Lobster Cop
龙虾刑警
China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 87 mins.
Director: Li Xinyun 李昕芸.
Rating: 8/10.
Richly characterised crime comedy marks a strong feature-film directing debut by actress Li Xinyun.
STORY
Guangzhou city, southern China, the present day. After a bungled arrest of some drug dealers, police squad leader Du Yufei (Wang Qianyuan) and his team are given one month to crack the case and find out where they were receiving their supplies from. If they succeed, their police chief says they will be assigned to the main case of going after druglord The General (Li Jianren); this is currently being handled by another squad led by Xu Xin (Wang Zheng). Du Yufei and his team suspect that the suppliers operate from a company run by Song Hui (Zhou Yunpeng), so they decide to rent a sleepy crayfish restaurant opposite and use it for surveillance. The youngest member of the squad, Chen Li (Zhou You), borrows RMB100,000 from his mother to find the operation, and the four of them pose as a family: the half-retired Cao Neng (Li Hua) as the father, Du Yufei as his son, Li Ruoju aka Xiaohua (Yuan Shanshan) as his wife, and Chen Li as Du Yufei’s younger brother. When Song Hui and his gang unexpectedly drop by wanting some food, Cao Neng surprises everyone by cooking a delicious crayfish meal. As a result, they go ahead with an official opening, renaming the restaurant 虾闹闹. Business is such a success that Du Yufei tells the three others to concentrate on that and leave him to handle the surveillance. Meanwhile, Cao Neng gets a big fan of his cooking in the elderly aesthete Uncle Nine (Zhang Jincheng), who becomes a regular customer. Song Hui receives a coded message that a big delivery is on its way from The General, and the squad realises something is up when the gang orders an especially large takeaway. However, all is almost lost when the impulsive Chen Li is caught eavesdropping on the gang. Du Yufei bluffs his way in and gets him out, and Chen Li learns a lesson in teamwork. When Du Yuefei hears the delivery is to go ahead, his squad combines with Xu Xin’s in a big operation to arrest everyone, including The General. But not all goes to plan.
REVIEW
An oddball police squad takes over a backstreet crayfish restaurant to stake out a drugs supplier in Lobster Cop 龙虾刑警, an entertaining character comedy that also manages to be both funny and suspenseful in its more actionful second half. Nicely (if not especially starrily) cast, and with a well-developed script with fully-drawn characters, it marks a strong feature-film directing debut by actress Li Xinyun 李昕芸, who began her career a decade or so ago under her real name Li Xiaofeng 李晓枫. Unfortunately, the film fell between the cracks on Mainland release, with only a meh RMB69 million box office.
Chengdu-born Li, 35, first made her mark as the muse of director Zhang Yuan 张元 (Little Red Flowers 看上去很美, 2006; Dada’s Dance 达达, 2009; Beijing Flickers 有种, 2012, the last two of which she also co-wrote) and, after the routine horror Death Trip 还魂之迷失曼谷 (2014) and an okay lead role in the otherwise iffy medical drama Sentence Me Guilty 判我有罪 (2015), directed and starred in the TVD Top 高能医少 (2017), an online comedy series centred on medical students that was funded by iQiyi. Among the producers of that was popular comedian Shen Teng 沈腾 (Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼, 2015; Never Say Die 羞羞的铁拳, 2017), for whom Lobster Cop was written; when neither Shen nor equally popular comedian Da Peng 大鹏 were available, the role of the squad leader was given to hangdog actor Wang Qianyuan 王千源, 46, whose star has recently been rising again since first attracting attention way back in The Piano in a Factory 钢的琴 (2010). Wang is fine in the role but still looks like a character actor being given lead parts; it’s easy to see how Shen, who has a star quality that Wang lacks, would have taken the film to another level. (In the event, Shen has a witty cameo as the restaurant’s somewhat louche owner – which earns him a full place on the film’s poster.)
All that aside, Wang does fit easily into the film’s general ensemble without dominating it – a foursome made up of him as the squad’s irascible leader, Yuan Shanshan 袁姗姗 as his tomboy deputy, Liu Hua 刘桦 as the veteran who’s already mentally half-retired, and Zhou You 周游 as the junior in the pack. With excellent cross-chemistry, and a slangy, scatalogical script lead written by Fan Jiuwei 范氿维 (who’s previously worked with Zhang and Li) and Lu Xun 鹿迅 (Bloody Campus 杀出阴阳界, 2017), the quartet makes up a likeable group of undercover nitwits who pose as a family and eventually stumble their way to success. The fact that they actually start to behave like the family they’re posing as is one of the screenplay’s several small pleasures, not least for the way it’s subtly referred to but is never pushed to centre stage; so too, the fact that, to everyone’s surprise, the crayfish restaurant becomes a roaring success, eclipsing the less stellar undercover work they’re meant to be doing there.
Mainly a TV actress, Yuan, 31, gets a rare crack here at a proper big-screen role and is clearly in her element as the tough girl in the group, a more blackly comic, grungy version of her bipolar wannabe reporter in So, I Married My Anti-Fan 所以……和黑粉结婚了 (2016). Smiley veteran Liu is as reliable as ever as the veteran who turns out to be a superb cook – and ends up being courted by a gay old foodie (Hong Kong actor-presenter Zhang Jincheng 张锦程, in a sly role). Among the villains, Zhou Yunpeng 周云鹏 stands out as the gang’s head. Only relative newcomer Zhou You (the school lothario in Fist & Faith 青禾男高, 2017) doesn’t create much wash as the junior in the cop squad.
Technical credits are all fine, with atmospheric photography by Vienna-born, Beijing-based d.p. Stephanie Leitl 林菲, who shot Sentence Me Guilty, and tasty art direction for the eaterie and Guangzhou backstreets by Jiao Jian 焦健. A better English title would be Lobster Cops (plural), which would still preserve the extra meaning of Loser Cops (as shown in the main title, which comically drops the “b” and “t”).
CREDITS
Presented by Wanda Media (CN), Add Star International Film Culture Media (Beijing) (CN), Big Cat Films (CN).
Script: Fan Jiuwei, Lu Xun, Li Xinyun, Wen Zhongri. Photography: Stephanie Leitl. Editing: Wang Gang. Editing advice: Li Nanyi. Music: Chen Kun. Art direction: Jiao Jian. Sound: An Wei, Ji Jing.
Cast: Wang Qianyuan (Du Yufei), Yuan Shanshan (Li Ruoju/Xiaohua), Liu Hua (Cao Neng), Zhou You (Chen Li), Zhou Yunpeng (Song Hui, gang leader), Zhang Jincheng (Jiu Ye/Uncle Nine), Li Jianren (The General), Cao Xing (Dongzi, Song Hui’s sidekick), Shen Teng (restaurant owner), Wang Zheng (Xu Xin, squad no. 1 leader), Ding Wenbo (Da Fan), Zhang Zhaobei (Wu Ju), Li Xinyu (Kun Shao), Chen Luoyi (Huizi), Luo Jinbao (Xiaohua’s schoolmate), Li Kui (San), Zhang Li (taxi driver), An Jingrui (Xu Xin’s son), Zhao Xiaofang (Xu Xin’s wife).
Release: China, 22 Jun 2018.