Dream Breaker

破梦游戏

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 102 mins.

Director: Han Yan 韩琰.

Rating: 5/10.

Virtual-reality action drama looks okay but doesn’t engage at a character level.

STORY

Chongqing, central China, the present day. Fifteen years ago the young Jiang Han (Chen Duling) witnessed the murder of her father Jiang Shan (Tong Dawei), a programmer, in their old house in the hills. Now, at a demonstration of virtual reality at her college, the orphaned Jiang Han is used as a guinea pig, to the amusement of her fellow students. One night she visits the old family house to pay her respects to her late father, still hoping to find his killer. She’s interrupted by Zhora (Gai Yuxi), a masked bounty huntress searching for someone (not Jiang Han), and is rescued from being spotted by her by a young man, Nan Ji (Song Weilong), who dispassionately leaves her when Zhora has gone. Jiang Han finds a message from her father to meet him in Souldream 万梦千魂, a VR world created by him whose entry point is in the building’s basement. There she finds herself bounced into a role-playing holo-game peopled with street-fighters and other colourful personalities. She meets Nan Ji, who says he’s after the person who stole money from the company of his uncle Nan Nan (Gao Shengyuan) and gave it to Souldream. Jiang Han remembers her father had admitted that Souldream had a problem. She and Nan Ji are almost arrested by security guards for breaking the rules of the game; both manage separately to escape, and Jiang Han to avoid being killed by Zhora. However, as she entered the game illegally via the basement, Jiang Han doesn’t have an exit button to leave Souldream completely. She’s rescued by young security guard Sushi (Zhang Youhao) who helps her solve the extra riddle of why so many young gamers went missing 15 years ago near her father’s home. The two are joined by Nan Ji on a journey through Luxuria 不醒城, a pleasure dome for hardcore gamers, where Sushi’s friend, longtime gamer M5 (Jin Shijia), may have some information about Jiang Han’s father.

REVIEW

Aimed squarely at teenage tech-heads, with a flimsy story peopled by human cut-outs in a virtual-reality world, Dream Breaker 破梦游戏 is well-staged, restlessly shot and okay edited but at the end of the day adds up to a big digital nothing. Uninvolving on a performance level, the movie has about an hour’s worth of plot spread over 102 minutes, and is a real hawl during the final half-hour. It’s most notable for its visuals and design; and if it all looks very Japanese, that’s no doubt partly due to veteran maestro Sono Sion 园子温 being involved as creative producer 监制, with the urban ramshackle look of his Tokyo Tribe トウキョウ トライブ (2014) looking like one influence and the general fairground atmosphere of the central location being another. Alas, Dream Breaker‘s target audience didn’t turn out: the film crashed at the box office with an almost invisible RMB430,000.

It’s the first theatrical feature by Tianjin-born director Han Yan 韩琰, 37, who studied design at high school and then photography at Beijing Film Academy. His work as a d.p. includes the shorts The Lost Land 失落之地 (2012) and The Rivers of Babylon 巴比伦少年 (2013), both directed by Zhou Yan 周燕, and as a director the online horror series 朝内八十一号 (2015), inspired by the success of feature film The House That Never Dies 京城81号 the previous year. The script by him and actress Chen Lv 陈绿 (who starred in The Lost Land) is based on a novel by young pseudonymous Mainland writer Xi Ge 曦哥 that’s also been adapted into a manga (see covers, left). Despite some changes, the general outline of the novel is adhered to, but it’s stripped to the bone and a tad chaotic; and in a film where the viewer is always being told “there are no real emotions in the virtual world”, it’s difficult to become engaged with anyone.

As the college student who’s sucked into her late father’s VR holo-game as she tries to find his killer, actress Chen Duling 陈都灵, 25, is as blank and unconvincing here as she was in crime mystery Inference Notes 推理笔记 (2017) after an impressive start to her career with The Left Ear 左耳 (2015). Of the two young men who accompany her, top-billed actor-model Song Weilong 宋威龙, 19, just stands there looking hunky and humourless, while Zhang Youhao 张宥浩, 23, is much more lively as a comic character called Sushi. But the only one with any pulpy flavour is the bounty huntress played by Gai Yuexi 盖玥希 (cheesecake in blah slasher The Precipice Game 魔轮, 2016; the villain’s actress girlfriend in The Big Shot “大”人物, 2019) who brings the kind of trashy glee to her role that the film badly needs. On a more serious level, experienced TV actress Cao Xiwen 曹曦文 is more than solid as a gamer/warrior, while star name Tong Dawei 佟大为 cameos in middle-aged glasses as the heroine’s dad.

Costumes by Japan’s Kawada Chieko 松李智惠子 sometimes have more personality than the people wearing them. Gai’s are the most o.t.t. (in a good way) while Chen is restricted to an all-white, fairytale-like dress (which only underlines her character’s blandness) until switching to a weird-looking combat suit an hour in (after unbelievably being trained up as a fighter). Widescreen photography by Liu Yizeng 刘懿增 (psychodrama A or B 幕后玩家, 2018) is better than the just-okay VFX. Shot in summer 2016, the film was originally to have been released in Oct 2017 but did not reach screens until Nov 2018.

CREDITS

Presented by Jetavana Entertainment (Shanghai) (CN), Beijing Jetavana Entertainment (CN). Produced by Jetavana Entertainment (Shanghai) (CN).

Script: Chen Lv, Han Yan. Novel: Xi Ge. Photography: Liu Yizeng. Editing: Zhang Yifan. Music: Zheng Nan. Production design: Nan Nan. Art direction: Chen Shuang. Styling: Kawada Chieko. Sound: Wang Yanwei, Liu Yang. Action: Sun Fei. Visual effects: Mi Chunlin, Yang Zhijun (Nova Film Technology). Executive direction: Pang Qingzheng, Zhang Kaiqiang.

Cast: Song Weilong (Nan Ji/South Pole), Chen Duling (Jiang Han), Zhang Youhao (Sushi), Gai Yuexi (Zhora/Nanami), Cao Xiwen (Mo Lv), Gao Shengyuan [Archie Kao] (Nan Yan, Nan Ji’s uncle), Jin Shijia (M5), Lv Shaocong (Jin Mao/Golden Hair), Tong Dawei (Jiang Shan), Su Mang (Cassandra), Peng Guanying (professor), Zhao Weilin (Jie), Zhu Jiayu (Xiaokai), Yang Liu (Wan Yan), Ma Ziwei (painter).

Release: China, 9 Nov 2018.