Scheme with Me

双城计中计

China, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.

Director: Pan Anzi 潘安子.

Associate director: Guo Shuang 郭爽.

Rating: 7/10.

Period caper movie, set in Shanghai and the western desert, is solidly entertaining.

STORY

Shanghai, 1924. Casino boss-cum-gangster Lin Xiaodong (Yu Seung-jun) shoots dead orphanage head Du (Gao Sen) after the latter is caught cheating at cards in order to save his institution from closure. Soon afterwards, young swindler Chen Shaoqing (Wei Qianxiang) is also caught cheating by Lin Xiaodong. To prevent his hand being chopped off, Chen Shaoqing presents him with an opportunity to make some serious money by stealing 20 cases of gold that Japan’s Kwantung Army is paying Wang Dashuai (Jiu Kong), a Chinese warlord in the northwestern desert, to defeat China’s Northern Expeditionary Army. To help them, Chen Shaoqing insists on bring in the country’s top two swindlers – master of disguise Eight-Face Ghost (Ren Xianqi) and Stone Buddha (Tenger), who were once partners but fell out over a woman. Lin Xiaodong brings everyone together and the two deadly enemies finally agree to work together this one time. Meanwhile, Eight-Face Ghost bumps into female swindler Dumpling (Xiong Naijin) who eventually joins the team. After Dumpling manages to read the contract between Wang Dashuai and Japanese army captain Hiroko (Pan Anzi), they learn that the gold is to be delivered on 18 April by train to Fengkou township. Stone Buddha has the idea of hijacking the gold by disguising Luoshui township, the station just before Fengkou, as Fengkou and Eight-Face Ghost disguising himself as Wang Dashuai. The whole gang, including Lin Xiaodong’s dancers led by Mali (Yu Silu), travels to Fengkou to reconnoitre the region. There they also meet female bandit Jin Sanniang (Weng Hong), who takes a liking to Stone Buddha. After a drunken evening, during which Eight-Face Ghost and Dumpling, and Stone Buddha and Jin Sanniang, end up in bed together, they then set off to Luoshui, which they have a week to disguise as Fengkou. As they wait for the train to arrive, they also have to deal with the oily town head (Han Qiuchi) trying to poison them all, Jin Sanniang kidnapping Stone Buddha to marry him, and one of the group turning out to be a Japanese spy.

REVIEW

A period action-adventure that runs along familiar lines, Scheme with Me 双城计中计 is buoyed by smooth ensemble playing, a reliance on character rather than visual effects, and nifty pacing that doesn’t let the caper-heavy plot dawdle. The film attracted no special attention at the time – and grossed only a very modest RMB23 million – probably because of its familar ingredients (swindlers, 1920s, Shanghai, the western desert) and low-wattage cast beyond Taiwan actor-singer Ren Xianqi 任贤齐 [Richie Ren], who’s no box-office draw on his own. But it’s thoroughly entertaining in a conventional way, and well worth a look given its director’s subsequent history.

The film was only the second feature by Nanjing-born Pan Anzi 潘安子, then in his mid-30s, following the low-budget Volunteers 志愿者 (2008), written by Wu Leilei 吴蕾蕾 and starring Tong Dawei 佟大为, about a music producer temporarily stranded in a mountain village. Pan was to attract major attention with his third feature, the impressive costume drama The Palace 宫  锁沉香 (2013), but it was Scheme that was his first try at mainstream film-making. In retrospect, Scheme can be seen as a dry run for the much splashier but ultimately less accomplished For a Few Bullets 快手枪手快枪手 (2016): both films feature swindlers and adventurers, are set in periods of social chaos, and take place in the western desert and Shanghai. (Bullets even continues the stories of two characters 16 years later.) But it’s notable that Scheme also credits scriptwriter Guo Shuang 郭爽 as “associate director” – which may explain why its comedy works in a way that Bullet‘s simply doesn’t.

Like Pan a graduate in direction at Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama, Guo went on to co-write and co-direct the romantic comedy South of the Clouds 北回归线 (2014) and has worked equally in theatre and as a comic personality on TV. (In Scheme he gives himself an extended cameo as a dim, portly detective, while Pan gives himself a straight cameo as a Japanese officer.) Guo’s script spends 40 minutes developing its main characters before moving all of them to the desert, is constantly inventive within a certain range, pretty much makes sense in all its double-dealing, and comes in at a tight 98 minutes under the scissors of Hong Kong editor Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai].

Most notably, the mechanics of its clever central scam (dressing up one railway station to resemble another, in order to hijack some Japanese gold) gets relatively little screen time; most of the film is devoted to character comedy, plot vignettes and actorly bits (such as by Taiwan’s Jiu Kong 九孔, o.t.t. as a corrupt Chinese warlord). The end result is that the character comedy, though conventionally extrovert, still has a lightness and bounce that Pan failed to recreate in the much more overblown Bullets.

More at home in gentler comedy, Ren sometimes manages to be part of the ensemble and sometimes (with his weird hairdo and soft Taiwan accent) to look and sound completely out of place. Everyone else fits together more naturally: Korean American Yu Seung-jun 유승준 | 刘承俊 [Steve Yoo] plays to his strengths as a nasty Shanghai gangster who’s drawn into the gold hijack; Mainland actress Xiong Naijin 熊乃瑾 is OK as a thief-cum-safecracker who falls for Ren’s master of disguise; Hong Kong actress Weng Hong 翁虹 is especially good as a lusty desert bandit; and Inner Mongolian actor Tenger 腾格尔 (who went on to reprise his character in Bullets) has a quiet, sparkly-faced charm as a master-swindler that sets him apart from the rest of the cast.

Also of note is the attentive score by Feng Da 冯达 that includes whistled sections without becoming too Spaghetti Western-like, the economic art direction by Ma Shiqi 马士棋 (Bullets) with its ramshackle desert towns, and the unforced widescreen photography of Li Ganghui 黎刚辉, equally at home on the period-Shanghai backlot as in the desert around Jiayuguan.

CREDITS

Produced by Beijing Heaven Culture Development (CN).

Script: Guo Shuang. Photography: Li Ganghui. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Mei Di. Music: Feng Da. Art direction: Ma Shiqi. Styling: You Ying. Sound: Shi Mingming, Chen Guang, Ren Hui. Action: Yang Chongyu. Visual effects: A Donglin (Zhouren Media). Second unit photography: Liu Hong.

Cast: Ren Xianqi [Richie Ren] (Bamian Guilian/Eight-Face Ghost/Ghost Face), Tenger (Shi Fo/Stone Buddha), Yu Seung-jun [Steve Yoo] (Lin Xiaodong), Xiong Naijin (Jiaozi/Dumpling), Weng Hong (Jin Sanniang/Third Gold Lady), Jiu Kong [Lv Kongwei] (Wang Dashuai), Yu Silu (Mali/Mary), Wei Qianxiang (Chen Shaoqing), Li Chen (Shalifei), Han Qiuchi (town head), Guo Shuang (Tang, police inspector), Pan Anzi (Kasahara, Japanese captain), Geng Zhiqiang (Japanese officer), Zhu Ruixiang (Hiroko’s uncle), Gao Sen (Du, orphanage head), Chen Wang (Baozi), Huang Shiya (young girl), Qian Rufu (Shilixiang), Lv Ying (Yizhangliang), Liu Mengmeng (female plaintiff), Feng Gang, Chen Hao (male plaintiffs), Liu Peng (pawnshop boss), Wang Lingbo (restaurant boss).

Release: China, 24 Feb 2012.