The Uprise
致命复活
China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 89 mins.
Director: Yang Le 杨乐.
Rating: 4/10.
Modestly budgeted survival/virus drama falls victim to its poorly structured script.
STORY
Beresk town, eastern Russia, 2027. Due to global warming the town has been infected by an ancient bacteria released in the meltwater from nearby mountains. An international team of scientists has secretly moved in to lock the town down. Unaware of the danger, Su Ping (Yan Wenjun), a nurse, flies to the region to spend time with her husband Lin Dong (Xu Shaoze) who works there. Along with middle-aged teacher Fang Hongning (Jia Fenggui) and his young mistress Jiang Qiuhong (Wang Wenwen), who are on the same plane, she stays in a complex of holiday flats. As Su Ping discovers at a restaurant run by Dong Zaishi (He Yang), the area has quite a few Chinese tourists. However, Lin Dong doesn’t turn up for dinner, and that night there is a heavy rainfall. Next morning Su Ping receives a panic phone-call from Dong Shiqi (Ren Tiantian), the owner’s younger sister and a waitress at the restaurant, to run for her life and not come back. The town is full of men in white protective suits. Along with Fang Hongning, Su Ping escapes in a lorry in which is a man, Zhou Hanyuan (Shen Wenjun), who is desperate to get back to China with his daughter, Zhou Guyu (Shen Yumei), who is ill from the virus. Also in the back of the lorry is the unconscious Lin Dong, whom Zhou Hanyuan says is infected too. Zhou Hanyuan is almost hysterical, as the men in white had taken his daughter to a medical centre, from which he’s snatched her away; they have since been on the run. The group meets other refugees, including Dong Zaishi, and hides out in an abandoned railway yard that at one time was used as a mortuary. The buildings are not safe but everyone needs somewhere to shelter from the torrential rain. The group of seven – Su Peng, Lin Dong, Dong Zaishi, Dong Shiqi, Zhou Hanyuan, Zhou Guyu, and Dong Zaishi’s cook Song Pengcheng (Qiao Yuanhao) – takes refuge in the rickety building and are trapped underground when part of its collapses. They are joined by a crazy old guy (Yuan Zhongyuan) who was at the restaurant the previous night. Following a further collapse, the group gets split up, and tensions start to rise between them as they try to survive until they are rescued.
REVIEW
Global warming, a deadly virus, regional lockdown and men in white bodysuits are the timely elements of The Uprise 致命复活, a budget disaster film-cum-survival movie that was actually shot well before the coronavirus pandemic. Young first-time writer-director Yang Le 杨乐 started on the script back in 2016 with a division of China’s Ecology & Environment Ministry but, though it was intended as a warning about climate change, the finished product is not especially didactic, apart from at the beginning and end. Released soon after Mainland cinemas started to reopen in low-risk areas from 20 Jul, it made no impression at the box office (RMB500,000).
After an over-long set-up – which for some obscure reason manoeuvres various Chinese to a town in eastern Russia rather than China – most of the drama takes place in the basement of a disused railway yard where they’ve been cut off from the outside world by falling masonry. Though a subplot about scientists desperately trying to find a vaccine rears its head in the later stages, Uprise shifts focus so often that it ends up being about pure survival rather than anything loftier. In that respect it’s more similar to earthquake dramas like Fallen City 倾城 (2011) or Waiting for Me in Heaven 在天堂等我 (2018) whose second halves focused on people trapped by collapsing buildings.
Unfortunately, Yang’s script is not up to the challenge of constructing any compelling human drama in a confined space: the half-dozen-or-so characters are not very interesting, and the same haphazard structure that flaws the film’s first half continues through the second half as well. Though composed well enough by Hong Kong’s Zhao Liangying 赵良鹰, the visual style is distracting: initially shot as if taken on the heroine’s mobile phone, the film later uses handheld and static photography like any other movie. Music is sparsely employed, with a kind of Central Asian lament in the central section and some conventionally uplifting stuff at the end.
Performances by the no-name cast are so-so, with He Yang 何洋 standing out as a restaurateur with a commanding personality and a very big gun, and Yan Wenjun 闫文君, 27, just okay as the cute nurse heroine. The film’s Chinese title literally means “Deadly Resurrection”, presumably referring to the ancient virus’ rebirth due to global warming. The same Chinese title was used for the 2016 Hong Kong TVD Dead Wrong, a revenge drama starring Guo Jin’an 郭晋安 and Wan Qiwen 万绮雯.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Joywood Pictures (CN), Publicity & Education Centre of the Ecology & Environment Ministry (CN).
Script: Yang Le. Photography: Zhao Liangying. Editing: Wang Xiaogang, Zuo Chao. Music: uncredited. Art direction: Zhang Dawei. Costumes: Sun Chang’e. Styling: An Yongqi. Sound: Wang Yan. Visual effects: Yuan Long. Executive direction: Zhang Qidong.
Cast: Yan Wenjun (Su Ping), Xu Shaoze (Lin Dong), Shen Wenjun (Zhou Hanyuan), Shen Yumei (Zhou Guyu), He Yang (Dong Zaishi), Jia Fenggui (Fang Hongning), Yuan Zhongyuan (Hu Kaiji), Qiao Yuanhao (Song Pengcheng), Ren Tiantian (Dong Shiqi), Wang Wenwen (Jiang Qiuhong), Yu Ming (Tong Ran), Li Yuanyuan (angry plane passenger).
Release: China, 31 Jul 2020.