Only Fools Rush In
四海
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 128 mins.
Director: Han Han 韩寒.
Rating: 4/10.
Celebrity writer-director-rallyist Han Han goes to the same well once too often in this lazily-written youth movie that takes its audience for granted.
STORY
Nan’ao island, Guangdong province, southern China, the present day. Twenty-year-old Wu Renyao (Liu Haoran) lives on the small island with his grandmother (Wu Yanshu), who has Alzheimer’s, and spends most of his time riding his motorcycle, with few friends. One day his “so-called father” Wu Renteng (Shen Teng), a former failed English teacher at primary school, arrives by boat from Guangzhou and doesn’t even recognise his son at the harbour. Wu Renyao’s mother died when he was one, and Wu Renteng is a self-admitted failure as a father; he’s come this time to bring his own mother back to Guangzhou while she can still vaguely recognise him. Wu Renteng borrows Wu Renyao’s bike for the evening; meanwhile, Wu Renyao walks into town to have dinner at the restaurant where Zhou Huansong (Li Haocun), the girl he’s secretly fallen for, works as a waitress. In the street he’s aggressively approached by a guy who turns out to be her elder brother Zhou Huange (Yi Zhenh). Eager to become friends, Zhou Huange suggests they go back to his place but en route they crash into Wu Renteng and his date (Zhao Ziqi). Next day Wu Renyao meets Zhou Huange two friends, Dongtu (Zhou Qi) and Hongchen (Zhang Youhao), who all share a love of motorbike racing. Wu Renyao agrees to join the team, which grandly calls itself The Invincible Legends 不败传说, in order to stay close to Zhou Huansong, though she tells him she’s not ready yet for a serious relationship as she still has a goal in life she wants to achieve. Next day all five go off to an (illegal) street race that Zhou Huansong has organised against a rival team, and Wu Renyao ends up almost winning it for them – until a last-minute accident. After messing up a translation job at the opening of a trendy club started by Zhou Huange, Wu Renteng leaves, having arranged with his brother, Uncle Liu (Wan Ziliang), to take their mother to see some snow, as she’s always dreamed. Left alone, Wu Renyao spends his whole time with Zhou Huange’s group. But the police are after Zhou Huange for arranging illegal street races. After a tragic accident, Wu Renyao and Zhou Huansong end up travelling to Guangzhou, on the run from both the police and a debt collector.
REVIEW
After a successful run of three movies (The Continent 后会无期, 2014; Duckweed 乘风破浪, 2017; Pegasus 飞驰人生, 2019), celebrity writer/blogger/rallyist-turned-film director Han Han 韩寒, 39, goes to the same well once too often with Only Fools Rush In 四海, which taps his favourite subjects of road tripping, racing, and youthful dreams but this time in a hopelessly disorganised way. Basically three different films cut up and pasted together, it’s a prime example of lazy film-making that takes its audience for granted, as well as being a waste of a potentially interesting cast that includes droll comics Shen Teng 沈腾 (Pegasus), Yin Zheng 尹正 (Pegasus) and Qiao Shan 乔杉, all of whom have ties with Beijing theatre troupe Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花. After very nice, rising figures for his previous three titles (RMB629 million, RMY1.05 billion, RMB1.73 billion), Fools has crashed to earth over Chinese New Year with a “mere” RMB530 million after three weeks, suggesting the Han phenomenon may have peaked. [Final tally was RMB543 million, making it the lowest earner of the five live-action attractions over Chinese New Year.]
Though it’s yet another film by the prominent Gen-80er that’s focused on a petrolhead (in this case, two wheels rather than four), it starts with a nice line in droll comedy as the 20-year-old hero (Liu Haoran 刘昊然, 24, from the Detective Chinatown 唐人街探案 franchise), who lives on Nan’ao, a small island off the southern coast of China, with his aged grandma, goes to meet his “so-called father” off the boat from Guangzhou. As played by Shen, he’s a smooth-talking rogue who effectively deserted his son for the big city – and now doesn’t even recognise him as he disembarks. After borrowing his son’s beloved motorbike to go womanising, and hardly connecting with him, the father leaves at the 40-minute mark with the cautionary words “Don’t become me!” Shen’s skill at straightfaced humour and portraying laidback opportunists keeps the film afloat and leads audiences to believe it will be another father-son study in the line of Duckweed or Pegasus. But when Shen’s character suddenly leaves, there’s a big dramatic hole as the film shifts course, concentrating more on the son’s involvement with his biker pals, and especially their big-talking leader (amusingly drawn by Yin) and his younger sister (relative newcomer Liu Haocun 刘浩存, 21).
The script’s wheels visibly shift as a reason is quickly fabricated for the son and the girl to motor off to Guangzhou, where each tries to make a go of it in the big city while she continues to keep him at arm’s length. But with Yin’s character also having disappeared, there’s another dramatic hole to fill – in this case by Qiao, as a fellow bike nut who helps the young hero. The experienced Qiao briefly restores some heft and humour but the film’s direction-less feel continues. Is it a laddish motorbike movie, a youth romance, a father-son film, or a small town vs big city light drama? At various times it’s all four – but completely lacking in any dramatic architecture to link them.
Other glaring weaknesses include the fact that most of the two-hour-plus film’s second half is motored solely by the girl’s refusal to fully commit to the young hero. Cameo appearances by a raft of Mainland and Hong Kong names (Wu Yanshu 吴彦姝, Huang Xiaoming 黄晓明, Feng Shaofeng 冯绍峰, Chen Xiaochun 陈小春[Jordan Chan], Wan Ziliang 万梓良 [Alex Man]) look like desperate attempts to give the film momentum. And some early wordplay on the character names for the son and father (which sound exactly the same in Chinese as “Nobody Wants” and “Nobody Adores”) seem more appropriate to a Ma Hua FunAge movie. If any script needed another set of eyes and several rewrites, it was this one.
Liu, who was so good as the ragamuffin in One Second 一秒钟 (2020) and no-nonsense girlfriend in cancer melodrama A Little Red Flower 送你一朵小红花 (2020), does her best with her part of a girl with a vague dream; but she can’t dispel the lingering feeling that her role was only created to bring the four motorbike pals together. Han really has no idea what to do with her once she and the young hero leave for Guangzhou. Ditto with Shen’s role, which is basically to supply some background for the son and some welcome humour at the start of the picture.
On a technical level, the film is okay, with natural and flavoursome widescreen photography of Nan’ao island by Bai Yuxia 白玉侠 (co-d.p. on Pegasus, co-editor on Duckweed). The film’s original title means “Four Seas”, an expression meaning “the whole world” (from a Chinese perspective). The relevance of the English title is unclear.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai PMF Pictures (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Xinjiang Bona Runze Film Culture Media (CN), Lian Ray Pictures (CN), China Film (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Zhejiang Hengdian Film (CN).
Script: Han Han. Photography: Bai Yuxia. Editing: Zhu Lin. Music: Chen Guangrong [Comfort Chan], Zuoxiao Zuzhou. Art direction: Zhao Xuehao. Styling: Wu Lilu [Dora Ng]. Sound: Huang Zheng. Action: Du Zihao. Visual effects: Qiao Qing.
Cast: Liu Haoran (Wu Renyao), Li Haocun (Zhou Huansong), Yin Zheng (Zhou Huange), Qiao Shan (Ziliang), Shen Teng (Wu Renteng, Wu Renyao’s father), Zhou Qi (Liu Fugui/Dongtu/Fast Rabbit), Wang Yanlin (debt collector), Chen Xiaochun [Jordan Chan] (Qiu, legendary Cantonese rally-driver), Wu Yanshu (Wu Renyao’s grandmother), Wan Ziliang [Alex Man] (Uncle Liu), Zhao Ziqi (Chunjuan, Wu Renteng’s date), Gao Huayang (Kawasaki Ninja 400 rider), Huang Xiaoming (Showta), Zhang Youhao (Xu Baoguo/Hongchen/Red Dust), Feng Shaofeng (Li, police captain), Liang Zhengqun.
Release: China, 1 Feb 2022.