The Return of the Lame Hero
毕正明的证明
China, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 123 mins.
Director: Tong Zhijian 佟志坚.
Rating: 8/10.
Multiple characters and plotlines are cleverly blended in this impressive first feature, beautifully cast, set in the world of professional train thieves in 1990s China.
STORY
Laiqing city, somewhere in China, Jul 1996. Ever since the age of seven, when he’d inadvertedly caused a train thief to be arrested by peeing on him, Bi Zhengming had dreamed of being a transport policeman and working in the anti-pickpocketing squad. Now, aged 22, he (Wang Anyu) has just graduated from the Railway Police Academy with top grades and, despite misgivings by squad leader Zhou (Nie Er) about his lack of experience, he joins the plainclothes team on the Zhengzhou to Guangzhou express on his first day – part of the major crackdown on train crime launched by the authorities during the 1990s. The train is full of skilled pickpockets who steal wallets and then return them (almost) empty so that the victims don’t initially realise they’ve been robbed. Bi Zhengming catches one thief but then has his own wallet stolen by Peach (Zhang Tian’ai), leader of a small gang within the large Rong criminal clan. Before she leaves the train at the next stop, she also steals a large gold medallion, but then has it stolen from her on the platform by Shadow Hand (Wang Yanlin), a particularly ruthless member of the Rong clan, who’s been close to its leader, Fourth Master (Feng Bing), since he was a boy. He dreams of taking over the Rong clan when Fourth Master retires, even though the job has been promised to Young Master (Wu Jiakai), who dislikes Shadow Hand. That evening Bi Zhengming catches Shadow Hand but in the struggle has his Achilles tendon cut by Shadow Hand, who escapes. Bi Zhengming’s mother (Huang Xiaolei), who’s always been against him joining the police force, urges him to leave and work in her clothes shop. Bi Zhengming finally leaves hospital and qualifies for a disability card, but he still dreams of rejoing the anti-pickpocketing squad. After months of hard training, he almost gets rid of his limp, and one day he catches two thieves who try to rob his mother’s shop. Zhou takes him back, reckoning that his slight lameness will be good cover when he goes plainclothes as a vagrant. Bi Zhengming’s goal is to catch Shadow Hand, as well as the mysterious Fourth Master whom the police don’t even have a picture of. Thanks to a tip-off from a blind fortune-teller (Feng Lei), Bi Zhengming goes to the city of Weijiang, where he spots Peach and her small team. She has criticised Shadow Hand’s men for stealing a large consignment of military uniforms – a move, she says, that will bring the authorities down on them all. When her team gets into a fight with Shadow Hand’s men and she is wounded, Bi Zhengming rescues her and she later agrees to take him onto her team. She suspects she may have met him before but cannot place his face; while training him in pickpocketing skills, she also mildly flirts with him. Bi Zhengming’s goal is to be included in her team at the Heroes’ Gathering 英雄会 in Weijiang in Oct 1997, where all eight branches of the Rong clan will convene and its new head be announced – an ideal moment for Zhou & Co. to arrest everyone in one fell swoop.
REVIEW
Multiple characters and plotlines are cleverly blended in The Return of the Lame Hero 毕正明的证明, a seemingly single-character study set among the gangs of pickpockets that plagued China’s rail network during the 1990s. The comedy-drama is an impressive first feature as writer-director by Tong Zhijian 佟志坚, who’s worked his way up through the industry during the past two decades and has here come up with an unexpectedly involving movie that’s packed with fine performances and offbeat touches and actually justifies its two-hour running time. Released on National Day, it’s unfortunately taken only an underwhelming RMB85 million, but could find a cult status in the future.
Tong started two decades ago as a cameraman on documentaries and then features (One Night in Supermarket 夜•店, 2009; One Wrong Step 无底洞, 2011; The Treaty of Double Bed 双人床条约, 2011; Just Try Me 关于爱情和那些魔鬼, 2012; horror Mysterious Face 枕边有张脸, 2014). After directing one of the nine episodes in the portmanteau feature One Day 有一天 (2014) he worked as an assistant director, notably on food-deliverer black comedy Upstream 逆行人生 (2024), in which he also had a small role as a philosophy professor. Upstream’s director and superstar Xu Zheng 徐峥 gets a “special thanks” in the end credits of Lame Hero, and several of its cast (Feng Bing 冯兵, Wu Jiakai 邬家楷, Huang Xiaolei 黄小蕾) also appear in major roles here.
The opening minutes of the film immediately establish an original tone, as pickpockets are shown skilfully lifting (and sometimes replacing) wallets on a crowded train. Here, and in a flashback to the hero’s childhood, slick, rapid editing is combined with slo-mo and close-up photography to create a world of crime run amok which immediately immerses the viewer. When our seven-year-old hero Bi Zhengming accidentally disrupts a gang’s plans, he tells his mother (much to her discomfort) that he’s determined to join the railway police when he grows up. He’s next seen in Jul 1996 – amid a belated national crackdown on train theft – graduating with honours from the Railway Police Academy and insisting on joining the anti-pickpocketing squad on his first day.
Events of that first day are to create two of the main drivers of the plot, as Bi Zhengming’s path crosses with that of Peach, the hot female leader of a small gang, as well as that of Shadow Hand, the ruthless head of another gang within the Rong clan who cripples our hero by knifing his Achilles tendon. Consumed with a desire for revenge on Shadow Hand, as well as bringing down the entire Rong clan, Bi Zhengming finally overcomes his disability and goes undercover as a vagrant, eventually joining Peach’s gang. Their relationship is one of the special delights of the movie, with the two engaged in low-level flirting that’s confidently handled by Ningbo-born Wang Anyu 王安宇, 27, in his big-screen debut, and Harbin-born Zhang Tian’ai 张天爱, 35, who was so good as the female lead in Legend of the Naga Pearls 鲛珠传 (2017) but hasn’t had a role of that prominence on the big screen since. Though the lesser experienced, Wang holds his own opposite Zhang, who’s very classy as the focused gang leader who teaches him the tricks of the trade while always wondering whether they’ve met before.
Zhang dominates that side of the movie, just as Wang Yanlin 王彦霖, looking older than his 36 years, dominates the more serious second half. Wang – who played the wounded sniper in blockbuster Operation Red Sea 红海行动 (2018) and the best friend in fantasy romance The End of Endless Love 如果声音不记得 (2020) – is way better here than as the lead in the ambling Daily Fantasy 日常幻想指南 (2021), exuding ambition and tight-lipped menace as a killer/thief who wants to take over the whole Rong clan. His character’s final confrontation with Wang’s is one of many unexpected delights in the movie: initially looking like a routine coda (“Six months later…”), it ends in the most unexpected way in the most unlikely setting.
The relationship of Bi Zhengming with these two very different criminals is just one aspect of Lame Hero, which also looks at internal politics between clan members, the various techniques of pickpocketing, the long-time relationship between the clan leader (Feng Bing) and Shadow Hand, as well as that between Peach and her adoptive mother (Kong Lingmei 孔令美). A host of small roles thread through the picture and are all well-drawn: the police squad’s tough leader (veteran Nie Yuan 聂远), Peach’s two male sidekicks (Shi Yunpeng 石云鹏, Yu Baishui 于白水), the clan’s cocky young heir apparent (Wu Jiakai) who dislikes Shadow Hand, and so on. All of these add depth and emotional involvement.
Though the action is equally dependent on slick editing (Zhou Yuan 周元, crime films The Victims 黄雀在后！, 2024, and A Place Called Silence 默杀, 2024) as on pure choreography (Chen Jiafu 陈家福, Hao Shuai 郝帅), the film’s apparent finale – a 15-minute sequence set in a crowded mall – neatly brings all of the film’s various elements together. Throughout, the widescreen photography by Piao Xinghai 朴星海 has a kind of cold, romantic realism that showcases the performances. The film was shot in and around Chongqing, central China, during the winter of 2024/25. Its Chinese title, which literally means “The Proof/Proving of Bi Zhengming”, is a complicated pun on the hero’s strange name, the separate but identical-sounding word for “proof/proving” (zhèngmíng), and the fact that he does finally achieve his goal of proving himself to his mum. The weak English title sounds like a sequel to a previous film that never existed.
CREDITS
Presented by MaxTimes (Shanghai) (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Shanghai Xixi Pictures Culture Media (CN), China Film Group (CN), Hubei Yangtze River Film Group (CN), Unison Frame Pictures (Hubei) (CN). Produced by MaxTimes (Shanghai) (CN).
Script: Tong Zhijian, Zhang Haotian, Chen Junyi, Tu Hua. Novel: Sun Daying. Photography: Piao Xinghai. Editing: Zhou Yuan. Music: Zhang Jian. Art direction: Wang Zichao. Costumes: Tian Ye. Styling: Fu Lei. Sound: Chen Ting, Zhao Nan, He Wei. Action: Chen Jiafu, Hao Shuai. Visual effects: Shi Ye, Liu Baojun (Image Architect VFX). Executive direction: Xi Jialin.
Cast: Wang Anyu (Bi Zhengming), Zhang Tian’ai (Da Baitao/Peach), Wang Yanlin (Lin Yuehua/Hua Shou/Shadow Hand), Nie Yuan (Zhou, captain), Feng Bing (Fourth Master), Wu Jiakai (Yang Wanxin/Young Master), Kong Lingmei (Man, hairdresser), Shi Yunpeng (Jiang Mitiao, Peach’s gang member), Yu Baishui (Erbao, Peach’s mute gang member), Sheng Gangshuai (Da Fazi), Chobu Huaje (Chang Lao’er), Huang Xiaolei (Bi Zhengming’s mother), Feng Lei (blind fortune-teller), Shi Mingze (Xiaowu), Li Xiaochuan (police constable), Wang Chao (sister-in-law), Luo Yichun (young Peach), Zheng Tianxiang (young Shadow Hand), Ruan Yunji (young Bi Zhengming).
Release: China, 1 Oct 2025.