Cloudy Mountain
峰爆
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 113 mins.
Director: Li Jun 李骏.
Rating: 6/10.
By-the-book disaster movie starts gangbusters but then becomes more cartoony and unbelievable.
STORY
Yunjiang county, Anyang province, somewhere in southwest China, the present day, 28 Jan. A construction team is blasting a tunnel through Yundang mountain as part of a high-speed rail line. The region has the world’s largest karst formations but the rock is fragile and constantly moving, and the region’s geological stability has been undermined by recent movement of the Indian Ocean plate. After one blast, supervised by brilliant young engineer Hong Yizhou (Zhu Yilong), the rockface cracks and the tunnel is flooded. Helped by his girlfriend Lu Xiaojin (Jiao Junfeng), a geophysical radar technician, Hong Yizhou manages to divert the water into an underground cavern. Project manager Ding Yajun (Chen Shu) orders work to stop for a while, even though the railway line’s official opening is set for March. Hong Yizhou immediately sets off to get data for her, abseiling down the side of Yundang mountain to put new sensors in place. These show that rock-strata activity is abnormal. Meanwhile, Lu Xiaojin goes to the bus station in Yunjiang town to meet Hong Yizhou’s crusty old father, retired “rail soldier” 铁道兵 Hong Yunbing (Huang Zhizhong), who’s decided to visit his son. Suddenly an earthquake devastates the town and a massive sinkhole opens up, swallowing the coach he has just arrived on. On Yundang mountain Hong Yizhou is left dangling by the shock; but he manages to spot a vertical crack in the mountain opposite and, after sending a drone to photograph it, sends his report to Ding Yajun. In town, Hong Yunbing joins the initial rescue effort of people trapped by the quake but then disappears when he goes to help the coach in the sinkhole. Lu Xiaojin loses him. Meanwhile, Ding Yajun learns that Yundang mountain could collapse onto the rail bridge; but she’s ordered by her superior Lin (Zhang Shen) that the project must still go ahead and open on time. Underground, Hong Yunbing leads a group of two men, a woman and a stowaway boy through the caves; after hearing about his father’s demise, Hong Yizhou races down the mountainside in a car to find him. Ding Yajun reports to the National Rescue Command Centre that she intends to blast away part of Yundang mountain to prevent it destroying the rail project. Hong Yizhou finds his father underground and takes over leadership of the group, but longtime tensions between the two come to the surface. Lu Xiaojin finds Hong Yizhou’s wrecked car but not him. However, she finds that Hong Yizhou sensors are still sending in data, which helps Ding & Co. to formulate a way to safely blow part of the mountain. Ding launches the operation that night, and also sends Lu Xiaojin to locate the underground river where Hong Yizhou and his group are, unaware that the mountain is soon to be blown. But then the direction of the mountain’s predicted landslide suddenly changes towards Yunjiang town, which has a population of 160,000 and cannot immediately be evacuated. And a major storm is also on its way.
REVIEW
Cloudy Mountain 峰爆 is a splashy Mainland disaster movie that starts gangbusters but loses its way in the second half as it becomes more and more cartoony. Set over a 24-hour period during which the instability of a whole mountain threatens a high-speed rail line being constructed in southwest China, it’s initially driven by a lean script that just keeps piling one disaster on another until the situation couldn’t seem to get any worse. Unfortunately, credibility starts to suffer along the way, and the second hour, which also contains a hefty dose of patriotic heroism, is less and less involving. With no big-name stars to dominate the physical drama, it was more a solid success (just under RMB440 million) than a knockout one in the run-up to the National Day holidays.
Mountain is the fourth feature by Li Jun 李骏, 55, who began with the period Shanghai drama Snow over the Boun 沧海有情人 (1997), shot simultaneously on film as both a feature and a TV drama series, and then worked exclusively on TVDs for almost two decades. After venturing back to the big screen with the iffy South Korea-set terrorist thriller Tik Tok 惊天大逆转 (2016), he came up trumps with the offbeat crime drama Hunt Down 长安道 (2019), a precision-tooled slice of entertainment that unfortunately performed poorly at the box office. Mountain is written by Li himself and Sha Song 沙颂 – a 53-year-old former sociology lecturer who’s mostly written for TV, plus a few online movies (Jade Road 玉道, 2009) – and is a safe, generic blockbuster that, via a modern story, is framed as a tribute to China’s “rail soldiers” 铁道兵 who started as an emergency force during wartime and from the late 1940s officially became part of the PLA tasked with repairing and constructing lines, often in perilous locations.
Ten years in the planning, a high-speed rail line is being blasted through a mountain in southwest China, a region that contains the world’s biggest karst formations – a highly fragile form of porous rock that’s currently under huge geological pressure from the unstable Indian Ocean plate. When the tunnel floods following a blast, work is temporarily halted; but the high-ups insist that the high-profile line’s opening date, in two months’ time, must be met. A few hours later the neighbouring town is devastated by an earthquake that opens up a sinkhole; and then the whole mountain is predicted to collapse onto the rail bridge. Just when it looks like things couldn’t get any worse, they do – and some Big Decisions have to be taken by industry and political chiefs.
Though it’s fairly procedural in structure, Mountain still follows the disaster-movie rulebook in having a number of human stories between all the flashing computer screens and geological carnage. The main hero is a Gen-80er (Zhu Yilong 朱一龙, 33, better known for TVDs than films) who’s head of the Blasting Office and is initially, along with his girlfriend (Jiao Junyan 焦俊艳, 34, the daughter in Hunt Down) who’s a radar technician, blamed for the flooding. He soon redeems himself, however, in the eyes of the project manager (a stern, glammed-down Chen Shu 陈数, 44, the ambitious wife in Hunt Down) and turns all-action hero when his father (Huang Zhizhong 黄志忠, 52, acting older), a crusty, retired “rail soldier”, turns up and gets trapped under the mountain in question. Son finally gets to prove himself to dad, despite a hidden phobia that stems from his youth, and a major sacrifice is made along the way.
It’s all very generic, and solidly put together, especially in the first half. But Zhu lacks the personality and sheer performance skills to carry a film of this size, and the writers don’t really know what to do with Jiao (an interesting, unconventional actress) in the second half; too often it’s Huang who carries sections of the film as the crusty old veteran who’s gently shown to be out-of-touch with the times (he prefers cash to Alipay) but still has the wherewithal when it counts. Cheng Taishen 成泰燊 stands out from the supporting pack as an about-to-retire chief engineer who’s also a former “rail soldier” and redeems an early mistake along the way. The usual scattering of cameos (Zhang Guoli 张国立, Zhang Yi 张译, Bai Ke 白客, Li Guangjie 李光洁) add little; actress Tao Hong 陶虹 is barely visible in flashbacks as the lead’s mother.
Technical credits are generally good, with the widescreen photography led by top d.p. Zhao Xiaoshi 赵晓时 (A Hustle Bustle New Year 没有过不去的年, 2021) eating up the scenery in Guizhou province (which stands in for the fictional location). Editing led by Hong Kong veteran Zhang Jiahui 张嘉辉 [Cheung Ka-fai] is tight and no-nonsense, and there are some thrilling (if unbelievable) action and car stunts by Hong Kong’s experienced Luo Lixian 罗礼贤 [Bruce Law] and Luo Yimin 罗义民 [Norman Law]. Scoring by Guo Sida 郭思达 (comedy Once Upon a Time in the Northeast 东北往事 破马张飞, 2016) is full-on heroic symphonic, and even includes a weepy violin solo at the climax. Visual effects are okay without being anything special. The film’s Chinese title means “Peak Explosion”, which refers to the plan of dynamiting the mountain. The English title is more mystifying, as it’s not at all cloudy.
CREDITS
Presented by China Film (CN). Produced by China Film (CN).
Script: Sha Song, Li Jun. Script advice: Zhang Yi. Photography: Zhao Xiaoshi, Li Qiang. Editing: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Ka-fai], Yao Shuo. Editing advice: Xu Hongyu [Derek Hui], Liu Yi. Music: Guo Sida. Art direction: Wang Zhijian, Meng Xun. Styling: Li Zhou. Sound: Xu Chen, Zhu Yanfeng, Cheng Yin. Action: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law], Luo Yimin [Norman Law]. Special effects: Wang Naipeng. Visual effects: An Jae-min, Hwang Seong-jun. Executive direction: Gu Haiping.
Cast: Zhu Yilong (Hong Yizhou, blasting research office director), Huang Zhizhong (Hong Yunbing, Hong Yizhou’s father), Chen Shu (Ding Yajun, project manager), Jiao Junfeng (Lu Xiaojin, geophysical radar technician), Cheng Taishen (He, chief engineer), Wang Ge (Chuzhong), Lu Siyu (Li Xiaojian, stowaway boy in coach), Hong Jiantao (Wang, office deputy director), Zhou Xiao’ou (Zhou Ming, foreman), Binzi (Xu Jiang, explosives store head), Sun Yili (Huang Yanlin, precision survey team director), Huang Chao (Chen Erdong, research department director), Yan Peng (Sun Guowei, engineering department head), Zhang Guoli (government high-up), Zhang Yi (Ling Haifeng, Yunjiang county head), Bai Ke (Lin Haoyun, insurance salesman in coach), Qiao Xin (Xu Yimiao, woman in coach), Li Guangjie (Qi Lei, helicopter pilot), Qiao Zhenyu (Liu, firefighting captain), Tao Hong (Hong Yizhou’s mother), Zhang Shen (Lin, group headquarters chief), Yu Shasha (saleswoman at bus station).
Release: China, 17 Sep 2021.