Night Watch
夜•守
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 84 mins.
Director: Jiang Zhilun 江稚仑.
Rating: 6/10.
Clever, twisty little crime mystery is a largely entertaining slice of pulp.
STORY
Singapore, the present day. One night a lorry crashes into a car; in the latter, the passenger Wang Renjie (Guo Xin) is injured and calls for help, while the driver, his girlfriend Li Yu’ai (Bian Xiaoyuan), is killed. Two years later, Wang Renjie is able to walk again but is still on physiotherapy and medicines, as well as suffering from amnesia. He tells psychologist Li Yuhong (Lin Zixuan) that he has finally had a reply to a job application. Some time later Li Yuhong is called to Jiadong Hospital, where the police, headed by Mo Gangnian (Min Zheng), are holding him for strangling and stabbing a man named Cai Tu (Ji Feng). Wang Renjie claims to have applied for a job as a nightwatchman at FBG Antique, a company that was closed down in 2016. Li Yuhong explains to Mo Gangnian that Li Renjie has suffered from amnesia since his car accident; she asks to question him alone in the hospital room. She tells the nervous Li Renjie to tell her exactly what happened. (Li Renjie had been told by letter to come to the building at 23:00, where he had been briefed by the regular security guard, Cai Tu. The large mansion was still full of valuable antiques that need guarding. Cai Tu had said that Chen Yongfu [Han Quantan], the older of the two brothers who ran FBG, had hung himself from the stairs near the entrance after bankrupting the company through gambling. The police, however, had discovered that his younger brother, Chen Yonglun [Le Xi], had killed him; after being sentenced he had been pronounced insane, and transferred to a mental institution, from which he had escaped. Cai Tu had said Chen Yongfu was rumoured to still wander the corridors. He had handed over the keys to Wang Renjie, who started work immediately. Left alone, he saw a red car drive by a couple of times and thought it was Cai Tu. After ordering some food and chatting to the delivery boy (Dong Yang), he had heard a sound, run away and called the police. Ci Tu had appeared, carrying a knife and asking, “You really don’t remember who I am?” After the two had fought, the police had arrived and found Cai Tu floating in the pool, with Wang Renjie’s fingerprints on the knife.) Li Yuhong then tells Wang Renjie that he did know Cai Tu, as the two of them worked for the Chen brothers’ real company (an illegal futures trading operation) that existed behind the antiques facade. She says she learnt this when once visiting Chen Yonglun, as his psychologist, in hospital. She tells Wang Renjie that, if he tells her the truth, she can help him escape, as it was she who coached Chen Yonglun in how to get transferred from prison to a mental asylum. Wang Renjie looks at her for a long time before speaking again.
REVIEW
A clever, twisty little crime mystery – mostly set in a hospital room with long flashbacks – Night Watch 夜•守 is an entertaining slice of pulp that only loses its self-control in the final section. Despite that, and a few other faults, it’s still a largely involving ride, led by a clever performance from Taiwan actor Guo Xin 郭鑫, aka Guo Jindong 郭晋东, and a complementary one from actress Lin Zixuan 林子煊 as his psychologist-cum-interviewer. Produced in the Mainland, it’s a promising first theatrical feature by Taiwan film-maker Jiang Zhilun 江稚仑, a producer-cum-commercials director, who previously directed the breezy youth comedy Super Girls’s Society 超能萌妹站江湖 (2017, aka Super Ability Girl), released online via iQiyi. However, at just under RMB3 million, box office was just average for such low-budget, no-name fare, misleadingly marketed as a horror movie.
Several credits don’t match between the film and its poster, and one of them is that for the screenplay, credited on the film as by Jia Taojun 贾涛珺 and on the poster as by director Jiang and creative producer 监制 Zhang Xinhao 张心豪, also from Taiwan. (Jia Taojun is presumably a pseudonym for the two.) Whatever the case, it’s a carefully constructed piece of work that deliberately leads the viewer up several false alleys before springing a main twist halfway through and another one nearer the end. As characters are defined and redefined, a seemingly simple plot centred on an amnesiac victim of a car crash who takes a job as a nightwatchman in an old house gathers complexities as it rolls along – gradually revealed in flashbacks as the man, accused of murder, is interviewed by his psychologist in a hospital room where he’s being held by police.
On its own unlikely level the plot does eventually make sense, so it’s a pity that in the final section Jiang takes off the brakes and goes disconcertingly over-the-top, both visually and musically. A lesser problem – though still annoying, given the care with which much of the plotting has worked out – is that the story is set in Singapore, where cars are right-handed and drive on the left-hand side of the road; however, in the film, which was obviously shot in Shanghai, the opposite is the case and this lazy mistake invalidates one crucial scene for anyone in the know.
As one of the keys to the mystery, Guo quietly dominates the movie as the car-crash victim, believable on a pulp level in his various moods. Lin also grows quietly as the psychologist-cum-interviewer, while Ji Feng 纪沨, aka Zhou Jiwei 周纪伟, is a standard baddie. Technically the film is okay without being standout in any way, with d.p. Jian Mingqi 简铭岐 using lots of close-ups of people staring at each other that gives the film much of its psychological intensity. An arrangement of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s 1974 Libertango is used very effectively.
CREDITS
Presented by Yuanguang Film & TV Production (Shanghai) (CN). Produced by Triangle Film (CN), Shanghai Yuanguang Advertising Production (CN).
Script: Jia Taojun [Jiang Zhilun, Zhang Xinhao]. Photography: Jian Mingqi. Editing: Xie Jiayu. Tango arrangement: Zeng Siming. Songs: Ding Ke. Art direction: Huang Yucong. Costume design: Wang Shuting. Sound: Wu Wenjun. Action: Dai Ming. Visual effects: Yang Pengju.
Cast: Guo Xin [Guo Jindong] (Wang Renjie/Jay), Lin Zixuan (Li Yuhong, psychologist), Ji Feng [Zhou Jiwei] (Cai Tu), Bian Xiaoyuan (Li Yu’ai), Min Zheng (Mo Gangnian, police captain), Han Quantan (Chen Yongfu, elder brother), Le Xi (Chen Yonglun, younger brother), Dong Yang [Wang Yuwei] (delivery boy), Xue Rong (Li Yuhong’s father), Liang Ying (Li Yuhong’s mother), Shen Yihui (Zhang, doctor).
Release: China, 12 Mar 2021.