Guns and Roses
黄金大劫案
China, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 110 mins.
Director: Ning Hao 宁浩.
Rating: 7/10.
Busy but uneven heist movie by Mainland director Ning Hao, set in 1930s Manchuria under the Japanese.
STORY
A city in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, mid/late 1930s. Impoverished thief and amateur magician Xiao Dongbei (Lei Jiayin), 28, from Taiyuan, is arrested by the police after stealing some money from the collection box of the local priest (Fan Wei). Temporarily imprisoned, he’s put in the same cell as Bai Murong (Sun Chun), an anti-Japanese revolutionary who was arrested in a cinema after receiving a message from a fellow revolutionary (Huang Bo). Xiao Dongbei steals his shoes and in them later finds the message: “The gold will arrive on the 10th at Yamato Bank.” Xiao Dongbei is then kidnapped by a group of revolutionaries, led by film actress Fang Die (Tao Hong), and forced to reveal the contenst of the message. Fang Die tells him the eight tons of gold will be used by the Japanese to buy weapons from the Italians, in a deal to be signed by visiting Italian ambassador DeNiro (Jean-Michel Casanovas). The revolutionaries, all working as film-makers, decide to steal it on its way to the bank. Xiao Dongbei is eventually taken on as Fang Die’s driver but almost compromises a mission one night when the gang tries to steal the map of the gold convoy from the home of bank president Gu Xianming (Yang Xinming), a Chinese collaborator. Later, Xiao Dongbei redeems himself by getting the map after he by chance saves Gu Xianming’s daughter, Gu Xixi (Cheng Yuanyuan), during an air raid. As the revolutonaries are all film-makers, they decide to use some movie artifice during the hijacking of the convoy. They successfully make off with the gold, but Japanese security chief Toriyama Konosuke (Yamazaki Keiichi) is hot on their trail after Xiao Dongbei’s greed gets the best of him.
REVIEW
The first released film by director Ning Hao 宁浩 in three years – the intervening No Man’s Land 无人区 (2013), a violent action-adventure set in Xinjiang, having been refused a certificate by SARFT [as of mid-2012] – Guns and Roses 黄金大劫案 finds the 35-year-old director in somewhat mellower mood than in his previous caper comedies Crazy Stone 疯狂的石头 (2006) and Crazy Racer 疯狂的赛车 (2008), though the film has the same kind of black humour, rough northern wit, twisty-turny plotting, and exaggerated characters. Apart from being Ning’s first period movie, and with a much more regular studio-style look, the major difference from his Crazy comedies is the pacing, which is much less frantic, and the underlying message that greed is not good when the country’s well-being is at stake.
Simply by having Lei Jiayin 雷佳音 – a good-looking, 28-year-old TV actor – instead of goofy regular Huang Bo 黄渤 play the main character of a money-obsessed petty thief, Guns becomes a much less manic movie. And though the plot has plenty of incident and reversals, it doesn’t have the same kind of complex, corkscrew construction as the earlier two films – or, alas, their holding power.
In fact, in its early stages, Guns looks like being a fun but pretty conventional gold-heist movie set during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the mid/late ’30s. In its well-constructed first half-hour the script (credited to six writers, including Hong Kong’s Ruan Shisheng 阮世生 [James Yuen]) gradually steers the lead, amoral thief Xiao Dongbei, towards the kernel of the plot as it carefully sets up supporting characters who will come into play later: a local priest, dryly played by comedian Fan Wei 范伟; Xiao Dongbei’s crazed father, a onetime Boxer Rebellion hero who still has a pigtail (Guo Tao 郭涛, unrecognisable from Crazy Stone); their appalling landlady; a corrupt police chief (Liu Hua 刘桦, wittily stone-faced); and so on. There’s even a cameo from Huang, in a sequence set in a cinema which lays a seed for the subsequent appearance of the film-making revolutionaries once the main plot of the gold heist finally hoves into view.
Thereafter, however, the script loses its control. For a start, the idea of having the revolutionaries’ leader a well-known actress and her accomplices a travelling crew of film-makers is never properly developed. Tao Hong 陶虹 (A Beautiful New World 美丽新世界, 1998; Unfinished Girl 第三个人, 2007) gives her role the full hard-bitten movie star bit but doesn’t get enough later scenes to flesh out her character, and her crew remains largely anonymous. That’s partly a result of the plot being so busy from thereon, with the ups-and-downs and other characters (including a Japanese security chief, leeringly played by Yamazaki Keiichi 山崎敬一, and Cheng Yuanyuan 程媛媛 as a collaborationist’s cutie daughter) all bustling for a place in the running-time.
The actual robbery takes place around the hour mark, with at least another half-hour after that of more plot and a grand finale which introduces yet more people. Ning and his writers haven’t mastered the trick of drawing involving characters and mood alongside a busy plot – something which made another anti-Japanese caper An Inaccurate Memoir 匹夫 (2012, released the same day as Guns and Roses) so enjoyable, though a much smaller earner at the box-office.
The film is at its best in more intimate, two-handed scenes (such as Lei and Fan) and splashy action sequences (like the finale); in sequences between these two extremes, the movie often lacks forward momentum, and the second half, in general, doesn’t seem sure where to throw the dramatic emphasis. Individual gags, however, are generally inventive – especially one involving a way to hide out in a church from pursuing Japanese, and another involving Xiao Dongbei’s wandering hands at a dinner-party. Throughout, Lei, in his first leading role on the big screen, is impressive, with an easy, likeable innocence that contrasts with the rougher types who surround him.
Widescreen photography by Zhao Fei 赵非 (Let the Bullets Fly 让子弹飞, 2010) is more richly appointed in interiors than exteriors. Editing supervised by ZhangJiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai], one of several Hong Kongers on the technical side, is fine. However, the choice of classical music for some scenes seems bizarre: Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance for an air raid, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for a tragic moment, and Chinese opera music for the action finale. The Chinese title simply means “The Gold Robbery”.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Galloping Horse Film (CN), Dongyang Yingyue Film Production (CN), Ning Hao Film Workshop (CN).
Screenplay: Xing Aina, Yue Xiaojun, He Ruirui, Wang Hongwei, Zheng Xiaoyang, Ruan Shisheng [James Yuan]. Photography: Zhao Fei. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Li Dianshi, Yin Zhe, Qiao Aiyu. Music: Wang Zongxian [Nathan Wang], Jiang Yongjun. Production designer: Chen Siqin. Art director: Jiang Hanlin. Costumes: Qiu Duofeng. Styling: Ai Wen [Ivan]. Sound: Liu Yang, Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Shim Jae-weon, Yang Gil-yeong, Sang Lin. Visual effects: Xu Jian, Wei Ming (Me Video).
Cast: Lei Jiayin (Xiao Dongbei/Little Northeast), Tao Hong (Fang Die), Cheng Yuanyuan (Gu Xixi), Yamazaki Keiichi (Toriyama Konusuke), Guo Tao (Golden Dart 13, Xiao Dongbei’s father), Fan Wei (priest), Sun Chun (Bai Murong), Liu Hua (Wu Ge/Brother No. Five, chief of police), Huang Bo (revolutionary in cinema), Kitaoka Hisataka (Shinemon), Li Cantian (Wu, producer), Nie Mao (Xiao, best boy), Dong Lifan (Jin, Xiao Dongbei’s landlady), Fu Heng (Wide-Angle Zheng, cameraman), Yue Xiaojun (Shu, scriptwriter), Wang Wen (Mu, director), Hatae Kiyoshi (Yokomichi, Japanese general), Yang Xinming (Gu Xianming, Yamato Bank manager), Zhang Songwen (Pu Xiaotong, Gu Xixi’s fiance), Jiang Yongjun (Hei Lao Er, the bandit), Yang Shuo (Hei Lao Da, bandit leader), Yuan Xibei, Chen Xiaohao (child beggars), Xu Jian (detective), Ning Hao, Yan Lai (policemen), Zhao Xingyu (flower girl), Liu Jiadong (old man), Jia Long (middle-aged man), Huang Yiyi (girl on stage), Second Chan, Takashima Shinichi (drunken Japanese soldiers), Muramatsu Shigeru, Kumazaki Shota (gold lorry drivers), Katsura Ginjiro (Japanese soldier), Akiyama So (gold lorry driver), Masumoto Norio (Japanese soldier), Jean-Michel Casanovas (DeNiro, Italian ambassador), Hikita Go (DeNiro’s translator), Jiang Zhigang, Dai Yishu (MCs).
Release: China, 24 Apr 2012.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 4 Jun 2012.)