Welcome to the Game
绑架游戏
China, 2024, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 89 mins.
Director: Zhang Zhe 张哲.
Rating: 7/10.
Twisty-turny drama of a fake kidnapping and multiple game-playing has strong leads and is involving purely on a plotting level.
STORY
Jiangcheng city, somewhere in a Pacific country, the present day. Every night Lu Fei (Peng Yuchang) visits an underground casino to gamble. Chapter I: “The Gambling Den” 赌局. Magic Cashpot is a huge underground casino, full of slot machines, games and gaming tables. Lu Fei tricks a gullible doctor, Wang (Xiao’ai), into taking part in a private card game, in which he fleeces him. At home Lu Fei looks after an old, sick woman (Song Ci) in a sterile room. On the TV he hears that casino tycoon Qin Haipei (Yao Lu) is to run for the job of district chief at the end of the month. At Magic Cashpot Lu Fei is approached by a middle-aged man who invites him to win 1 million on the toss of a coin. Lu Fei, to his surprise, loses. The man reveals himself as Qin Haipei: he knows all about Lu Fei and tells him never to come back to his casino; he also says Lu Fei has seven days to pay the 1 million. Lu Fei follows Qin Haipei back to his mansion, where he sees a young woman in a blonde wig climbing over the wall with a bag. He follows her, and she says she’s Qin Haipei’s daughter, Qin Xiaoyao (Hu Bingqing), and is running away from home. She carries a leaf-shaped dagger and says she’s the illegitimate black sheep of her father’s family; her father’s favourite is her elder sister. She tells Lu Fei, “I want you…”, but he says she’s crazy and leaves her. Later she turns up at his home and asks to stay the night to evade her father; she’s still as arrogant and presumptuous but Lu Fei lets her stay. However, while popping out to by some more blood (illegally) for the old woman’s transfusions, Lu Fei is forcibly taken to see Qin Haipei, who gets him to sign an IOU for the 1 million he owes. Back home, it turns out that Qin Xiaoyao actually said to Lu Fei, “I want you… to kidnap me.” As it would mutually benefit them, he now agrees: he throws a piece of her clothing into Qin Haipei’s garden and then emails him anonymously, demanding 10 million. Chapter II: “The Trap” 陷阱. After not responding to the email, Qin Haipei suddenly turns up with a real-estate manager (Zhang Haosen) who handles the land on which Lu Fei’s home is. Lu Fei hides Qin Xiaoyao and manages to ward off Qin Haipei, who says Lu Fei has three days left to pay off the 1 million debt. Afterwards, Lu Fei reveals to Qin Xiaoyao that the sick woman he is looking after was the director of the orphanage where he grew up. Qin Xiaoyao says they are therefore both orphans, as she went to live in Qin Haipei’s mansion only when her mother (Qin Haipei’s mistress) died. Qin Haipei responds to the anonymous ransom demand and starts playing the pair’s “kidnap game”. But they then realise their scheme has a weakness: Qin Xiaoyao reveals that, prior to meeting Lu Fei, she made a telephone call to a female friend, Lingling, in Haicheng city just before her mobile ran out of power. They drive to Haicheng to try to delete the message she left on her friend’s answerphone; but while Qin Xiaoyao is visiting her friend’s flat, Qin Haipei calls Lu Fei and says he wants to hear Qin Xiaoyao’s voice in the next 10 minutes or the game is off. Chapter III: “The Game” 游戏. Qin Haipei’s wife (Jiang Linjing) drives to Haicheng with the 10 million ransom. Th elaborate handover planned by Lu Fei goes okay and he finally “releases” Qin Xiaoyao, saying he’ll leave her share of the ransom in a locker. She wants to stay with him, but then realises that, for Lu Fei, it’s all about winning a game against Qin Haipei. Lu Fei drives away, but then encounters several major surprises. Chapter IV: “The Winner” 赢家. Lu Fei and Qin Haipei go one more round together.
REVIEW
The game is the game is the game in Welcome to the Game 绑架游戏, in which a gambling obsessive and the illegitimate daughter of a powerful businessman fake her kidnapping to get back at her dad. Though the director’s name on the can is that of Zhang Zhe 张哲, 37, making his first theatrical feature after five online movies (all action, mostly costume), the guiding spirit appears to be that of creative producer Han Yan 韩延, 41, whose last picture (Viva la vida 我们一起摇太阳, 2024) had several of the same technical crew (including d.p., art director and stylist) as well as lead actor Peng Yuchang 彭昱畅. Whatever the case, the result is an entertaining, twisty mystery, based on a novel (see left) by much-adapted Japanese crime writer Higashino Keigo 东野圭吾, that surprisingly crashed at the box office last autumn with a nothing RMB16 million.
Several of Higashino’s novels have already been turned into Chinese movies – The Devotion of Suspect X 嫌疑人X的献身 (2017), Namiya 解忧杂货店 (2017) and Revival 回廊亭 (2023) – with reasonable box office despite some faults, so it’s a bit of a mystery why Welcome flopped so badly. The fact that the original work had already been adapted multiple times may have been one reason. The novel ゲームの名は誘拐 (literally, “The Name of the Game Is Kidnapping”) was first serialised in the Japanese magazine Gainer during 2000-2002 and then published as a book in 2002. A local film version came out the following year: g@me. (see poster, left), directed by Isaka Satoshi 井坂聪 and starring actor Fujiki Naohito 藤木直人 and actress Nakama Yukie 仲间由纪惠. (There was also a Tamil-language version, Sarabham (2014), written and directed by Arun Mohan.) In 2020 a 12-part 
Chinese online drama version was released, Kidnapping Game 十日游戏 (see left), directed by Zang Xichuan 臧溪川 and starring actor Zhu Yawen 朱亚文 and actress Jin Chen 金晨, alongside an unusually heavyweight cast for a drama series including Liu Yijun 刘奕君, Geng Le 耿乐 and Ni Dahong 倪大红.
Another reason may have been the drastic reimagining of the main character and the way in which the theme of gambling is played up. In the novel (and Japanese feature film) the protagonist is a successful, arrogant advertising executive and his opponent is a client who singlehandedly scuttled a campaign he was working on. In the Chinese online drama he’s the owner of a gaming studio who’s hit by the withdrawal of a major investor. The screenplay of Welcome – by Lu Wenying 卢文莹 (Blood of Youth 少年, 2016, plus several drama series) – takes the gaming idea one step further by making the protagonist a young gaming addict and his opponent the all-powerful owner of an underground casino he frequents every night. It’s worth noting that producer Han already dealt wth gaming theory in his sci-fi VFX-athon Animal World 动物世界 (2018).
The film starts with Lu Fei (Peng) lying prone on the floor of his home – either dead or unconscious – with a voiceover: “An hour ago I lost all my chips, as well as my whole life.” It’s the first game he’s lost, and as the film flashbacks a couple of days it’s to be an hour before the viewer rejoins the story in the present. The Lu Fei played by Peng, 30 – a versatile young actor who can play both charming (Viva la vida) and nerdy (Our Shining Days 闪光少女, 2017) – is hardly likeable, but then neither was the protagonist of Higashino’s original novel. Here he’s a quiet, arrogant, hoodie character, utterly convinced of his own superiority in game-playing/gambling – and thus ripe for a fall – who meets a young woman (TV actress Hu Bingqing 胡冰卿, 32, in her first film lead) who’s just as arrogant as he is. Lu Fei is shown to have a caring side (or maybe just a sentimental one) by having him look after an old woman in a sterile room in his home; the young woman has little background, and the relationship between them, which is more utilitarian than sexual, is given an extra edge by Lu Fei never quite trusting her. Hu is excellent at balancing her character somewhere between manipulator and manipulated, and wringing the most emotion from an emotionless screenplay.
With not much to get the viewer rooting emotionally for either character, the film is kept watchable by the suspicious chemistry between the two leads, the twisty-turny narrative (including a major revelation just over an hour in), some atmospheric, noirish photography by d.p. Da Jiang 大江, aka Zhang Jiang 张江 (Viva la vida; oldies rom-com Love Never Ends 我爱你！, 2023), the dark, vaguely cyberpunk look of art director Song Xiaojie 宋晓杰 and stylist Tang Ning 唐宁 (both Han Yan regulars), and a quietly menacing performance by 57-year-old Yao Lu 姚橹 (the suspicious doctor in costume drama The Assassins 铜雀台, 2012) as the ruthless businessman/villain who also likes playing games.
Editor Fan Zhaoshuo 范肇硕, who coincidentally cut the Higashino adaptation Revival, brings the whole thing in at a refreshingly tight hour-and-a-half. The film’s chapters were added during post-production. (English translations have been provided in inverted commas in the plot synopsis above.) The screenplay was passed for shooting in Nov 2023 and was mostly filmed around Zhongshan and Foshan, in Guangdong province.
CREDITS
Presented by Lian Ray (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN), Guava Pictures (CN), Guangdong Lian Ray Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Haojiahuo International Film & TV Culture Development (CN), Beijing Weimeng Internet Technology (CN), Inner Mongolia Film Group (CN), We Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), Zhejiang Media (Group) (CN). Produced by Lian Ray (Shanghai) Pictures (CN), Guangdong Lian Ray Pictures (CN).
Script: Lu Wenying. Novel: Higashino Keigo. Photography: Da Jiang [Zhang Jiang]. Editing: Fan Zhaoshuo. Music: Zhu Jintai. Art direction: Song Xiaojie. Costumes: Wang Mingming. Styling: Tang Ning. Sound: Wang Gang, Liu Xiaosha. Action: Chen Haojie, An Bo. Visual effects: Wang Yongguang, Zhang Kecheng (Time VFX).
Cast: Peng Yuchang (Lu Fei), Hu Bingqing (“Qin Xiaoyao”/Qin Xiao’ou), Yao Lu (Qin Haipei), Xiao’ai (Wang, doctor), Shi Ce (Qin Xiaoyao), Xiu Rui (fat pharmacist), Song Ci (old orphanage director), Liu Di (drug peddler), Tang Yun (presenter), Nan Sikai (bodyguard), Dong Borui, Yin Zuokang (policemen), Jiang Linjing (Mrs. Qin), Yu Lei (Zhao), Zhang Haosen (real-estate manager), Liu Jixun (traffic policeman).
Release: China, 12 Oct 2024.