Mojin: The Lost Legend
寻龙诀
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 127 mins.
Director: Wuershan 乌尔善.
Rating: 7/10.
Tomb-robbing adventure has engaging characters but becomes increasingly repetitive and unimaginative.
STORY
New York, 1988. Hu Bayi (Chen Kun), Wang Kaixuan (Huang Bo) and Chinese American Shirley Yang (Shu Qi) had a successful career as tomb raiders in China but, on the suggestion of Shirley Yang, retired and moved to the US. After a one-night stand with Shirley Yang, Hu Bayi disappeared and was later found by her selling trinkets on the street along with Wang Kaixuan. Shirley Yang suggests she and Hu Bayi get married so he can get a green card, but he is equivocal and his old friend Wang Kaixuan is keen to return to tomb robbing in China. When art smuggler friend Da Jin Ya (Xia Yu) accepts a lucrative contract from the mysterious Global Mining Group to find the tomb of Aogu, a Khitan princess during the Liao dynasty, and the Equinox Flower medallion that can open the door to the spirit world, Wang Kaixuan goes with him to Inner Mongolia province, northern China. (In 1969, when they were both hot-headed students during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Kaixuan and Hu Bayi were sent there to wipe out feudal thought. Both fell for Ding Sitian [Yang Ying], a member of the group. While destroying a tomb that locals said was a gateway to the spirit world, the group came across a WW2 underground Japanese base that turned out to be haunted by zombies. During the chaos of escaping, Ding Sitian died.) Hu Bayi later decides to join Wang Kaixuan, much to the displeasure of Shirley Yang, who grudgingly tags along. In Inner Mongolia, where Global Mining Group is using the cover of “geological exploration”, Wang Kaixuan and Da Jin Ya finally locate the underground tomb but, on entry, the company’s staff start turning into zombies. Wang Kaixuan and Da Jin Ya are saved by the arrival of Hu Bayi and Shirley Yang, and then they all penetrate the tomb’s huge inner chamber where the Equinox Flower medallion is located. When the company’s ageing hippie president, Ying Caihong (Liu Xiaoqing), steals the medallion, the chamber starts collapsing and the four tomb raiders barely escape alive. But then Wang Kaixuan suggests he and Hu Bayi return for the medallion in the hope of resurrecting Ding Sitian.
REVIEW
The second of two 2015 films separately based on Ghost Blows Out the Light 鬼吹灯 – a series of eight tomb-raiding novels by Tianxia Bachang 天下霸唱 (penname of Zhang Muye 张牧野) that were originally published online – Mojin: The Lost Legend 寻龙诀 couldn’t be more different from Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe 九层妖塔, released only 11 weeks earlier. Where Chronicles was a monster-strewn VFX-athon that had hardly anything to do with its supposed source novel, Mojin is much closer in spirit to Zhang’s original and the whole tomb-raiding sub-genre. It is, however, only a fractionally better movie, and a notch down from the previous film of director Wuershan 乌尔善, Painted Skin: The Resurrection 画皮II (2012). There’s a similarly lively array of juicy characters, plenty of rough humour, and a natural taste for the fantastic. But where the ambitious Chronicles dared to fail, Mojin stays safely within the fantasy/adventure genre, with more engaging characters than Chronicles but less imagination as to what to do with them.
Though both films employ characters and character names from the novels, they are, in fact, original stories: Chronicles claimed to be based on the first novel in the series but bears no relation to it, while Mojin states vaguely that it’s “adapted from the Ghost Blows Out the Light novels”. (The first four novels were bought by China Film, but the second four by Wanda Media, which accounts for “rival” versions going into production at the same time.) Mojin did, at least, have the original author on board as a “script consultant”, a job that apparently involved daily meetings with director Wuershan. The result, alas, is not especially fresh: like Chronicles, the final hour is very repetitive, and not helped by being entirely set underground in the same giant cavern. And with so many plot points left unexplained or fuzzily defined it’s only the skill of Wuershan in juggling over-sized characters (as in The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman 刀见笑, 2010) that prevents the film from curdling in its own visual effects.
The screenplay by Taiwan’s Zhang Jialu 张家鲁 – who’s worked on his fair share of blockbuster adventures (A World without Thieves 天下无贼, 2004; The Forbidden Kingdom 功夫之王, 2008; Taichi Zero 太极1 从零开始 and Taichi Hero 太极2 英雄崛起, both 2012; plus some of the Detective Dee films) – is simply structured: in the late 1980s, three tomb-raiders come out of retirement and return to China for one more job, coincidentally near the site of a traumatic love affair for two of them 20 years earlier. Where Chronicles was three movies rolled into one and spread across six years, Mojin is all of a piece and as tight as a drum, sustained by salty dialogue between the leads as they bitch their way from one tight situation to another, and given a visual unity by the umbrous, colour-starved photography of Jake Pollock 包轩鸣, a Taiwan-based American who’s co-shot a couple of big pictures (The Message 风声, 2009; Wu Xia 武侠, 2011) but is better known for smaller indies (Yang Yang 阳阳, 2009; Monga 艋舺, 2010; Gf*Bf 女朋友 男朋友, 2012).
The film gets off to a literally swinging start as the three principals abseil down into a tomb in the best tradition of Asia’s Wesley/Wisely 卫斯理 or the West’s Lara Croft. They are supposedly modern-day heirs to the ancient tomb-robbing tradition, and dub themselves the Mojin (literally, “touching gold”) Captains 摸金校尉. After a section in New York (whither they have retired) that’s mostly devoted to character-building dialogue, and a flashback to the Cultural Revolution that introduces the two male leads’ onetime love, the main action kicks off in Inner Mongolia at the 35-minute mark and stays there for almost two hours.
That becomes part of the film’s problem as, however entertaining the patter is between the leads and however spectacular are the underground tomb sets (all rope bridges, colossal monuments, and so on), there are only so many things the characters can say and run around before it all starts to get a bit repetitive. Now almost 40 and looking it here, Taiwan’s Shu Qi 舒淇 brings a mature authority to her adventuress that makes the role much more than just a lithe bimbo; and she more than holds her own in the sexually charged spatting with Mainland actor Chen Kun 陈坤 as her rugged, on-off boyfriend. More often seen in louche or metrosexual roles, Chen, 40, is surprisingly good as the latter, and also convincingly portrays his younger self in the two flashbacks.
Popular comedian Huang Bo 黄渤, as their proletarian pal, has a field day with the salty dialogue and often singlehandedly keeps the film moving whenever the plot pulls over into a lay-by. As the fourth member of the tomb-raiding group, the normally low-key Xia Yu 夏雨 goes completely over-the-top in a piratical role that quickly becomes annoying. In a slimly cast movie, that’s basically it for the lead cast, apart from an extended cameo by veteran Mainland actress Liu Xiaoqing 刘晓庆, 60, who pops up in the embarrassingly bad role of a hippie-like villainess looking for eternal life.
Most of the plot’s mystical subtext – involving an Equinox Flower medallion that can open the gates of the spirit world, and so on – is only foggily explained, as is Liu’s weird-looking character and the way in which Chen and Huang’s tomb-raiders hope to resurrect a onetime love from Cultural Revolution days (Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy], winsome in ’60s pigtails and PLA uniform). Spectacular as the main tomb sets are by Wuershan’s regular p.d. Hao Yi 郝艺, they have a familiar look from other adventure movies, and the action staged within them by South Koreans Shim Jae-weon 심재원 | 沈在元 and Yang Gil-yeong 양길영 | 梁吉泳 (Arahan 아라한, 2004; Warriors of the Rainbow 赛德克•巴莱, 2011) is also unoriginal. Best contribution on the technical side comes from Japanese composer Endo Koji 远藤浩二 – a regular for director Miike Takashi 三池崇史 – whose music is shaped to the characters and action, and isn’t just the usual wall of heroic/propulsive noise that’s become the norm for adventure fare.
The film’s Chinese title literally means “Tactics for Seeking the Dragon”. An earlier English title was The Ghouls.
CREDITS
Presented by Wanda Media (CN), Shine Asia (CN), Huayi Brothers Media (CN), Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN). Produced by Wanda Media (CN), Huayi Brothers Media (CN), Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN).
Script: Zhang Jialu. Script consultation: Tianxia Bachang [Zhang Muye], Wang Qi’nan. Novels: Tianxia Bachang [Zhang Muye]. Photography: Jake Pollock. Editing: Du Yuan. Music: Endo Koji. Production design: Hao Yi. Styling: Hao Yi. Sound: Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Shim Jae-weon, Yang Gil-yeong. Visual effects: Douglas Hans Smith, Wang Lei.
Cast: Chen Kun (Hu Bayi), Huang Bo (Wang Kaixuan), Shu Qi (Shirley Yang), Yang Ying [Angelababy] (Ding Sitian), Xia Yu (Da Jin Ya/Lao Jin/Grill), Liu Xiaoqing (Ying Caihong, Global Mining Group president), Yan Zhuoling (Yuko, Ying Caihong’s secretary), Jonathan Kos-Read (Mark, Global Mining Group executive director), Zhang Dong, Huang Xi.
Release: China, 18 Dec 2015.
(Read review of Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe here: https://sino-cinema.com/2016/03/12/review-chronicles-of-the-ghostly-tribe/.)