Ulterior Motive
别有动机
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 89 mins.
Director: Huang Yuetai 黄岳泰 [Arthur Wong].
Rating: 4/10.
Kidnapping drama, unfolding at breakneck speed, strangles itself in its own complexity.
STORY
Binhai city, northern China, Jun 2014. On her birthday, young Ling Yun (Ai Mi) is picked up outside her primary school by her father Ling Feng (Gao Shengyuan) and, after a collision with a lorry at a crossroads, the two go missing. Ling Yun’s mother, Ye Shuang (Qin Lan), and her father, Ye Cheng (Ren Dahua), receive a computer diskette showing a kidnap from 20 years ago, on 22 Mar 1994, the same year that Ye Shuang was kidnapped in similar circumstances and only released after Ye Cheng paid RMB100,000 ransom. Assigned to the case by police chief Ding (Xu Shaoqiang), detective Yao Jie (Lin Jiadong), who happens to be a former boyfriend of Ye Shuang, thinks the two cases are related, as in both cases the driver of the colliding vehicle went missing. (The Mar 1994 kidnapping was of the wife and child of businessman Xiao Xin [Liu Wei], a business colleague of Ye Cheng, and one of the kidnapper’s demands was that Xiao Lin should kill someone.) Suspecting Ye Cheng may somehow be involved in the present case, Yao Jie secretly installs spy cameras in his home and later follows him as he pays a man to find his son-in-law and daughter. Yao Jie follows the man but loses him. Separately, Ye Shuang has also seen her father hand over money to the man, and she later questions him about it. After finding the spy cameras, Ye Shuang complains to Yao Jie and is told her father is under suspicion because he claims he can’t remember any details about her 1994 kidnapping. Ye Shuang explains that is because her father is suffering from cerebral degeneration. Stymied in the case, Yao Jie asks help of his retired mentor, Ma (Ren Shan), who remembers the Mar 1994 case. (It had involved a businessman killing his business partner and then committing suicide. The businessman’s wife had vanished after a traffic accident, and then her young daughter too. The murdered man, Fang Xu [Zhang Huizhong], had been involved in a shady deal with Xiao Xin, who then ran for it when the police came to question him. He sought help from Ye Cheng.) Meanwhile, Yao Jie’s live-in girlfriend (Qu Jingjing) walks out on him, exasperated by his workaholism. Nagged by Ye Shuang to find her husband and child, and hounded by the media, Yao Jie again asks Ma for help.
REVIEW
A kidnapping drama that strangles itself in its own complexity, Ulterior Motive 别有动机 was a disappointing swan song by noted Hong Kong d.p. and sometime director/producer Huang Yuetai 黄岳泰 [Arthur Wong], then 59, who worked with some of the territory’s best-known mainstream directors in a career stretching back to the late 1970s. Financed by and set in the Mainland, with a largely Mainland cast, it moves at such breakneck speed that the viewer almost needs a computer to follow the plot as it flashes continuously between the present and 20 years ago and becomes progressively more unbelievable in the process. An oldtime Hong Kong-like crime film that looks out of time and place in contemporary Mainland dress, the film is dedicated at the end to the audience “for watching it” – somewhat optimistically, as it made only a weedy RMB12 million at the Mainland box office.
Motive was the third and last directorial outing by Huang, after martial-arts comedy The Fool Escape 发围 (1980) and pulp classic In the Line of Duty III 皇家师姐之III 雌雄大盗 (1988), co-directed with stunt director Yuan Zhenyang 袁振洋 and one of the earliest and best outings by Taiwan action queen Yang Liqing 杨丽青 [Cynthia Khan]. On Motive Huang also takes d.p. and creative producer 监制 credits, but after 27 years out of the director’s chair he brings little new to the table, relying too much on rain and night shots and a fair amount of flashy visual effects. (The detective hero, flatly portrayed by Hong Kong’s Lin Jiadong 林家栋 [Gordon Lam], is meant to have the ability to project himself into crime scenes.) The scattergun screenplay, by Hong Kong pulp writer Chen Zhiheng 陈志恒 and Mainland-born TV scripter Peng Yanwen 彭艳雯, fires in all directions without hitting any of its targets, while the restless editing by Hong Kong’s Liang Guorong 梁国荣 [Jacky Leung] (Lost on Journey 人在囧途, 2010; My Sassy Hubby 我老婆唔够秤2 我老公唔生性, 2012; Paris Holiday 巴黎假期, 2015) and the over-obvious score seem to be there just to distract the audience from the overwrought and scarcely comprehensible plot.
Hong Kong veteran Ren Dahua 任达华 [Simon Yam] clocks in as the grizzled and highly suspicious father of the heroine, while in the latter role Mainland actress Qin Lan 秦岚, then 36 and capable of much better (Be a Mother 母语, 2011; The Last Supper 王的盛宴, 2012), can’t really make anything of her distraught role from the little the writers give her. In a guest spot, Mainland actress Qu Jingjing 屈菁菁 has some ironic fun as the detective’s exasperated girlfriend.
The car chases, staged by Hong Kong maestro Luo Lixian 罗礼贤 [Bruce Law], are okay, but the rest of the action is so-so. The film was shot in Beijing and Tianjin. Huang subsequently worked as d.p. on the VFX-heavy martial arts fantasy League of Gods 封神传奇 (2016) but after that appears to have retired.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing CHS Culture Development (CN), Zhejiang CHS Media (CN). Produced by Beijing CHS Culture Development (CN), Zhejiang CHS Media (CN).
Script: Chen Zhiheng, Peng Yanwen. Photography: Huang Yuetai [Arthur Wong]. Editing: Liang Guorong [Jacky Leung]. Music: Xue Linke, Huang Lele. Art direction: Lu Wenhua. Styling: Zhang Chuhan. Sound: Wu Jingjing. Action: Luo Lixian [Bruce Law]. Visual effects: Huang Hongda, Xie Yiwen, He Zhongning (vfxNova). Executive direction: Mai Yonglin [Gary Mak].
Cast: Lin Jiadong [Gordon Lam] (Yao Jie), Qin Lan (Ye Shuang), Ren Dahua [Simon Yam] (Ye Cheng), Gao Shengyuan [Archie Kao] (Ling Feng), Liu Wei (Xiao Xin), Ren Shan (Ma), Gao Xin (Zhang Heng), Li Peize (Wang Wei), Zhang Huizhong (Fang Xu), Qu Jingjing (Liu Yi, Yao Jie’s girlfriend), Xu Shaoqiang (Ding, police chief), Ai Mi (Ling Yun), Zhuo Qi (young Ye Shuang), Liang Chao (Deng Zhe), Li Wanzhen (female forensic officer), Sun Yan (male forensic officer), Ma Lan (train attendant), Li Meng, Ju Bozhan (reporters), Liang Chen (Lu Hui), Huang Yuetai [Arthur Wong] (lawyer).
Release: China, 17 Sep 2015.