s wife), Guo Qiucheng (Zhang Guanglin/Zhang Sir), Li Wenran (Li Yongchang), Yu Xiaodong (Lai Zhixiong), Jin Hui (Hu Jiahui), Lan Cheng (Chen Jiawei), Wan Da (young Jiang Wenfeng), Cen Guangming (young Zuo Junzhe), Sang Yuze (young Jiang Wenqi), Luo Chang (Zhou Yaosheng, Money-Laundering Crime Investigation Division secretary).

Release: China, 27 Oct 2023; Hong Kong, 23 Nov 2023.