Game of Identity
天才游戏
China, 2026, colour, 2.35:1, 95 mins.
Director: Cheng Liang 程亮.
Rating: 5/10.
Initially interesting psychodrama fails to go the distance at a character level due to an increasingly torturous script.
STORY
Huaguang university, Jianghai city, somewhere in eastern China, 14 Sep 2010. Liu Quanlong (Peng Yuchang), who has a natural talent for mathematics and programming but cannot afford to go to university, finds the student card of Chen Lun (Ding Yuxi), son of well-known property developer Chen Jiandong, and uses it to attend classes in the university’s School of Economics & Management. However, after being confronted outside the class by a young woman, Zhou Xiaohan (Li Manxuan), who says she’s his girlfriend, he runs off and throws the card away. Back at the grungy cyber cafe where he’s worked since he came to the city in his teens from a village in Jiangxi province, Liu Quanlong can’t find any pictures on the internet of Chen Lun as an adult. Zhou Xiaohan turns up and takes him to meet Chen Lun in an abandoned building. Chen Lun proposes that Liu Quanlong impersonates him at university for the next four years so that he can show his parents (who live abroad) that he is doing well; in return, he will pay Liu Quanlong whatever he wants. Initially, Liu Quanlong turns him down but later changes his mind, treating it as a challenge as well as a way of paying his mother’s medical bills in his home village. 15 Sep 2010, Day One of the Game/游戏第1天. Liu Quanlong arrives at Chen Lun’s luxurious house in the countryside, where Zhou Xiaohan gives him new clothes and Chen Lun, who says he will take care of the cyber cafe, turns the building over to him. A few days later at the university Liu Quanlong meets mathematics student Qi Qi (Deng Enxi), who’s friendly towards him. On the 14th day of the game, Chen Lun goes for a drive with Liu Quanlong and equips him with some expensive clothes and a watch. Next day Liu Quanlong, posing as Chen Lun, attends the swanky birthday party of Zhou Xiaohan and her wealthy, snobbish friends. They decide to form a club, The Elites 菁英社, with Liu Quanlong/Chen Lun as its head. Later, to Qi Qi, Liu Qualong describes them as a group of “pretentious snobs who believe they own the world”; he says he is going to prove them wrong. On the 38th day of the game, Liu Quanlong wins the university’s prestigious Financial Talent Challenge 金融挑战赛, with some help from Qi Qi. But at the celebration party afterwards, Wei Tao (Hou Wenyuan), an old friend of Chen Lun, reveals to Liu Quanlong that he knows he is an imposter. Later, when Liu Quanlong, Chen Lun and Zhou Xiaohan are alone, Chen Lun proposes taking the game “to another level” – a money-making scheme using Liu Quanlong’s same fake identity to get The Elites’ wealthy families to invest. Liu Quanlong isn’t keen on the idea, and he’s beginning to have suspicions about Chen Lun and their whole deal.
REVIEW
An interesting idea fails to go the diatance in Game of Identity 天才游戏, in which a rich kid bribes a poor but brilliant country lad to impersonate him at university for four years and get him a degree. As the “game” of identity gets considerably darker, the by-the-numbers screenplay becomes less convincing and more untidy, though performnces are generally okay. Shot back in summer 2020, it took a very polite RMB56 million on release this spring and two months later was streamed on the iQiyi platform.
Shanghai-born Cheng Liang 程亮, 46, who studied at the Beijing Film Academy, has had a varied career the past 20 years as a director of shorts, online movies and TVDs, as well as occasional acting and producing. (Relatively recently he was one of three associate directors on the lavish, 30-part TVD Blossoms Shanghai 繁花, 2023, directed and supervised by Wang Jiawei 王家卫 [Wong Kar-wai], his first TV series.) Shot mostly in his home city, Game of Identity (whose Chinese title literally means “Genius Game”) appears to be his first theatrically released feature. When raising finance for it at the 2018 Shanghai festival, well-known film-maker Zhang Yibai张一白 was listed as creative producer 监制, though his name doesn’t appear on the final print. While waiting six years for Game’s release, Cheng has had another feature, Odds Beater 逆风而行, see the light of day – though only at the 2025 Shanghai festival. Starring actor Jing Boran 井柏然 and actress Zhuang Dafei 庄达菲 , it centres on a teacher who helps out a struggling senior-high student.
According to the credits, the script is based on a novel by Cheng himself, The Brilliant Liu Quanlong 天才刘全龙; other sources say it’s based on someone of that name that Cheng knew, a genius at writing computer code. In any event, it’s the name of the main character (played by boyish-faced Peng Yuchang 彭昱畅) who comes across the student card of rich boy Chen Lun and soon ends up being sucked into his game, partly out of necessity (to pay his mother’s medical bills back in his home village) and partly as an intellectual challenge. As such it’s the story of a young man who does a deal with the devil and then can’t escape his control.
Films about game-playing are not uncommon in Mainland cinema – such as the recent Welcome to the Game 绑架游戏 (2024), also starring Peng – and this one is set back in 2010 when digital face recognition was not the necessity it’s become in China the past few years and people could impersonate others just by using their university ID cards. Even so, the plot is still full of holes, especially the fact that none of Chen Lun’s friends seems to realise that Liu Quanlong is an imposter when they all meet up at the birthday party of Chen Lun’s girlfriend. The fact that Peng and fellow actor Ding Yuxi 丁禹兮 hardly look identical is another problem, as well as the long delay in one of Chen Lun’s friends revealing to Liu Quanlong that he knows he’s an imposter.
The screenplay – whose writers include Liu Chi 刘迟 (relationship movies Love You Forever 我在时间尽头等你, 2020; Lost and Found 以年为单位的恋爱, 2021) and Cheng himself – becomes increasingly torturous at the expense of involving character development, with the final half-hour explaining much of the preceding action, adding twists of its own, and reversing sympathy for/dislike of some characters, as well as revealing who the mastermind really was.
In his mid-20s at the time of shooting, the versatile Peng is good as the main character as far as the script allows him to go. The same can almost be said for Ding, who was previously the male lead in the appalling Ten Years of Loving You 十年一品温如言 (2022) and is mostly known for his TV work. Then 15, Deng Enxi 邓恩熙 has a likeable but generic role as the lead’s female friend, but it’s Hong Kong’s characterful Li Manxuan 李蔓瑄 (Guo Ran 果然, 2025), then 27, who’s way more memorable in the slowly evolving role of the villain’s girlfriend. Technically, the film is fine at all levels, without being outstanding in any one area.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Maoyan Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN). Produced by Shanghai Maoyan Pictures (CN).
Script: Liu Chi, Tian Ye, Hu Ting, Cheng Liang. Novel: Cheng Liang. Photography: Jin Chenyu. Editing: Shen Xiaoyao. Music: Varqa Buehrer, He Meizhen [Min He]. Music supervision: Varqa Buehrer. Art direction: Liang Honghu. Costumes: Li Binbin. Styling: Wang Jiahui. Sound: Feng Yanming, Lin Xuelin. Action: Wei Bin. Visual effects: Liu Qin. Executive direction: Liu Yizhou.
Cast: Peng Yuchang (Liu Quanlong), Ding Yuxi (Li Xiaojiang/”Chen Lun”), Li Manxuan (Zhou Xiaohan), Deng Enxi (Qi Qi), Hou Wenyuan (Wei Tao), He Liao Lvyun (Lu Guangting), Li Jiahao (Chen Lun), Gu Qilin (Xiaobai), Sheng Gangshuai (Gu Xianyang), Yang Bo (Qu Yuan), Qi Yi (Wen Zi), Fan Yunfei (Huang Mao/Yellow Hair), Yuan Wenkang (Fang Xiaobo), Xu Shaowu (Li Xiaojiang’s father), Jiang Lu (Li Xiaojiang’s mother), Gan Yunchen (cyber-cafe manager).
Release: China, 4 Apr 2026.