Tiger Robbers

阳光劫匪

China, 2021, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 106 mins.

Director: Li Yu 李玉.

Rating: 3/10.

Manga-like comedy about some pet-finders rescuing a kidnapped tiger is mirthless and overblown.

STORY

Puguang city, southern China, the present day. Xiaoxue (Song Jia) has been searching for a week for her five-year-old pet tiger Na’na, whom she looks upon as a daughter, having reared it from when it was a cub and the zoo at which she was working as an animal keeper closed down. As Na’na grew, Xiaoxue moved it to a nearby island and the two lived together in an abandoned chapel. The tearful Xiaoxue begs a group of people who not long ago set up Yang Guang Pet Search to help her – tomboy Yang Guang (Ma Li), young inventor Wang Yuan (Zhang Haiyu), and thief Yishou (Xie Ruitao). Xiaoxue believes the man who kidnapped Na’na is Liu Shenqi (Zeng Zhiwei), a Guangdong-born entrepreneur and local celebrity who’s famous for his philanthropy. After much persuasion by Xiaoxue, the trio agree to take on the job. Yishou slips a tracker in Liu Shenqi’s pocket while at a public event and they find his private mansion is on Zhoushan island. Disguised as electricians, the four bluff their way inside when Liu Shenqi is away in Shanghai on business. They discover a secret basement complex behind sliding doors whose doorcard is held by Wu Chuanpu (Fang Li), Liu Shenqi’s butler. Pretending to be a nurse, Xiaoxue goes for a job interview with Wu Chuanpu, drugs his drink, and gets all four of them into the basement, a huge complex full of valuable possessions, gold and jewellery, in which they eventually find Na’na. (Meanwhile, Yishou has discovered the reason Liu Shenqi kidnapped Na’na: he had a younger sister of the same name who dies 10 years ago and to whom he was devoted, and he believes her spirit lives on in the tiger.) The four are discovered by the mansion’s guards but escape with Na’na (and some of Liu Shenqi’s valuables) in a speedboat. However, they are then robbed on the sea by three masked thieves and put ashore. They eventually reach home, and find that Yishou stole the ID card of one of the thieves, Lin Didao (Sha Yi). He happens to be Xiaoxue’s ex-boyfriend, and Liu Shenqi is hot on everyone’s trail.

REVIEW

A miscast Ma Li 马丽, one of the Mainland’s top light comediennes, can’t do much to help Tiger Robbers 阳光劫匪, a cartoony caper comedy in which a group of four misfits try to steal back a tiger that’s been kidnapped by a celebrity entrepreneur. Pitched somewhere between a kids’ film, a spoof on tomb-robber sagas and a ditzy pratfaller, it’s the first outright comedy by Shandong-born writer-director Li Yu 李玉, 47, after six dramas of varying success. From her first feature, lesbian drama Fish and Elephant 今年夏天 (2001, unreleased in the Mainland), Li’s box office appeal has gradually increased with each movie – though mainly with her last three features – to a polite but hardly notable RMB148 million for her last and most mainstream film, the college-and-after comedy-drama Ever Since We Loved 万物生长 (2015). Alas, Tiger Robbers has reversed all that: shot some three years ago (between Dec 2017 and Mar 2018), it’s managed only a meh RMB44 million as a May Day holiday release.

Dedicated to “those who have lost much, but still have have hopes in their hearts and bravely love again” 那些在不断失去中，依然心怀阳光，勇敢去爱的人们, it’s Li’s first film without actress Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 after a straight run of four (Lost in Beijing 苹果, 2007; Buddha Mountain 观音山, 2010; Double Xposure 二次曝光, 2012; Ever Since We Loved). The film is based (very freely, according to Li) on two novels by Japanese crime/fantasy writer Isaka Kotaro 伊坂幸太郎, 50: 陽気なギャングが地球を回す (2003, literally “A Cheerful Gang Reverses the Earth”) and 陽気なギャングの日常と襲撃 (2006, “A Cheerful Gang’s Everyday Life and Surprise Attack”) that have been translated and published in China in one volume (see cover, top left). Isaka is a popular writer in East Asia, and there’s been over a dozen adaptations of his stories for the big screen in Japan – the first being A Cheerful Gang Turns the Earth 陽気なギャングが地球を回す (2006, see poster, below left), which is far closer to the 2003 novel and has nothing to do with a kidnapped tiger. Tiger Robbers is the first film version of an Isaka work in Chinese but, apart from capturing the author’s propensity for pantomime villains and extreme plotting, it might just as well have been an original script by Li and her three other writers – regular producer/co-writer Fang Li 方励, plus Yang Bingjia 杨秉佳 (The Thousand Faces of Dunjia 奇门遁甲, 2017) and Wang Yanyi 王雁羿.

At the start, the film explicitly labels itself an “urban fairytale” 城市的童话; in fact it’s nothing of the kind – the label simply gives the film-makers free rein to do anything they want. Tiger Robbers is simply a knockabout, manga-like comedy – full of exaggerated characters, colourful settings, and a boom-boom-boom-like rhythm to the cutting and humour. Starting with an extended sequence that’s basically a showpiece for Hong Kong comic Zhan Ruiwen 詹瑞文 [Jim Chim] as a fake Cantonese monk, and then an extended section in which a lovelorn woman (Song Jia 宋佳) tries to persuade a group of pet-finders to track down her five-year-old “daughter” Na’na (actually a tiger), the film becomes a series of crime-comedy capers, as the quirky quartet, led by tomboyish Yang Guang (Ma) penetrates the remote mansion of billionaire philanthropist Liu Shenqi (Zeng Zhiwei 曾志伟 [Eric Tsang] with funny white hair) to rescue the carnivore he’s kidnapped for ridiculous reasons. The mansion turns out to have a lavish underground section, complete with organ; escaping from that, the gang is robbed on the high seas, and then recaptured by Liu Shenqi, who locks the tiger up in his burglar-proof pawn shop and challenges Yang Guang & Co. to rescue it again. In between all this – as well as a tacked-on, remarkably silly coda to show off the visual effects – the writers spin a story of unrequited love between Yang Guang and the tiger’s owner that’s dressed up with b&w flashbacks to Yang Guang’s youth to downplay the lesbian content.

There are two major problems with the film: one, Li has no inherent sense of humour or timing, and two, the film is all visual design and no story. Art director Zheng Chen 郑辰 does a fine job with sets like the pet-finders’ home and the villain’s gold- and diamond-filled basement, and French composer Nicolas Errèra (The White Storm 扫毒, 2013; Mountain Cry 喊•山, 2015; Hidden Man 邪不压正, 2018) satisfactorily mickey-mouses his way through the action. But the central emotional story, a de facto lesbian yarn disguised as a severe case of mother-loss, is paltry. Most of Li’s films – apart from, arguably, Ever Since We Loved – have been centred on women and their emotions, but Tiger Robbers is a manga-like caper comedy, not a melodrama. Like her misguided mystery-drama Double Xposure, which also tried mixing genres, it soon starts sinking with all hands.

In short hair and tomboy clothes, Ma, 38, simply looks out of place, her subtle style of comedy out of kilter with most of the cast, while Song, 40, as the lovelorn tiger lady, looks wistful and confused, and has never shown any great aptitude for comedy anyway. Hong Kong veteran Zeng glides in and out, gleefully playing the soft-spoken villain, but he seems to come from another movie. The rest of the cast clock in and do their stuff, producer/co-writer Fang pops up as the villain’s lumbering butler, but finally it’s all an overblown, by-the-numbers, mirthless affair.

For the character of Na’na, five tigers were used in all, with the two Bengal tigers used for the adult Na’na actually filmed in the US. Though the producers claim that 90% of the tiger shots are not CGI, the visual effects are generally top quality. The film’s Chinese title means “Sunshine Robbers”; the name of Ma’s character also means “sunshine”. The film was shot in Beijing and Zhejiang, including Zhoushan island. Since then, Li and Fang have completed another feature, crime drama The Fallen Bridge 断•桥, with Ma Sichun 马思纯, Wang Junkai 王俊凯 and Fan Wei 范伟 [released in Aug 2022].

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Laurel Films (CN). Produced by Beijing Laurel Films (CN).

Script: Li Yu, Fang Li, Yang Bingjia, Wang Yanyi. Novels: Isaka Kotaro. Photography: Chen Cheng. Editing: Yan Tingting, Wang Liye. Editing advice: Zhang Jiahui [Cheung Kar-fai]. Music: Nicolas Errèra. Art direction: Zheng Chen. Costume design: Zhang Xiang. Styling: Wei Xiangrong. Sound: Fu Kang. Action: Liu Mingzhe. Visual effects: Zhong Dehong (Dexter Studios, Blaad Studios).

Cast: Ma Li (Yang Guang), Song Jia (Xiaoxue), Zhang Haiyu (Wang Yuan), Xie Ruitao (Yishou), Zeng Zhiwei [Eric Tsang] (Liu Shenqi, professor), Sha Yi (Lin Didao, sea robber), Fang Li (Wu Chuanpu, butler), Yang Di (An Zi, sea robber), Zhan Ruiwen [Jim Chim] (fake monk), Ma Lei (Binzi), Wang Gang (Da Xiong), Jiang Yi (Cao, head security guard), Cao Hanchao (security guard from Henan), Sun Ning (fake municipal official), Zhang Renbo (security guard), Liu Jiage (Da Yun), Liu Jiarui (Xiaoyun), Zhou Zhuoyi (young Yang Guang), Ming Xing (Yang Guang’s mother).

Release: China, 1 May 2021.