The Tipping Point
扫黑行动
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 97 mins.
Director: Lin Delu 林德禄.
Rating: 6/10.
Standard Mainland anti-corruption drama that has an above-average script and some colourful performances.
STORY
Wanhai city, Lingzhong province, somewhere in China, the present day. Following the start of a major crackdown on crime and institutional corruption ordered from a provincial level, Cheng Rui (Zhou Yiwei), the son of a heroic policeman who dies 15 years ago, arrives in Wanhai, where the rapid growth of the banking and financial sector has seen spiralling crime. Cheng Rui is welcomed by Du Yulin (Wang Jinsong), veteran deputy head of the city’s police department, who assigns him to work as a deputy under the CID’s anti-corruption squad leader, Lv Peng (Shao Bing). Cheng Rui is immediately assigned the case of a Wanhai university student, Zhao Xuening, who has seemingly fallen to her death from a building. Cheng Rui questions her best friend and roommate An Ran (Zhang Yishang), who says Zhao Xuening was not the type to commit suicide; he also questions her tutor, economics professor Zhao Xianyu (Zhang Zhilin), who has business interests on the side. When Zhao Xuening’s parents are harrassed by the moneylenders their daughter was in hock to, Cheng Rui and his team manage to arrest them. As the team investigates, it finds that Zhao Xuening had taken out seven different loans totalling RMB900,000, and that the people behind the loan companies were all the same. Meanwhile, Zhou Tong (Qin Hailu), head of loan company Blue Sea Wealth, orders her team of enforcers to call in all loans by whatever means possible. Cheng Rui is pressured by his ultimate boss, Wanhai anti-corruption team leader Chen Guodong (Zhang Xilin), to close the case as quickly as possible, as all eyes are on the city. Cheng Rui suspects that Hou Wenwu (Wang Xun), general manager of Xinxing Property Insurance, is somehow involved but he can’t quite prove it. Both Du Yulin and Lv Peng urge him to follow procedure and find the proof first – an approach also underlined by public prosecutor Shen Shuyuan (Dong Xuan). Hou Wenwu has close business ties with – and is currently blackmailing – prominent businessman An Yiming (Zeng Zhiwei), chairman of Haichuang Group and husband of Zhou Tong. An Yiming, who’s also friends with Zhao Xianyu, has long been rumoured to have underworld connections and has just celebrated getting a large bank loan for Haichuang. Cheng Rui and his team visit Hou Wenwu at his home after An Ran tells them she just found his business card in one of Zhao Xuening’s books. An Yiming is just leaving Hou Wenwu’s home as they arrive, and he sees An Ran, who turns out to be his daughter, who arrived with Cheng Rui, waiting in a car outside. He tells his daughter to drive him home; she immediately starts being suspicious of her father. That evening, Hou Wenwu is killed at his home by a masked female assassin who escapes just as Cheng Rui and his team arrive to question him again. And then Zhou Tong’s elder brother, Zhou Shenghua (Lv Liangwei), comes out of prison after serving 15 years on An Yiming’s behalf. He has a major grudge to settle with An Yiming, who doesn’t even turn up to welcome him. Instead, An Yiming’s second wife, Zhou Tong, meets her brother and gives him RMB200,000. But Zhou Shenghua wants much more to keep his mouth shut.
REVIEW
Following his money-spinning ICAC alphabet franchise with star Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo], which grossed some RMB2.18 billion from Z Storm Z风暴 (2014) to G Storm G风暴 (2021), Hong Kong director Lin Delu 林德禄 moves across the border to tackle Mainland anti-corruption with The Tipping Point 扫黑行动. It’s as equally rooted in local crime-fighting cliches as the Storm quintet was in Hong Kong ones; but at least it has a literate script that chews over some of the issues while maintaining tension over who is covering for whom. Mainland box office was only a tepid RMB174 million, so another franchise looks unlikely to develop – though Z Storm only took a weedy RMB95 million at the time.
Though it’s entirely Mainland funded, the film has a familiar cross-border flavour, using some key crew from Hong Kong – d.p. Chen Guanghong 陈广鸿 [Joe Chan] (P Storm P风暴, 2019; G Storm), plus regular editor Pan Xiongyao 潘雄耀 and stylist Cai Yanwen 蔡彦雯 – as well as several Hong Kong actors among the leads, including the ubiquitous Zeng Zhiwei 曾志伟 [Eric Tsang], who practically steals the show as an oily businessman with a cobra smile. Among the supports is late character actor Wu Mengda 吴孟达 [Ng Man-tat], in his last performance (as a friendly old restaurateur) prior to his death in Feb 2021. On the writing side, Storm regular Huang Haohua 黄浩华 is absent; instead, the three lead writers include Guan Yanjie 管彦杰 (a Mainland police officer who co-wrote TVD crime drama The Scale of Desire 杠杆, 2022) and Tong Mu 佟睦 (whose small-screen action dramas include online series Crime Crackdown 扫黑风暴, 2021). The four additional writers include Hong Kong’s Liu Guowei 刘国伟, an all-purpose veteran who directed several forgettable potboilers during the 1990s.
If it wasn’t already clear from the generic Chinese title (“Operation Anti-Corruption”), the film’s opening scenes, as police officers are lectured by political high-ups about the need to crack down on criminals (and especially those shielding them), directly signal that Tipping Point is going to be pretty unchallenging fare. As a new officer sent to join the team in the fictional city of Wanhai, Cheng Rui (Mainland actor Zhou Yiwei 周一围, now 40 but still boyish-looking) is a standard hard-jawed hero, forging ahead even as he comes up against official interference on one side and personal stonewalling on another. Zhou just about manages to hold his own against a strong supporting cast but it’s a step down from more colourful outings like his psycho gangster in Blood of Youth 少年 (2016), commanding journalist in The Insanity 你好，疯子！ (2016) or cocky blackmailer in Brotherhood of Blades 绣春刀 (2014).
Where Tipping Point scores, and earns an extra point above being just a rote command movie, is in its script, which, as it fans out from the case of a university student’s apparent suicide, manages to create a web of interconnected stories that hold the attention – though more from their scheming characters than any clever plot twists. This, combined with Zhou’s less-than-commanding performance, turns the whole thing into a large ensemble movie, with over-sized personalities like Zeng’s brash entrepreneur all having their time in the sun.
On the criminal side, experienced Mainland actress Qin Hailu 秦海璐 gets at least one nice setpiece (regaling her collection of shady debt collectors), the ever-shifty Wang Xun 王迅 briefly shines as a smoothly corrupt businessman, and Hong Kong’s Lv Liangwei 吕良伟 [Ray Lui] gives Zeng a run for his money as an over-the-top ex-con with payback on his mind. On the police side, Wang Jinsong 王劲松 is suspiciously friendly as one of Cheng Rui’s bosses, and ditto Shao Bing 邵兵 in an underwritten role as Cheng Rui’s immediate superior; as a public prosecutor who knows her stuff, a glammed-down Dong Xuan 董璇 holds up the film’s small female contingent with poise, whereas Zhang Yishang 张艺上 (the tomboyish daughter in Railroad Tigers 铁道飞虎, 2016) is little more than standard pretty as the dead girl’s questioning BFF. Looking rather uneasy throughout is Hong Kong’s Zhang Zhilin 张智霖 [Julian Cheung] as the dead girl’s university prof with a sideline. The script (and the film’s English title) seems to want to draw a parallel between one of the subjects he’s teaching (critical-point theory) and the main plot; but the idea isn’t really developed, and Zhang and his role are left stranded.
Tautly paced, with no spare flesh, Tipping Point passes the time in an entertaining way and has some powerful moments. But thanks to the lack of a finale worthy of its multi-stranded plot, it ends up as a superior by-the-book crime drama. Much the same could be said for the weaker entries in Lin’s Storm quintet.
CREDITS
Presented by CBLM (Shenzhen) (CN), Poly Film Investment (CN), China Chang’an Publishing Media (CN), Cultural Investment Holdings (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Grand Triumph (CN), Beijing Joy Spreader Entertainment (CN), Beijing Yaolai Film & TV Cultural Media (CN), Zhijiang Film Group (CN), Shenzhen Jiahuang Media (CN), Beijing Eryueniao Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Yansai Tourism Investment (CN). Produced by Beijing Grand Triumph (CN).
Script: Guan Yanjie, Gao Yang, Tong Mu, Zhao Li, Xu Yiwen, Liu Guowei, Fan Guanqiao. Photography: Chen Guanghong [Joe Chan]. Editing: Pan Xiongyao. Music direction: Shu Nan. Art direction: Li Jingwen. Costumes: Song Nan. Styling: Cai Yanwen. Sound: Cheng Zhijie, Zhang Zhen’an. Action: Gu Xuanzhao. Car stunts: Wu Haitang. Visual effects: Li Tao, Tan Wenlong. Executive direction: Xu Jianghua.
Cast: Zhou Yiwei (Cheng Rui), Qin Hailu (Zhou Tong), Zhang Zhilin [Julian Cheung] (Zhao Xianyu, economics professor), Wang Jinsong (Du Yulin, deputy head of police department), Zeng Zhiwei [Eric Tsang] (An Yiming), Lv Liangwei [Ray Lui] (Zhou Shenghua), Wu Mengda [Ng Man-tat] (Da, restaurateur), Wang Xun (Hou Wenwu, Xinxing Property Insurance general manager), Shao Bing (Lv Peng, CID squad leader), Cao Weiyu (Li Qiang, chief of police), Ma Yuke (Zhang Bing, Zhou Shenghua’s sidekick), Zhang Yishang (An Ran, An Yiming’s daughter), Dong Xuan (Shen Shuyuan, public prosecutor), Cao Chengfang (Tang Hao), Lin Jiachuan (Jia Chuan, police officer), Xiao Yang (Xiao, police officer), Zhang Xilin (Chen Guodong, Wanhai anti-corruption team leader), Liu Zhibing (supervisor of police direction department), He Zhengjun (He Changming, Lingzhong province anti-corruption team leader), Hu Yajie (Zheng Guowei, vice-secretary of Lingzhong provincial party committee), Chen Yuxian (Gao Yue, police officer), Shao Jiarong (Guan Jie, police officer).
Release: China, 11 Nov 2022.