All Suspects

全员嫌疑人

China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 95 mins.

Director: Fu Dong 傅鸫.

Rating: 5/10.

An okay period whodunit with two good leads but let down by a total lack of atmosphere in photography and design.

STORY

A remote location in some mountains in China, 1937. Early one morning Song Zhiwen (Xiaoshenyang) and Yamei (Qin Hailu) meet on the balcony of Wuzhixiang guesthouse during a pre-breafast smoke. She recognises him as a police detective from a photo. Afterwards, while seeing if breakfast is ready, she finds the guesthouse’s owner, Jiang Tian (Wang Ziyi), dead on the floor from a gunshot. Song Zhiwen calls in the death to detective Li Dongtian (Zhou Rui) at the nearest town’s police station. (Two days earlier, Song Zhiwen, the least remarkable member of a detective squad, had decided to take a weekend’s holiday at a quiet guesthouse in the mountains to celebrate the squad winning an award. An avid reader of detective fiction, he had planned to finish reading Great Detective Joe 大侦探乔警长 by Meng Zhu 梦竹. When he had arrived at night, it was snowing. Already there were two other guests, Yamei and young pianist Huang Muzi [Cao Enqi], the latter from Jiangsu province. The owner, and his assistant, Jiang Min [Jin Mengyangzi], who seems to be his younger sister, had been waiting for one other guest, Ma [Dong Chang], to arrive before starting dinner. In the event, Ma had arrived in the middle of dinner, a taciturn figure with long straggly hair, glasses and a limp. Jiang Tian had recognised him but said nothing. Later that evening, Jiang Tian, clearly concerned about something, had embraced Jiang Min but she had pushed him away. An amateur painter whose works were on every wall of the house, he had a safe that was packed with cash and also owned a gun. Huang Muzi had also seemed on edge about something and kept fingering a crucifix he wore round his neck. Jiang Tian had come to repair something in Song Zhiwen’s room and, before going to sleep, Song Zhiwen had gone downstairs for a nightcap. Yamei was talking on the phone but quickly hung up. Later, everyone had gone to sleep. Next morning, Song Zhiwen’s alarm had woken him at 07:00. As he got up he didn’t notice that the painting on his wall had changed from one of flowers to one of the blue sea.) On the carpet by Jiang Tian’s body are five crosses drawn in blood – a clue, suggests Yamei, by the dying man about his killer’s identity. Jiang Tian also has his own gun in his right hand, and his safe is open – and empty. Song Zhiwen finds a bullet in the corner of a painting on the wall. He then decides to cook breakfast for himself, Yamei, Huang Muzi and Ma. Jiang Min has gone missing. Detective Li Dongtian calls Song Zhiwen to say he will have to handle the case on his own for the time being, as the bridge to the guesthouse has collapsed. Song Zhiwen asks him to check whether the gun used in a famous armed robbery of Zhidong Bank five years ago was a Luger P08. Song Zhiwen deduces that Jiang Tian was murdered after 03:00, but none of the guests were woken by a gunshot. Li Dongtian calls back to confirm that the gun used in the armed bank robbery was a Luger P08, and the suspects were thought to be two men and a woman. Yamei then reveals she is Amy Lin, aka Meng Zhu, a well-known writer of detective fiction and the author of the novel Song Zhiwen is reading. She shows him a notebook of her extensive research into the armed bank robbery that she undertook for professional reasons. Song Zhiwen and Yamei deduce that, as it stopped snowing at 03:00, and there are no fresh footprints outside, the killer is still in the guesthouse. During a search of the house, they find the body of Jiang Min, shot through the heart, in her wardrobe.

REVIEW

An Agatha Christie-like whodunit set in a snowbound guesthouse where a detective happens to be holidaying, All Suspects 全员嫌疑人 is okay on a plotting level and given some oomph by comedian Xiaoshenyang 小沈阳 as the pompous cop and actress Qin Hailu 秦海璐 as a crime writer who’s also staying there. However, this first theatrical feature by Beijing-born Fu Dong 傅鸫, 51, a sometime art director, is strangely let down by a total lack of any atmosphere, in both the photography and the design, and saddled with a final 20 minutes that are decidedly lame after the revelation of the killer. Mainland box office was a nothing RMB22 million.

The film is adapted from a 2020 book, ワトソン力 (literally, “The Watson Force”), by Japanese mystery author Oyama Seiichiro 大山诚一郎, a collection of short stories in which detective Wado Soshi 和户宋志 solves murders in closed locations (see cover, left). The screenplay is based on the first story, 赤い十字架  (“[The] Red Cross[es]”), reportedly the best of the bunch. The book was published in China in Oct 2021 under the title 全员嫌疑人 (“Everyone Is a Suspect”), which the film has also used. The film’s poster was also based on the cover of the Chinese translation (see left, below).

The script by Shanghai-born writer-director A Gan 阿甘 (pen name of Liu Xiaoguang 刘晓光, aka Kiefer Liu) – for whom Fu previously worked as art director on two movies, including offbeat comedy Two Stupid Eggs 大电影2.0    两个傻瓜的荒唐事 (2007) – follows the original story pretty closely, even down to using some of the Japanese names to inspire the Chinese ones. But it relocates events from modern-day Japan to 1937 Republican China (in an obvious nod to its Christie-like flavour) and also comes up with a second murderer after the first has been revealed. Now 65, A Gan – who takes his pen name from the Chinese one for Forrest Gump – hasn’t directed a film since the disastrous VFX-athon Brothers 钢刀 (2016), which took almost six years from start of shooting to final release, and then crashed and burned at the box office. On All Suspects he takes a creative producer 监制 as well as a script credit, and his touch can be felt all over the lighthearted whodunit, though not always to its benefit.

Xiaoshenyang is well cast as the self-important detective who – as he tells the audience in occasional asides that aren’t regular enough to work – is the least gifted of a star team of detectives but has what he calls the “Watson Force” 华生力, a power (named after Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick) that radiates out and improves others’ deductive powers while he himself remains out of the spotlight. Xiaoshenyang’s explanation of this piece of nonsense and the reaction of Qin’s character (who thinks he’s just a pompous fan of detective fiction who got lucky) are priceless as the two set out to solve the mystery.

Unfortunately the film doesn’t sustain the promise of the first half. The other two suspects – a young pianist and a bedraggled drifter – are uninteresting and the deductive leaps by Xiaoshenyang’s detective hardly support the idea that he’s basically an arrogant nerd. But it’s the look of the film that is its biggest drawback, especially surprising for a former art director who’s worked on several big costume movies, including The Monkey King 西游记之大闹天空 (2014) and The Monkey King 2 西游记之孙悟空三打白骨精 (2016), both directed by Hong Kong’s Zheng Baorui 郑保瑞 [Soi Cheang] and produced by A Gan.

Not only does the period setting look too fake and filmy, but in the over-clean photography by d.p. Fang Yaxi 方亚熙 (director of 2012 horror Any Other Side 夜店诡谈) and unimaginative direction by Fu it has no atmosphere at all – something that’s underlined by several of the many flashbacks being for some reason in an exotic blue-red blur. As a result the dialogue has to work extra hard to maintain the audience’s interest – which is difficult, given that most of it is procedural detection and the plot, though okay, lacks really waah! twists. The copious score by Tian Liang 田亮 sometimes adds atmosphere (notably in flashbacks) but also is sometimes unsuitable (in a distracting way).

Meanwhile, Fu has also directed the online costume fantasy Love, Death and Cat 猫妖奇谭, starring Zhang Rongrong 张榕容 [Sandrine Pinna] and released in spring 2024, and mecha fantasy The Final Strike 最后一击, begun in 2021 and reportedly wrapped in the summer of 2024.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing AMP Pictures (CN). Produced by Xi’an GS Pictures (CN), Beijing AMP Pictures (CN).

Script: A Gan. Short story: Oyama Seiichiro. Photography: Fang Yaxi. Editing: Li Xiaogang. Music: Tian Liang. Art direction: Zhou Songtao. Styling: Wang Fanglan. Sound: Zhang Meng, Wu Shuai, Wang Chen. Executive direction: Xiong Xiaoping.

Cast: Xiaoshenyang (Song Zhiwei), Qin Hailu (Yamei/Meng Zhu), Cao Enqi (Huang Muzi), Wang Ziyi (Jiang Tian), Dong Chang (Ma/Wang Xilai), Jin Mengyangzi (Jiang Min), Tao Hai (Huang, bank chairman), Zhou Rui (Li Dongtian), Lin Kaiyang (young Song Zhiwei), Zhu Yufei (young Jiang Tian), Yu Yihan (young Jiang Min), Ding Junbo (young Wang Xilai), Yu Xiaoyiming (young Huang Muzi), Weng Changte (police-station chief), Chu Jungang (schoolteacher).

Release: China, 15 Sep 2024.