Out of Crimes

云雾笼罩的山峰

China, 2018, colour, 1.85:1, 92 mins.

Director: Zuo Zhiguo 左志国.

Rating: 7/10.

Modest but cleverly scripted crime drama, with several interlocking stories in broken time, does go the distance.

STORY

Southern Hebei province,  near the border with Shanxi province, northern China, the present day. Mine worker Junpo (Wang Haitao) urgently needs RMB200,000 for his young daughter’s hospital treatment, and still hasn’t been paid the compensation for a work injury promised by mine boss Zhang Liangui (Ren Qing’an). Junpo calls his younger brother for help; but the latter has been away from home for five years, following a falling-out with their father. Junpo drives out to Zhang Liangui’s home in the hills but is fobbed off with another excuse. On an impulse, Junpo kidnaps Zhang Liangui’s young daughter, Zhang Jingyi (Wang Shang), who is playing outside. (A few hours earlier, Zhang Liangui had told his younger brother, Zhang Lianzhou [Ding Jianjun], to hide in the mountains, as the police were searching for him. Zhang Liangui was visited at his office by Qiu Wei [Dong Bo], an investor who wanted to cash in his 7% investment for RMB10 million. Zhang Liangui had said he didn’t have the money, and threatened to expose Qiu Wei for a past crime if he didn’t leave him alone. At home, just before Junpo arrived, Zhang Liangui had been told by his wife [Gao Xia] to close the mine down if it was no longer profitable.) As Zhang Liangui goes fishing, he notices his daughter is no longer outside but assunes she is with a neighbour. In the lake Zhang Liangui finds a body whose face he recognises. He puts the body in his car’s boot and his wife calls with the news that their daughter has been kidnapped and the ransom is RMB2 million. Two local policemen drop by Zhang Liangui’s home, recommending that bis brother should give himself up for a past crime. Zhang Liangui delivers some money to an arranged location but when he returns to his car find the body has disappeared. He calls his younger brother and asks him why he killed Qiu Wei. Zhang Lianzhou says he’s just finished burying “the body”, and Zhang Liangui tells him to hide out in the mountains immediately. (The previous night, Qingqing [Li Jue], had taken home a drunken, married businessman, Qin [Chen Jianhua], whom she’d seduced. He had woken up early in the morning, handcuffed to a bed, and been blackmailed in exchange for a video of his night with Qingqing. Qin’s friend, Zhang Liangui, had arrived with the money – the RMB200,000 he had promised Junpo – and paid it to Qingqing and her male partner Liang Yi [Long Shuilin]. On their way through the mountains to Shanxi province, Qingqing had told Liang Yi that she wanted out of the blackmail game. As they were arguing, Junpo had driven by on his bike to visit Zhang Liangui’s home. When the couple’s car had run out of petrol, and it was burgled, they had ditched it and started walking to the border.) (Earlier that day, after Zhang Liangui had left his office, Zhang Lianzhou had beaten up Qiu Wei, who had a weak heart. Afterwards, Qiu Wei, who was separated from his wife, had gone home to his young son, who said he’d heard his father had been taking drugs and had killed a man. Qiu Wei had then learned his father had died two days ago and Zhang Liangui had paid for the funeral.) (Meanwhile, camping in the mountains, Zhang Lianzhou had come across a gun that Qingqing had thrown away when she had argued with Liang Yi. And while Qingqing and Liang Yi had been away from the car, making up, Qiu Wei had passed by on his motorbike and stolen their bags, including the one with the RMB200,000 ransom money from that morning.) As they walk along the road, Qingqing and Liang Yi pass by Junpo’s hiding place with Zhang Liangui’s daughter. Realising what’s up, Liang Yi demands a cut of the ransom money. While Junpo goes off to buy food, Zhang Lianzhou sees Qingqing playing in the woods with his niece; he rescues her but in a fight with Liang Yi the latter dies. Meanwhile, Qin has hired Binzi (Han Weihua) and his gang to retrieve the incriminating video of him and Qingqing before his wife (Zuo Sufang) learns about it.

REVIEW

Various criminal elements in a Hebei mining town find their lives interlocking during the course of one day in Out of Crimes 云雾笼罩的山峰, a cleverly scripted debut by writer-director Zuo Zhiguo 左志国 that teases the viewer along as it moves backwards and forwards in time with the precision of a Swiss clock. Such twisty-turny crime yarns have been a favourite genre in Mainland cinema since a decade or so ago, and this one doesn’t outstay its welcome at a trim 90 minutes. Partly funded by Zuo himself, a former advertising designer who threw everything up to study at the Beijing Film Academy in 2009, it’s an arresting first feature that took almost nothing at the box office (RMB180,000) in spring 2019. But Zuo has since followed it with two more movies, desert survival drama Where Nothing Grows 荒原 (2022), with offbeat actress Ren Suxi 任素汐, and the yet-to-be-released family drama Everything Is Unknown 意外人生, aka 繁华将至, with Ren, Hong Kong’s Wu Zhenyu 吴镇宇 [Francis Ng] and Taiwan’s Li Kangsheng 李康生.

Set and shot around Xingtai, a district in the south of Hebei province – Zuo’s birthplace, not far from Beijing – the script starts out centred on a mine worker called Junpo, first seen calling his younger brother on the phone to get RMB200,000 to pay his dying daughter’s hospital bills. The (unseen) brother left home five years ago after a family row, so Junpo is reduced to throwing himself on the mercy of his employer (who still hasn’t paid some injury compensation) and then, when he’s fobbed off again, kidnapping the man’s young daughter on a whim. The desperate but out-of-his-league Junpo is only the starting point for a complicated yarn that fans out to include half a dozen or so other characters – to whose interlocking stories Zuo adds the further ingredient of not narrating in real time. It’s a measure of the writing skill, and the actors’ performances, that the viewer doesn’t become annoyed by all this chicanery, as things are hardly very clear in the opening moments.

It does, however, all click together, in surprising and sometimes blackly humorous ways, and Zuo manages to top all his cleverness with a final revelation that’s like the cherry on the cake. There’s hardly a single character in the film who doesn’t have a seedy side; but at the end of the day they’re all shown to be very human, and sometimes redeemable. And the film ends on a conciliatory note between two of its protagonists, the hapless Junpo (Wang Haitao 王海涛, in his only leading role to date) and the tough-but-kind mine boss Zhang Liangui (nicely portrayed by onetime horror stalwart Ren Qing’an 任青安). Other roles are well but hardly starrily cast, with Li Jue 李珏 as a disillusioned female scammer and Ding Jianjun 丁建钧 as the mine boss’ no-good brother making the most impression. A name cast and glossier production values would have given the material much more punch, but on its own modest level Out of Crimes is always watchable.

Technical credits are solid, led by the naturalistic photography of the hilly Hebei scenery by former camera operator Matthew Wakai (who unexpectedly died in Hong Kong in Aug 2022) and an atmospheric chamber score by South Korea’s Jeong Jae-hwan 정재환 | 郑载焕 (who subsequently scored female boxing drama Shallow 出拳吧妈妈, 2021). Quite what the film’s English title means is anybody’s guess. The Chinese one translates as “Mountain Peaks Shrouded in Clouds”, though not much of either is visible.

CAST

Presented by Star of David Media Beijing (CN), Defeng Pictures (CN).

Script: Zuo Zhiguo. Photography: Matthew Wakai. Editing: Bae Kim, Jiao Jian, Vincent Vierron. Music: Jeong Jae-hwan. Art direction: Yang Zhao. Costumes: Li Yige. Styling: Wang Xi. Sound: Wu En, Chen Dongyan. Executive direction: Xu Xu.

Cast: Wang Haitao (Junpo), Ren Qing’an (Zhang Liangui), Ding Jianjun (Zhang Lianzhou), Long Shuilin (Liang Yi), Li Jue (Qingqing), Dong Bo (Qiu Wei), Wang Shang (Zhang Jingyi, Zhang Liangui’s young daughter), Wang Jun (Xiaoyou, Junpo’s younger brother), Han Weihua (Binzi, gang leader), Chen Jianhua (Qin, blackmail victim), Zuo Sufang (Qin’s wife), He Qianqian, Ge Zhuang (heavies), Sui Hongwei (Zhao Bin, policeman), Gao Xia (Zhang Liangui’s wife), Yao Jingyu (Qiu Wei’s young son).

Premiere: Warsaw Film Festival (Free Spirit Competition), 18 Oct 2018.

Release: China, 26 Apr 2019.