Moscow Mission

93国际列车大劫案   莫斯科行动

China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 127 mins.

Director: Qiu Litao 邱礼涛 [Herman Yau].

Rating: 6/10.

Action-packed crime story, based on a real event, with Chinese police going undercover in period Moscow.

STORY

Russia, 1993. With the Chinese economy booming but the Russian economy in shambles, traders are flocking to Moscow on the K3 Beijing-Moscow train to pick up bargains. Passengers with pockets stuffed with cash are a magnet for bandits. On one trip a masked Chinese gang that uses a female scout, Li Suzhen (Wen Yongshan), to identify wealthy victims, violently raids the train en route, stealing cash and valuables, and the gang’s masked boss, D, aka Miao Qingshan (Huang Xuan), rapes a female passenger, Li Fang (Xu Xiaosa). In Beijing one of the gang, Ironhead (Aruna), is arrested by Cui Zhenhai (Zhang Hanyu), a no-nonsense captain in the Railway Police. The K3 robbery has harmed relations between Russia and China, so Cui Zhenhai is assigned to investigate it by taking a small undercover team, posing as debt collectors, to Moscow. He chooses new recruit Sun Jiandong (Bainarisu), a graduate of the Public Security University; Li Jian, from the Beijing Narcotics Division; and Kazimir Gang, from the CID in Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia province. The group take the K3, which is then robbed by elements of the same gang, including the female scout, Li Suzhen, and the gangster Whisker (Zhang Benyu), who is looking to go into business on his own. Pretending to be a rival gang, Cui Zhenhai and his team fight them off. In Moscow, they are met by Zhang (Chen Daming), the Chinese consul. Li Suzhen is met by her friend and admirer Vasily, aka Liu Yuhu (Liu Dehua), a fellow southern Chinese, who once worked with Miao Qingshan but is now a trader on his own; he warns her against her current boyfriend, Miao’s devoted no. 2, Miao Ziwen (Gu Jiacheng). Cui Zhenhai meets an old Russian friend, Sergey Pavlovich Grachev, who now works for Russia’s secret service, the FSB. He introduces him to Pasha, president of the China-Russia Trade Association, but tells Cui Zhenhai not to trust him. Miao Qingshan proposes to Liu Yuhu that they team up again to rob the cash-rich Water Palace Casino. Miao Qingshan needs Liu Yuhu’s knowledge of drainage systems, as the plan is to escape with the cash via the city’s sewer system underneath the casino. To make sure Liu Yuhu doesn’t betray him (as in the past), Miao Qingshan is holding his young daughter Lili as a hostage. Also in on the plan for 10% is the casino’s manager, Igor (Danny Ray), brother of Miao Qingshan’s girlfriend Marina (Zina Blahušová). Miao Qingshan then learns that Cui Zhenhai and his team are in Moscow, looking for him. But then Cui Zhenhai learns from Whisker about a big job involving the city’s sewers.

REVIEW

The fourth feature this year from super-prolific Hong Kong director Qiu Litao 邱礼涛 [Herman Yau] – whom even a worldwide pandemic seemingly cannot slow down – is a fairly straightforward crime story in which a small group of Chinese cops journey to Russia to hunt down the perpetrators of a major robbery on the Beijing-Moscow train known as the K3. Unlike his international drug-buster The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell 扫毒3   人在天涯, released two months earlier, Moscow Mission 93国际列车大劫案    莫斯科行动 has no elaborate flashback structure nor any great twists. But like WS3, it does have a standout performance of true villainy – by the generally low-key actor and former dancer Huang Xuan 黄轩 (Blind Massage 推拿, 2014; Extraordinary Mission 非凡任务, 2017; Youth 芳华, 2017) – that helps to jog things along on a character level between all the chases, shootouts and car stunts. The biggest earner by far of Qiu’s 2023 foursome, it’s taken a nice but not massive RMB658 million, placing it fourth in the October Golden Week battle, behind Under the Light 坚如磐石, The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan 前任4 英年早婚 and The Volunteers: To the War 志愿军 雄兵出击.

The film is based on a major robbery on the K3 in May 1993, an event that was big news at the time and embarrassed relations between China, whose economy was then booming, and Russia, whose economy was in a shambles after the recent collapse of the Soviet Union. The robbers were all Chinese and their targets the cash-rich passengers who were flocking to Russia to pick up bargains. Given the lackadaisical policing once the train entered Russia, robberies had been happening on the K3 for some time, with one journey seeing four robberies by separate gangs, starting on 26 May.

Moscow Mission is broadly based on that event, and is at least the third version to be filmed, following The Train Robbers 中俄列车大劫案 (1995), directed by Hong Kong’s Mai Dangjie 麦当杰 [Michael Mak] and starring Lv Liangwei 吕良伟 [Ray Lui], and the 31-part online drama series Operation Moscow 莫斯科行动 (2018), directed by Zhang Rui 张睿 and starring Xia Yu 夏雨 (see posters, left). The script by Chen Daming 陈大明 – better known as a director from the early 2000s, Manhole 井盖儿 (2003), One Foot off the Ground 鸡犬不宁 (2006), What Women Want 我知女人心 (2011) – is based on a reportage by Ai Anjun 艾安军, a onetime employee of the Beijing Railway Police, called 中俄国际列车大劫案全揭秘 (literally, “The Full Story of the Sino-Russian International Train Robbery”). Ai co-wrote the script of The Train Robbers, and Chen, who started as an actor, pops up in the current film as the Chinese consul in Moscow.

The actual case took years to finally resolve, but Chen’s script takes the basic facts and weaves a semi-fictional, fast-moving narrative that ties the whole thing up in one operation by a fearless railway investigator (Mainland actor Zhang Hanyu 张涵予, at his most rock-faced) and three colleagues, neatly ending on the R3 back to Beijing. (Moscow Mission must be the only movie to have its action climax in a chassis-and-wheel-changing railway shed.) Though the production is 100% Mainland financed, Qiu again uses some of his regular Hong Kong crew, like d.p. Chen Guanghong 陈广鸿[Joe Chan], musician Mai Zhenhong 麦振鸿 [Brother Hung] and action director Li Zhongzhi 李忠志 [Nicky Li]. Hong Kong’s Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau], with whom Qiu has worked profitably in recent years on the Shock Wave 拆弹专家 films, is billed as creative producer 监制 alongside former China Film boss Han Sanping 韩三平, and takes a typically self-effacing role alongside Huang as a kind-of-honourable baddie. His scenes alongside Hong Kong actress Wen Yongshan 文咏珊 [Janice Man], as a gangster’s moll he’s fond of, are in Cantonese, with both playing southerners.

The film gets straight into the action with the robbery itself, followed by Cui Zhenhai (Zhang Hanyu) being assigned to the case and choosing three colleagues, including an intellectual newbie, to help him. Thirteen minutes into the movie, they’re already on the way to Moscow on the K3, which is then robbed again by a member of the master villain’s gang trying to go freelance. The action basically doesn’t let up from then on, with Cui Zhenhai & Co. posing as debt collectors from China and aided by an old Russian friend now working for Russia’s secret service, the FSB. It’s actually tensions within the gang itself, whose ruthless head Miao Qingshan (Huang) has a particular liking for violent rape and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, that help Cui & Co. to do their job. Chief among those tensions is the relationship between Miao Qingshan and his old colleague Liu Yuhu (Liu) that simmers with resentment.

Huang’s portrait of smiling psychopath Miao Qingshan is a study in minimalist acting, powering standoffs between him and the iron-jawed Cui Zhenhai. The soft-spoken Liu comes through in the latter stages – with a surprisingly touching finale – but few of the others make much impression on an emotional level apart from Mainland actor/boybander Gu Jiacheng 谷嘉诚 as the villain’s grovelling sidekick. Early scenes make it look as if the newbie member of Cui Zhenhai’s team will develop some character, but like many supporting roles he’s lost amid all the action or has had his role cut back during post-production.

The action setpieces – including a standoff in an opera house, a motorcycle chase in the city’s sewers, and a shootout and attempted escape on a fighter jet at an abandoned rocket base – are inventively staged, though, like the whole film, they’re sometimes so tightly cut as to be incomprehensible. Mai’s music is again unmemorable but Chen’s photography and the period design are both spot on in an unflashy way, helped by some documentary footage from the period.

The film shot from 31 Jul to 6 Oct 2022, with Harbin, northeast China, standing in for period Moscow.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai CMC Pictures Beijing Branch Office (CN), Gravity Pictures (CN), Beijing Super Lion Culture Communication (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Shanghai CMC Pictures (CN).

Script: Chen Daming. Reportage: Ai Anjun. Photography: Chen Guanghong [Joe Chan]. Music: Mai Zhenhong [Brother Hung]. Art direction: Zhao Hai. Styling: Li Zhou. Action: Li Zhongzhi [Nicky Li]. Visual effects: Li Zifei, Li Shuai. Executive direction: Wen Zhenwei.

Cast: Zhang Hanyu (Cui Zhenhai), Liu Dehua [Andy Lau] (Liu Yuhu/Vasily), Huang Xuan (Miao Qingshan/D), Wen Yongshan (Li Suzhen), Gu Jiacheng (Zhang Ziwen/Mao Ziwen), Zhao Bingrui (Mao Xiaoming), Bainarisu (Sun Jiandong), Zhang Benyu (Yizuomao/Whisker), Shang Yuxian (Zhao Na), Xu Xiaosa (Li Fang), Han Qiuchi (Zhu Banxian/Sage Zhu), He Shengming (Jin), Aruna (Tietou/Ironhead), Shi Zhaoqi (Tao, section head), Shi Liang (Zhuo, bureau head), Zhu Zhu (Lin Yanni), Chen Daming (Zhang, Chinese consul in Moscow), Ji Huanbo (Shetou/Snakehead), Zina Blahušová (Marina), Danny Ray (Igor, Marina’s brother).

Release: China, 29 Sep 2023.