The Big Shot
“大”人物
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 107 mins.
Director: Wubai 五百 [Guo Shubo 郭书博].
Rating: 7/10.
Entertaining cop-vs-the-system drama is carried along by a strong cast and bravura performances.
STORY
Bincheng, northern China, the present day. Police stake out a market area and finally arrest a coin-counterfeiting gang led by Jia Chao (Liu Tianzuo), who does a deal with the police to help them get a bigger counterfeiter, international criminal Nick. The operation makes a local hero of maverick detective Sun Dasheng (Wang Qianyuan). His wife (Mei Ting) pressures him to enter a lottery for housing in a good area for their young son’s schooling, though he keeps putting it off. At a glamorous showbiz party Sun Dasheng is introduced by a mutual friend (Ma Yuke) to Zhao Tai (Bao Bei’er), the young CEO of property developer Taihua, part of his family’s Zhao Shi Group. The arrogant Zhao Tai humiliates Sun Dasheng in front of everyone when the latter refuses to drink, though Sun Dasheng shrugs it off. Meanwhile, Taihua’s building contractor, Hong Tiejun (Xing Hanqing), has been pressuring people to leave an old area due for development; among them is Sun Dasheng’s friend, car mechanic Chen Yongqiang (Kou Zhenwen), who simply wants his RMB3,800 advance rent refunded. Public protests grow against Taihua, whose share price is already being weakened by investigations into the Zhao Shi Group. Zhao Tai agrees to meet Chen Yongqiang face to face at the group’s headquarters; but he ends up humiliating Chen Yongqiang, who then apparently throws himself down the building’s stairwell and ends up in a coma. Chen Yongqiang’s young son, Chen Xiaoyu (Guo Ziming), thinks his father was murdered and asks Sun Dasheng for help. Sun Dasheng is brushed off by Zhao Tai when he tries to see him, and is later reprimanded for accusing the Guangming district police bureau for not investigating the case properly. Zhao Tai’s oily deputy, manager Cui Jingmin (Wang Xun), tries to buy Sun Dasheng off by offering to help him and his wife find a home in a good area – which only makes Sun Dasheng even angrier. Cui Jingmin also pressures Chen Yongqiang’s wife (Liu Mintao) to a point where she begs Sun Dasheng to drop his investigation. But as the shares of Zhao Shi Group continue to fall, company president Zhao Rongbiao (Gao Jie) is forced to step in.
REVIEW
A maverick detective investigating a pal’s death takes on a giant property group in The Big Shot “大”人物 , a re-make of South Korean mega-hit Veteran 베테랑 (2015) transferred to mainland China. Like the original (see poster, left), there’s nothing especially new about the plot – one man against the system etc etc – but a strong cast and some bravura performances carry the day, with lantern-faced character actor Wang Qianyuan 王千源 finally getting a lead role that suits him and baby-faced Bao Bei’er 包贝尔 (recently seen in a fat suit in crime comedy Fat Buddies 胖子行动队, 2018) having a whale of a time as a coke-snorting, sleazebag villain.
This second feature by 38-year-old, Changchun-born director Wubai 五百 (literally “Five Hundred”, pen name of shorts and TV director Guo Shubo 郭书博) rattles along at a fine clip towards an ending that’s hardly a surprise but is still entertaining along the way, comparing very favourably with the crackerjack Korean original. In its first 12 days the film has taken a very solid RMB290 million [final tally was RMB379 million], some five times that for Wubai’s first feature, divorcee comedy-drama The Old Cinderella 脱轨时代 (2014), a fine vehicle for actress Zhang Jingchu 张静初 that didn’t really click with the public.
For Big Shot, Wubai has a completely different crew, partly drawn from the TV/online drama world in which he’s mostly worked. They include d.p. Liu Yingjian 刘英剑 (camera operator on Cinderella, who went on to shoot several of Wubai’s drama series) and writers Yang Miao 杨苗 (with whom Wubai co-directed the online drama series Unforgiven 灭罪师, 2016), TVD regular Hu Rongrong 胡蓉蓉, and journeyman Guo Zisheng 郭子圣. (The last two wrote the big-screen romance Never Said Goodbye 谎言西西里, 2016.) Without introducing any major structural changes, the writers have done a fine job of tweaking the South Korean original and making it look natural in a Mainland setting.
Many of the differences simply come with the geographical change: there’s none of South Korea’s bullying culture and less critique of all-powerful conglomerates. Plot changes are minimal: the opening has the police breaking up a counterfeiting rather than a car-smuggling ring, the police detective’s friend has been cheated out of property compensation rather than sacked for joining a union, the detective’s wife is a nurse rather than a social worker, and so on.
Big Shot‘s darker tone stems partly from the lead casting. Wang’s hangdog looks have proved effective as a character actor but his screen persona is very different from the original’s Hwang Jeong-min 황정민 | 黄晸玟, who’s made a whole career in South Korean cinema out of breezy characters. Big Shot still has a strain of light comedy but it’s not as prominent as that of Veteran and is due as much to the salty northern dialogue as to the acting. Out-and-out comic scenes, like the cops stripping down to their underwear to show each other their work scars – a highlight of the movie, as it was of Veteran – are rare. And Bao’s scenery-chewing performance as the psychotic young CEO – one of his best to date – is more creepy than funny.
Other casting is equally strong. Bespectacled comedian Wang Xun 王迅 (Kill Me Please 这就是命, 2017) – a dead ringer for the original’s Yu Hae-jin 유해진 | 柳海真 – transcends his usual goofiness to paint the genuinely unsettling figure of the villain’s enabler, while versatile veteran Wang Yanhui 王砚辉 comes into his own in the second half as the detective’s supportive boss. In a smaller but crucial role, actress Mei Ting 梅婷 (Aspirin 阿司匹林, 2006; Blind Massage 推拿, 2014) hews a strong character as the detective’s wife; TV veteran Du Yuan 杜源, who played the dry police chief in The Looming Storm 暴雪将至 (2017), is terrific in a similar role; and Taiwan veteran Gao Jie 高捷 [Jack Kao], clocking in for his umpteenth gangster part, is quietly effective as the villain’s exasperated father.
Among the supporting cast, actress Qu Jingjing 屈菁菁 (the hero’s breezy girlfriend in Once Upon a Time in the Northeast 东北往事 破马张飞, 2016) is among those members of the police team who seem shortchanged either by the script or by the editing. In a brief in-joke, playing himself, up pops actor Pan Yueming 潘粤明, who played the lead’s hopeless ex in Cinderella and also starred in the Youku online crime drama Day and Night 白夜追凶 (2017), which Wubai produced.
Editing by Li Nanyi 李楠一, who cut black comedy Chongqing Hot Pot 火锅英雄 (2016) and psychodrama A or B 幕后玩家 (2018), is on the nose in both dramatic highlights, such as the nightclub stand-off between the detective and the CEO, and action sequences, such as the opening police operation, and delivers a tight package that’s also some 20 minutes shorter than the Korean original. A final intertitle directly links the film to the continuing police drive in the Mainland against business malpractice. The original Chinese title translates as “The ‘Big’ Shot”, with the quotation marks around “Big” 大 also helping to differentiate the film from the 2011 comedy Big Big Man 大人物.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Firework Entertainment (CN), Beijing Give Me Five Media (CN), Spring Era Films (Horgos) (CN).
Script: Yang Miao, Hu Rongrong, Guo Zisheng. Script co-ordination: Dong Runnian. Script planning: Gu Xiaobai. Photography: Liu Yingjian. Editing: Li Nanyi. Music: Ren Yajing, Wang Fu. Title song: Xiaoke. Production design: Zhang Lili. Sound: Jin Changxie. Action: Zheng Hong. Visual effects: Wang Xiaowei.
Cast: Wang Qianyuan (Sun Dasheng), Bao Bei’er (Zhao Tai), Wang Xun (Cui Jingmin), Wang Yanhui (Wu Weidong, police team leader), Qu Jingjing (Gao Ya’nan, detective), Zhou You (Xiaowu, detective), Han Yezhou (Da Zhuang, detective), Gai Yuexi (Luo Qian, Zhao Tai’s actress girlfriend), Liu Mintao (Xu Xiuying, Chen Yongqiang’s wife), Mei Ting (Xu Jie, Sun Dasheng’s wife), Pan Yueming (himself), Qiao Zhenyu (Zhao Kang, Zhao Rongbiao’s eldest son), Jing Gangshan (Guangming police chief), Du Yuan (Zhang, city’s police chief), Gao Jie [Jack Kao] (Zhao Rongbiao, Zhao Tai’s father), Kou Zhenwen (Chen Yongqiang), Liu Tianzuo (Jia Chao/Third Uncle, counterfeiting gang head), Ma Yuke (Wang Feng), Huo Qing (Cui Jingmin’s lawyer), Xing Hanqing (Hong Tiejun), Li Beilei (Cheng Li’na, Hong Tiejun’s wife), Wan Peixin (Zhao Tai’s bodyguard chief), Zhang Haoran (Zilong), Xie Mengwei (Yingjun), Jiang Han (Gazi), Xiao Han (creative director), Lv Xiaolin (finance director), Li Yuhang (Wang Yu), Cheng Fangxu (Zhao Liming, Guangming policeman), Ma Jingjing (Ma, counterfeiting gang member), Wang Ziqing (Linda), Wang Yuhan (Hulu, Sun Dasheng’s son), Wang Yuqi (ditto), Guo Ziming (Chen Xiaoyu, Chen Yongqiang’s son), Yao Wu (Jiao, city mayor).
Release: China, 10 Jan 2019.