The Scoundrels

狂徒

Taiwan, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 104 mins.

Director: Hong Zixuan 洪子烜.

Rating: 6/10.

Entertaining crime/action drama, centred on an odd-couple pairing, doesn’t fully realise its potential.

STORY

Gaoxiong, southern Taiwan, Oct 2018. Onetime basketball star Liao Wenrui (Lin Zhexi) now works as a parking warden after attacking a fan during a match. He’s still trying to pay off the NT$3 million compensation ordered by a court, and supplements his income by working for an underworld gang, planting GPS trackers on cars worth stealing. For this the gang, run by Xiaohei (Li Mingzhong), pays him only NT$2,000 a month. One night Liao Wenrui happens to give a parking ticket to a car used by the notorious masked Raincoat Robber 雨衣大盗 (Wu Kangren), an ice-cool security-van robber who’s been in the news for some time and has just pulled off a robbery in which a female motorist got shot. The Raincoat Robber, who calls himself Biao, forces Liao Wenrui into the car, where a woman, Yang Yahui (Xie Xinying), is bleeding in the back. Biao forces Liao Wenrui to drop her off outside a hospital, and then to drive to his gang’s HQ to buy a car. Biao initially strikes up a relationship with Xiaohei as it turns out both are Cantonese; but Xiaohei later refuses to sell Biao a car. After a big fight, Liao Wenrui and Biao escape, and Liao Wenrui manages to steal a car. Unfortunately for him, Biao is hiding in the back. Next day the media claim Liao Wenrui is the mysterious Raincoat Robber. The police captain on the case, Wu Zijie (Shi Mingshuai), doubts this, as the Raincoat Robber was operating while Liao Wenrui was still a basketball player; however, veteran detective Chen Mu (Gao Jie) believes Liao Wenrui is guilty. Meanwhile, Biao won’t let Liao Wenrui go until he helps him retrieve the cash left behind at Xiaohei’s HQ. He promises Liao Wenrui a cut. In hospital Yang Yahui tells police how her car was hijacked by the Raincoat Robber as he fled the scene of the robebry, and how she was accidentally shot by a pursuing policeman. Biao deliberately provokes Xiaohei by giving the address of Xiaohei’s illegal gambling club to the police. Later, he and Liao Wenrui visit Xiaohei at his own restaurant, finally escaping with Biao’s money after a furious fight. Liao Wenrui refuses to take the cut that Biao promised him; he walks off, annoyed that he’s now thought to be the Raincoat Robber. An attempt to reason with Wu Zijie goes awry when Chen Mu orders his men to close in. Liao Wenrui escapes, but is then approached by Biao, who says he needs his help on one more job.

REVIEW

A onetime basketball star-turned-petty criminal finds himself entwined with an ice-cool bank robber in The Scoundrels 狂徒, an odd-couple crime movie laced with lots of hand-to-hand action that’s a refreshing spin on the genre without fully realising its potential. The first feature by 20-something Taiwan director Hong Zixuan 洪子烜, after several striking and punchy action shorts (especially System-A/Systema 破贼, 2013, and Out of Line 欺逃人, 2014), it’s actually more in the style of South Korean than Chinese action/crime cinema, though filtered through a distinctly Taiwan sensibility and sense of humour. Whatever its shortcomings, Scoundrels is still an impressive leap into professional film-making by a director who started making shorts with his pals at university.

The core of the film is in the first half-hour as Liao Wenrui, a former sports star who’s been bankrupted after assaulting a fan and now works partly for a car thief to pay his bills, happens upon Taiwan’s most wanted criminal, the ice-cool Raincoat Robber, who’s now being hunted after a security-van robbery in which a female motorist was accidentally shot by a policeman. Liao Wenrui ends up as RR’s hostage, first as the latter dumps the wounded woman outside a hospital, and second as he tries to buy a new car from Liao Wenrui’s boss. As the days go by, and the media report that Liao Wenrui may actually be RR, the former finds himself psychologically bound to the latter as well as by a fear for his life.

The weakness of the script, by Taiwan’s Huang Jianming 黄建铭 (TVD Wake Up 麻醉风暴, 2015) from Hong’s original story, is that, as in so many one-thing-follows-another films, there’s a slight manufactured feel to keeping the two leads together, as well as the fact that Liao Wenrui’s psychology doesn’t really make sense. (There are several opportunities for him to just walk away.) This isn’t helped by the fact that RR, though admirably portrayed as a super-cool and self-assured villain rather than a violent psychopath, doesn’t come over as someone whose psychological hold over Liao Wenrui – on which the whole film depends – is strong enough to make the story believable. Structurally, the film falls into two clear halves, and has some difficulty, after the 45-minute mark, in regaining the narrative momentum of the first half. A smart twist, near the end, helps to nudge things along, highlighting the need for more such script devices.

Though he’s good as the outwardly genial RR, 36-year-old Wu Kangren 吴慷仁 (High Flash 引爆点, 2018) doesn’t have the pure star charisma to fully realise the role, and 28-year-old Lin Zhexi 林哲熹 (the moody artist in arty The Last Painting 自画像, 2017) doesn’t cut a strong enough profile as the broken sports star. The pair’s chemistry is at its best in the more humorous moments, of which there are quite a few in the first half but less in the darker second. If the black humour had been better sustained throughout, the film would have been more believable; unfortunately, there’s a feeling that director Hong can’t wait to get to the hand-on-hand fights – which are entertainingly staged, often with irony, but are not the sine qua non of this particular film, which requires a sustained suspension of disbelief by the audience.

The classiest playing comes from Li Mingzhong 李洺中 as the Cantonese car-gang head, closely followed by Shi Mingshuai 施名帅 as a sympathetic police detective and (of course) veteran Gao Jie 高捷 [Jack Kao] as an unsympathetic one. In a very male movie, Li Qianna 李千娜 does her best in a token role as Liao Wenrui’s hospital-nurse girlfriend, and Xie Xinying 谢欣颖 (One Day, 2009; The Rice Bomber, 2014) slightly better as the wounded female motorist. Action direction by Hong Shihao 洪昰颢 is zippy and visceral, with the Korean influence most noticeable in the final knock-down/drag-out fight between the two leads. The widescreen photography by Chen Keqin 陈克勤 (Shuttle Life 分贝人生, 2017; The Bold the Corrupt and the Beautiful 血观音, 2017) and Chen Zhixuan 陈志轩 also shows the same look in the nocturnal and rain-drenched sequences. Though the film is set in Hong’s native city of Gaoxiong, southern Taiwan, it’s not over-stressed with touristy shots.

The film’s Chinese title, which means something like “The Thugs”, is rather more brutal than the English one, and is reflected by the (very South Korean-style) poster.

CREDITS

Presented by Great Dream Pictures (TW), Kaohsiung Film Fund (TW), CY Films (TW). Produced by Great Dream Pictures (TW), CY Films (TW).

Script: Huang Jianming. Original story: Hong Zixuan. Photography: Chen Keqin, Chen Zhixuan. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: Lin Wenjie, Yang Wanqian. Art direction: Luo Wenjing. Styling: Luo Wanyi. Styling advice: Xu Liwen. Sound: Yang Zijie, Traithep Wongpaiboon. Action: Hong Shihao. Visual effects: MoonShine VFX.

Cast: Wu Kangren (Biao/Raincoat Robber/Wu Shunwei), Lin Zhexi (Liao Wenrui), Xie Xinying (Yang Yahui), Li Qianna (Li Xinjie), Gao Jie [Jack Kao] (Chen Mu, detective), Li Mingzhong (Xiaohei), Shi Mingshuai (Wu Zijie, police captain), Da Mingwei (Dahei), Li Jiarong (cards dealer), Yang Dongqing (gambler), Liao Qinliang, Wu Qixuan (car stop-check policemen), Tang Peiling (foodstall owner), Wu Wenzhi (Xiaowei), Sun Shuoren (Ming), Yang Zhongtian (Gui), Xu Minglie (security guard at second bank).

Premiere: Busan Film Festival (A Window on Asian Cinema), 6 Oct 2018.

Release: Taiwan, 26 Oct 2018.