Dust to Dust
第八个嫌疑人
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 111 mins.
Director: Li Zijun 李子俊 [Jonathan Li].
Rating: 7/10.
Complexly structured, psychological crime drama is largely involving, with scene-stealing playing by Mainland comedian/film-maker Da Peng.
STORY
1997. In a remote stone quarry, one man kills another and throws his body off the edge of a cliff. Ruilong city, Yunnan province, southern China, 2016. Mo Zhiqiang takes his seven-year-old daughter Mengmeng (Huang Yuejia) to school and then visits his sick cousin, who says he had “that same dream” again. Qingyuan city, Guangdong province, southeast China. At a lunch to mark his retirement, police captain Wang Shouyue (Lin Jiadong) remembers his friend and colleague He Lan who was killed during an operation 21 years ago. Watching a news item about a fire in Ruilong, he recognises a face in the crowd and later takes a train there. Visiting the ceramics business run by Mo Zhiqiang, he tells the latter’s wife, Yang Fang (Qi Xi), that he’s an old friend; she invites him for dinner but at the flat Mo Zhiqiang seems only to pretend to recognise Wang Shouyue. Qingyuan, 1995. Chen Xinwen (Da Peng), the smooth-talking head of construction company Brilliance, is behind on completing a government project, Guilong bridge, as he’s embezzled all the money. Only his younger cousin, Chen Xinnian (Sun Yang), who co-runs the company, knows the truth. While throwing a lavish lunch to keep his workers happy, despite having no money to pay them, Chen Xinwen is warned by Song (Wen Guangyu), head of the Highway Bureau, that the bridge project has to be completed. At the same time, Chen Xinwen learns that the bank where Brilliance has an account has been robbed by two men. The case is assigned to police captain He Lan (Zhang Songwen), assisted by his old friend and classmate Wang Shouyue, who’s been seconded to the Qingyuan police force for a year. Meanwhile, from press reports, Chen Xinwen guesses who the bank robbers are – Yuan Changyong (Wang Zichen) and Lin Donghai (Xu Jinming), from Tongzhou, in neighbouring Guangxi province – and upraids them for spoiling his own plan to rob the bank of RMB10 million, not the small amount they took. Because of high police security, the pair can’t get out of town back to Tongzhou, so Chen Xinwen tells them to join the gang of three – led by He Yongshen (Shao Shengjie), head of the cash-escort team of Yonghua savings bank – he’s already organised for his robbery. By chance, during a planning meeting with everyone present, Wang Shouyue bursts into Chen Xinwen’s office to complain about the traffic chaos caused by the unfinished Guilong bridge – not realising who the five men in Chen Xinwen’s office are. Thinking the two robbers are still in Qingyuan to rob another bank, Wang Shouyue suggests staking out the three most likely targets. But Chen Xinwen hits a different one – not robbing the interior of the bank but stealing the money during a cash delivery on the street. Three men are killed in a shootout with police but the thieves steal RMB15 million, the biggest bank robbery in the PRC’s history. The police trace the robbers to Tongzhou, where they arrest them; but He Lan is killed while chasing one of the gang, Wan Zhaoquan (Wang Jianbing). Meanwhile, back in Qingyuan, Wang Shouyue realises Chen Xinwen was involved in the robbery and remembers the day he saw him with five men in his office. He gets ready to arrest Chen Xinwen but the latter manages to skip out of town with his cousin. 1997, Burma, by the Yunnan border. Along with hundreds of others, Chen Xinwen and Chen Xinnian are prospecting in the hills for jade. Chen Xinwen befriends one of them, a man called Mo Zhiqiang (Liu Zhankui).
REVIEW
A largely successful attempt to create a crime drama with little standard action but plenty of psychology (on both sides of the law), Dust to Dust 第八个嫌疑人 features another scene-stealing performance by Mainland comedian/film-maker Da Peng 大鹏 [Dong Chengpeng 董成鹏], closely followed by a very different but complementary performance by Hong Kong veteran Lin Jiadong 林家栋 [Gordon Lam] as the cop who spends some two decades hunting him down. Inspired by the true case of a 1990s bank robbery that was the biggest in the PRC’s history, it’s a relatively simple story that’s given a fresh coat of paint by a time-shifting structure, as well as by a host of well-drawn supporting characters, and though some of the plotting doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny the film is an entertaining enough ride with a special flavour of its own. Shot four years ago, it managed a very decent RMB439 million on Mainland release this summer, especially considering its non-crowdpleasing approach.
Though the film is entirely Mainland financed, its director, scriptwriter and almost all key crew are from Hong Kong, the cast is almost all Mainlanders, and the Mandarin dialogue is naturalistically spiced with Cantonese in sequences set in Guangdong province. It’s all quite a turnaround for director Li Zijun 李子俊 [Jonathan Li], 44, a former assistant director who debuted with the ridiculous action drama The Brink 狂兽 (2017), starring Zhang Jin 张晋, Yu Wenle 余文乐 [Shawn Yue] and Wen Yongshan 文咏珊 [Janice Man], that was partly capsized by a workaday script. For Dust, his second outing, Li has partnered with a different writer, Zhou Wenru 周汶儒, who’s come up with his most mature work after a string of scatty comedies (Good Take! 拍得不错, 2016; House of the Rising Sons 兄弟班, 2018; online serial The Pond 池塘怪谈, 2021). The two have since collaborated again, on crime mystery Behind the Shadows 尾随, starring Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo] and Zhou Xiuna 周秀娜 [Chrissie Chau] and shot during Sep-Oct this year in Malaysia, with Zhou this time co-directing. Like Dust, it’s creatively produced 监制 by the experienced Zheng Baorui 郑保瑞 [Soi Cheang], for whom Li had earlier worked as an a.d. (Dog Bite Dog 狗咬狗, 2006; Shamo 军鸡, 2007).
The time-shifting structure keeps the audience partly in the dark during the first half, and is further complicated by an entertaining double-performance by Da Peng as an oily, utterly corrupt businessman and a much older, skinnier, introverted one. The comedian has played many smooth-talking, reprehensible characters in his career but none as contrasted as this in the same movie. In comparison – and especially with his smooth villain in recent money-laundering thriller Cyberheist 断网 (2023) – Lin’s playing of the dedicated cop seems almost vanilla; but it makes an effective contrast with Da Peng’s theatrical performances by not trying to challenge them.
After announcing that the film is based on a true case from the 1990s, a murder in a stone quarry is shown in longshot before the action switches to a city in Yunnan province, southern China, where a certain Mo Zhiqiang is shown taking his daughter to school and then visiting a sick relative. Only in retrospect does the audience learn that the quarry scene was set in 1997 and the Yunnan scenes in 2016. The film then switches to a town in Guangdong province where veteran cop Wang Shouyue (Lin) is retiring, but still remembers a colleague who died 21 years ago. In the first of several over-convenient developments, he’s watching a news feed from a city in Yunnan and thinks he recognises a face in the background. That’s enough to make him take a long train-ride to confront the man, married with a young daughter, who claims to have difficulty in recognising him. The scene itself, which is re-visited in more detail later in the film after the audience has been fed extra background, is beautifully played, with quiet referee-ing by actress Qi Xi 齐溪 (the restaurant owner in Before Next Spring 如果有一天我将会离开你, 2021) as the man’s innocent, trusting wife.
Finally, the first hard date appears on screen as the film flashes back to 1995 in the same Guangdong city and the story proper begins, with a bank raid and the cop’s dedicated pursuit of the perpetrators across many years. Despite some of the coincidences that have been bled into the script, it’s still an involving ride, especially when the film’s emotional core is reached in the final 25 minutes. Among the supporting cast, the dependable Zhang Songwen 张颂文 is likeable as the cop’s old friend whose death motivates him to track down the mastermind after so many years, while Hong Kong’s Sun Yang 孙阳 (the villain’s sidekick in No More Bets 孤注一掷, 2023) makes the most of a reactive role as the put-upon younger cousin of Da Peng’s flamboyant businessman.
The naturalistic widescreen photography by d.p. Tan Yunjia 谭运佳 (The Empty Hands 空手道, 2017; Septet: The Story of Hong Kong 七人乐队, 2020; One More Chance 别叫我“赌神”, 2023) doesn’t get in the way of the performances but discreetly adds atmosphere. The limited action staged by veteran Huang Weiliang 黄伟亮 [Jack Wong] is similarly realistic. The actual robbery that inspired the film took placeon 22 Dec 1995 in Panyu district, Guangzhou city, Guangdong province, with the thieves making off with RMB15 million. The mastermind’s real name was Chen Xunmin 陈恂敏, here renamed Chen Xinwen 陈信文. For reasons that become clear but aren’t that convincing, the film’s Chinese title means “The Eighth Suspect”.
CREDITS
Presented by Wish (Suzhou) Culture Development (CN), Beijing Nextra Fei Fan Pictures (CN), Emei Film Group (CN), QC Media (Wuxi) (CN), China Film (CN). Produced by Emei Film Group (CN).
Script: Zhou Wenru. Photography: Tan Yunjia. Editing: Zeng Yujian. Music: Ou Leheng, Liao Yingchen. Art direction: Li Zifeng. Costume design: Ye Jiayin. Sound: Zhang Kaitong. Action: Huang Weiliang [Jack Wong]. Visual effects: Lin Hongfeng, Liang Weimin (Free-D Workshop).
Cast: Da Peng [Dong Chengpeng] (Chen Xinwen), Lin Jiadong [Gordon Lam] (Wang Shouyue), Zhang Songwen (He Lan), Qi Xi (Yang Fang, Mo Zhiqiang’s wife), Sun Yang (Chen Xinnian), Yi Yunhe (He Wei), Shao Shengjie (He Yongshen), Wang Zichen (Yuan Changyong), Xu Jinming (Lin Donghai), Wang Jianbing (Wan Zhaoquan), Sun Limin (Chen Xinwen’s father), Liu Zhenyou (Zhang Wenhai), Liu Yanqing (Xiaolong), Chen Di (Dong Li), Liu Zhankui (Mo Zhiqiang), Huang Yuejia (Mengmeng, Mo Zhiqiang’s daughter), He Guoxuan (Xiaoguang), Liang Chenyu (Zhang Ping), Peng Xu (Ma Yuan), Mo Yonghui (Li Kezhi), Xu Shaowu (Wen Yulin), Li Yingwei (Liang Sen), Chen Houjun (young Chen Xinwen), Yang Shuo (young Chen Xinnian), Sun Yong (taxi driver), Wen Guangyu (Song, Highway Bureau head), Dan Baozhong (Qingyuan police chief), Xu Fan (Tongzhou CID head), Ma Hanyi (printing-shop owner).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Competition), 16 Jun 2023.
Release: China, 9 Sep 2023.