Hunt Down
长安道
China/Hong Kong, 2019, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 111 mins.
Director: Li Jun 李骏.
Rating: 7/10.
Father/daughter drama-cum-crime puzzler is strongly cast and written, with a challenging structure.
STORY
Xijing city, somewhere in central China, the present day. While redecorating his old home for his daughter Zhao Hongyu (Jiao Junyan) to live in, respected history professor and TV presenter Wan Zhenggang (Fan Wei) is surprised by his second wife, Lin Baiyu (Chen Shu), who’s been missing for three days. With a shotgun in her hands, she claims he’d betrayed her over the Tomb Nine case. The two fight and Lin Baiyu is about to shoot Wan Zhengguang when Zhao Hongyu arrives and shoots her with a gun. As she falls, Lin Baiyu shoots Zhao Hongyu, seriously wounding her; a tearful Wan Zhenggang carries his daughter to hospital but she dies. (Some time earlier, Wang Zhenggang had taken custody of Zhao Hongyu from a detention centre, after finally tracking her down after a decade. Her probation officer was Shao Kuancheng [Song Yang]. A punkish tomboy, she had a history of multiple offences for fighting, and had never forgiven her father for abandoning her and her mother and marrying the ambitious Lin Baiyu for the sake of his career. A former journalist, TV host and professional markswoman who’s also her husband’s agent, Lin Baiyu hadn’t been warned about Zhao Hongyu’s arrival at her expensive home, and the two women immediately took a dislike to each other. At dinner that evening Lin Tao [Tian Zheng], an art dealer friend of Lin Baiyu, had offered Zhao Hongyu a secretarial job at his gallery and she had reluctantly accepted. Lin Tao was actually Lin Baiyu’s lover, and the pair were planning an illegal antiques operation; Wan Zhenggang had told his wife he didn’t want any part of it. [Zhao Hongyu is actually an undercover police officer brought over from the Narcotics Division because of her relation to Wan Zhenggang to investigate Lin Tao, Lin Baoyu and gangster archaeologist Guo Debao (Zhou Bo), who are suspected of an antiques smuggling operation known as Tomb Nine; Shao Kuancheng is actually Zhao Hongyu’s police colleague from the Cultural Relics Division.] At home, Lin Baiyu had caught Zhao Hongyu taking an ancient jade bracelet from Wan Zhenggang’s office and reported her to the police; Wan Zhenggang had brushed the event off but Zhao Hongyu had suspected he could, after all, be involved in the Tomb Nine case. Shao Kuancheng had reminded her that her job was to investigate Lin Tao, not her father, however much she hated him. But various events had then combined to force Wan Zhenggang to take a major decision.)
REVIEW
A father/daughter story framed as an offbeat crime drama, Hunt Down 长安道 is a precision-tooled slice of entertainment whose main flaw is not knowing when to quit. The third feature by respected TVD director Li Jun 李骏, 53, following his iffy South Korea-set terrorist thriller Tik Tok 惊天大逆转 (2016) and a much earlier work, it’s a complexly structured drama that keeps the audience on its toes by continuously sliding back and forth in time, manages to be about several things at the same time, and has a central ensemble of actors at the top of their game. With some tightening in the latter stages, the film would have rated 8/10; as it is, it still comes very close. Mainland box office, alas, was only a feeble RMB23 million.
The script by Li and Ding Xiaoyang 丁小洋 (comedy-horror Thrilling Eve 夜幕惊魂, 2013; alien comedy Impossible 不可思异, 2015; Tik Tok) is based on a 2013 novel by well-known writer Hai Yan 海岩, aka Si Haiyan 佀海岩, 65, several of whose works have been adapted for the big screen (Jade Goddess of Mercy 玉观音, 2003; Crimes of Passion 一场风花雪月的事, 2013), as well as TV, by himself and others. Hai Yan’s novels often blend crime and love stories, and Hunt Down is in that genre, except that this time the love is a dysfunctional one between a famous history professor and the daughter he abandoned for a second marriage and his career.
The original novel, 长安盗 (literally, “Chang’an Robbers”, see cover, left), was inspired by a real-life tomb-robbing case. The film, which changes the character 盗 dào (“robbers”) into the homonym 道 (“way”), sticks to roughly the same plot – as well as exhaustively detailing the true case in a postscript – but scrambles the timeline into a puzzler that’s part of the movie’s attraction. Opening with a multiple shooting, the script moves around in time to fill in the background and, after all the characters’ actions have been explained, finally show what really happened that day.
During the first 20 minutes the audience is largely kept in the dark about the main protagonists. After a major revelation about the daughter – initially presented as a punkish juvenile delinquent – the story’s criminal plot is developed alongside the father/daughter relationship, which gradually blooms from hate through suspicion into love, with the father’s guilt coming to the fore. One problem is that the main plot is effectively over by the 70-minute mark and there’s a dramatic dip as the film changes gear back to explaining the opening sequence. Just when that’s been successfully accomplished, the film adds an unnecessary b&w scene centred on the father’s tearful guilt plus “what is the truth?”, as well as a whole postscript about China’s continuing struggle to retrieve cultural artifacts smuggled overseas.
None of that completely undoes the movie’s merits, which are considerable. Li directs with great precision, both visual and structural, flashing backwards and forwards with no on-screen captions but always in a clear and incremental way. Holding everything together is the lead playing, anchored by veteran comedian Fan Wei 范伟 (in his best straight role since Someone to Talk To 一句顶一万句, 2016) as the ever-placatory professor and supported by actresses Jiao Junyan 焦俊艳, 32, as his daughter and Chen Shu 陈数, 42, as his ambitious second wife. Jiao (the aspiring singer-songwriter in Midnight Diner 深夜食堂, 2019; best friend in When Larry Met Mary 陆垚知马俐, 2016) is especially good, sliding easily between hard-nosed tomboy and conflicted daughter, while TV/theatre actress Chen (the bitchy diva in The Second Woman 情谜, 2012; ball-breaking agent in Fall in Love Like a Star 怦然星动, 2015) is super-classy as the prof’s ambitious, driven wife. (Li had just directed her in the lead in the acclaimed period TVD Peace Hotel 和平饭店, 2018.) In the other major role, Song Yang 宋洋, 36, known for the arty wuxia movies of Xu Haofeng 徐浩峰 (The Sword Identity 倭寇的踪迹, 2011, etc.) as well as the stylish crime drama Wrath of Silence 暴烈无声 (2017), displays an easy chemistry with Jiao.
Clean widescreen photography by Zhang Nan 张楠, seamless editing by South Korea’s Choi Min-yeong 최민영 (Late Autumn 만추, 2010; Snowpiercer, 2013; Tik Tok) and a finely crafted, largely string score complete a good technical package, flawed only by an ill-advised burst of VFX in a tomb-discovery scene. Set in the fictional city of Xijing, the film was shot in and around Xi’an, central China, whose ancient name was Chang’an.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Hairun Pictures (CN), HR Pictures (Hong Kong) (HK), Beijing Asia Rim Vision Picture (CN). Produced by Purple Wave (Wuxi) (CN), Anji Junchi Film & Culture Studio (CN).
Script: Ding Xiaoyang, Li Jun. Novel: Hai Yan. Photography: Zhang Nan. Editing: Choi Min-yeong. Music supervision: Hanno Yoshihiro, Hao Yigang. Art direction: Xian Ruiqing. Styling: Jiang Feidie. Sound: Xu Chen. Action: Kim Shin-ung. Visual effects: Zhang Chunmiao.
Cast: Fan Wei (Wan Zhenggang), Song Yang (Shao Kuancheng), Jiao Junyan (Zhao Hongyu/Wan Jun), Chen Shu (Lin Baiyu), Yu Ailei (Yang Jian), Zhang Zhaohui [Eddie Cheung] (jade buyer), Shen Yao (Lu Yi, Shao Kuancheng’s wife), Tian Zheng (Lin Tao), Shi Liang (Li Jin), Qi Zhi (Ma, police captain), Shi Yanjing (police department head), Wang Jian (police chief), Zhi Tingyun (young Zhao Hongyu), Zhang Baolong (young Wan Zhenggang), Guo Xiaoqi (Wan Zhenggang’s first wife), Sun Chaosheng (TV station director), Zhou Bo (Guo Debao), Gao Guo (Liu, police captain), Da Li (Wang, antiques client), Wang Yiquan (Jing, policeman), Xuan Ke (Mao Jr.), Tian Lu (Mao Sr.), Mao Aining (Xiaoliu, maid), Ma Cancan (Ma, forensic pathologist).
Release: China, 15 Nov 2019; Hong Kong, tba.