Wind Blast

西风烈

China, 2010, colour, 2.35:1, 117 mins.

Director: Gao Qunshu 高群书.

Rating: 5/10.

Dusty, desert-set action movie is drained by a scrappy script and lack of cumulative drama or tension.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day. Desperate for money to prove himself to his girlfriend Sun Jing (Yang Caini) after being cheated in business, Zhang Ning (Xia Yu) accepts a commission to shoot a man but also takes a picture on his mobile phone of the man who hires him. After killing his target, Zhang Ning flees back to the Mainland. A year later, a pursuit team of four crack detectives from Hunan – leader Xiang Xi (Duan Yihong), sharpshooter He Jianzhong (Ni Dahong), young martial arts expert Yang Xiaoming (Wu Jing) and strongman Han Chaodong (Zhang Li) – have traced Zhang Ning to a mining company in the deserts of northwest China, near Dunhuang, Gansu province, where he’s reunited with Sun Jing, now pregnant. After a pursuit, they arrest both of them. At the same time, veteran hitman Mai Gao (Wu Zhenyu) and his younger associate Nuo (Yu Nan), grand-daughter of his martial arts teacher, arrive on an assignment to get hold of the incriminating photo and kill Zhang Ning. That night they kidnap Zhang Ning and take him to a hidden cave once used by bandits. It’s the start of a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between the four detectives and the two hired killers, as each side fights over Zhang Ning and his girlfriend.

REVIEW

All the visual sweep that director Gao Qunshu 高群书 brought to his period spy whodunit The Message 风声 (2009) is also evident in Wind Blast 西风烈, which swaps the studio-bound look of the previous film for the wide open spaces of one entirely shot on location. Though it’s pretty difficult not to come up with striking work when shooting around Dunhuang, northwest China, and though the landscape there has hardly been under-used by Chinese filmmakers, the widescreen photography by d.p. Du Jie 杜杰 (Crazy Stone 疯狂的石头, 2006; A Tale of Two Donkeys 走着瞧, 2008) still makes great use of the desolate desert and dusty, deserted gulleys, creating a hostile no-man’s-land that’s both vast and intimate, with people constantly bumping into each other round the next bend. The problems with Wind Blast lie elsewhere: in some of the other technical aspects, in some of the performances, and most all in the script.

Gao’s previous films – Tokyo Trial 东京审判 (2006), Old Fish 千钧。一发 (2007) and The Message – were all anchored in relatively strong scripts; Wind Blast, by Gao himself, has almost no script at all. On a first viewing the initial 20 minutes are very confusing – and not in a good, tension-building way – as the film plays around with various genres like spaghetti westerns and U.S. road movies, takes time out with an episode simply to showcase the skills of Mainland martial artist Wu Jing 吴京, and has clumps of taciturn dialogue that only make some sense much later. Things settle down, and characters become a little more defined, at the half-hour mark with a well-staged, 12-minute sequence of a night attack on the detectives’ camp; but as things progress, and the six leads are shuffled around from action setpiece to action setpiece, the lack of any real plot or backgrounding becomes more and more evident. Even on a genre level, these are unlikeable characters the audience couldn’t care about one bit.

With so few dramatic underpinnings, the movie’s final half-hour, which involves a switch of location to a ramshackle police station (and a mysterious change in the weather, with snow that comes and goes from shot to shot), is a long hawl to a disappointing finale. The script simply runs out of ideas as it goes along, finally throwing in a stampede of horses for no discernible reason. Throughout, the action staged by Jackie Chan Stunt Team member Li Zhongzhi 李忠志 [Nicky Li] is okay-to-good, but let down by less-than-precise editing; and the music score, which could have papered over some of these technical weaknesses, lacks atmosphere, any kind of consistency and real excitement.

The best performances come from Ni Dahong 倪大红, as a grizzled old sharpshooter, and Duan Yihong 段奕宏as the policemen’s fleet-footed leader, running hither and thither across the landscape. Apart from his opening setpiece, Wu is under-used, and the character of actor Xia Yu 夏雨, as the main reason for all the hijinks, is weakly drawn. Hong Kong’s Wu Zhenyu 吴镇宇 [Francis Ng] – who appears not have been re-voiced, to judge from his strongly accented Mandarin – isn’t really believable or threatening enough as a super-hitman, and Mainlander Yu Nan 余男 (in her first action role) becomes less so as the film wears on, with little to do except look nasty.

Billing itself as China’s first crime-action-western – and stealing a march on the long-delayed, similarly-set action feast No Man’s Land 无人区 [finally released in 2013] – Wind Blast passes the time on an undemanding level but is disappointing in light of the talent involved. The Chinese title means “West Wind Martyrs”, playing on an expected use of “East Wind” in the title.

CREDITS

Presented by United Power Media (CN), Huayi Brothers Media (CN), Ya Huan Media Investments (CN), Beijing United Mighty Movie & Culture (CN), Zhejiang Golden Globe Pictures (CN), Dongchuan International Media (Beijing) (CN).

Script: Gao Qunshu. Photography: Du Jie. Editing: Yang Hongyu, Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: An Dong, Han Jae-gweon. Art direction: Xiao Haihang. Costumes: Chen Hongfei. Styling: Han Yeong-jin. Sound: Liu Linzong. Action: Li Zhongzhi [Nicky Li]. Visual effects: Hu Xuan.

Cast: Duan Yihong (Xiang Xi/Leopard, police captain), Ni Dahong (He Jianzhong/Mastiff), Wu Jing (Yang Xiaoming/Shepherd), Zhang Li (Han Chaodong/Yak), Wu Zhenyu [Francis Ng] (Mai Gao), Yu Nan (Nuo), Xia Yu (Zhang Ning), Yang Caini [Charlie Young] (Sun Jing), Ma Su (overseas Chinese woman), He Tiehong (Chang Zhongjian, blacksmith), Ma Guowei (bureau chief), Xie Junhao (mystery man), Zhang Yibai (assassinated man at start), Wang Shuangbao (Sun Jing’s uncle), Chi Qiang (policeman), Chen Hongfei (boss lady), Ma Zihan (fit woman), Da Bingzi (boyfriend), Wang Wei, Li Beiyue (rock’n’rollers), Luo Luo (overseas Chinese man), Li Peng, Wang Hucheng (tough guys).

Release: China, 28 Oct 2010.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 22 Nov 2010.)