Never Say Never
八角笼中
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 117 mins.
Director: Wang Baoqiang 王宝强.
Rating: 6/10.
In his second outing as a director, popular goofy comedian Wang Baoqiang presents a much more personal story, about deprived kids training as cage-fighters.
STORY
Longshan, Sichuan province, southwest China, 2001. Recently released from prison, onetime champion fighter Xiang Tenghui (Wang Baoqiang) is running a sandpit business, with his friend Wang Feng (Wang Xun) as manager. Driving along a remote rocky road at night, his lorry is attacked by a gang of kids. Wang Feng has always warned against using the road, which has a reputation for being dangerous. He also says the sandpit is not making any money, and RMB60,000 is owed in staff wages. He recommends Xiang Tenghui sells the sandpit to local businessman Li Sancai (Zhao Liang). Instead, Xiang Tenghui visits Wang Jingfu (Xiao Yang), a local entrepreneur whose latest wheeze is selling bottled essence of the watershield plant, He’s always said he’s prepared to financially back Xiang Tenghui in starting a children’s fight club that will breed champions – and also help to advertise his new essence. Xiang Tenghui was once a child cage-fighter and grew up to become provincial champion in 1992; but he’s always been reluctant to revisit his past. Wang Feng rounds up eight raggedy orphans and Xiang Tengui starts a club, providing the kids with food, clothes and dormitory lodging. However, after a few weeks, Wang Jingfu is arrested for peddling fake goods, so his backing dries up. Xiang Tenghui is reluctant to carry on but the kids still want to train under him. Seeing how they have no stable homes to return to, he agrees to continue, but stresses he will only teach them “fake fighting”, as done in martial-arts films. Xiang Tengui does a deal with local bar-owner Li (Li Hua), to have a steel cage built on his premises as an attraction. On the first outing, however, the customers immediately spot the two boys, Ma Hu (Ma Hu) and Su Mu (Zhou Debowen), are faking it, so he has to urge them to be more realistic. The idea is a big hit and everyone makes money from it. Xiang Tenghui then gets an offer to move it to the provincial capital. However, when some thugs disrupt a fight between Ma Hu and Su Mu, claiming it’s fake, a real brawl breaks out and Ma Hu almost stabs one of the thugs. Wang Feng helps Xiang Tenghui and the two boys to escape, but he’s injured and arrested. Xiang Tenghui has to bail him out later on. Wang Feng tells Xiang Tenghui he has to get off the fence and decide whether he wants to train the boys for real, to be real champions, as he himself has said they have a real gift for the sport. After visiting his family home, where his mother (Chi Peng) has all his awards, Xiang Tenghui comes to terms with his own past and how he ended up in prison. He starts training Ma Hu and Su Mu seriously. Some 10 years later, in 2011, Xiang Tenghui picks up the now-adult Ma Hu (Chen Yongsheng) and Su Mu (Shi Pengyuan) from the airport after they’ve won a competition. His fighting club, complete with a school, is now very successful, and many families want their underprivileged children to join. But then an old video is posted on the internet of Ma Hu and Su Mu as 10-year-old children doing cage fighting in the capital. Suddenly, at the age of 43, Xiang Tenghui’s whole world collapses.
REVIEW
Six years after his directorial debut with Buddies in India 大闹天竺 (2017), goofy Mainland comedian Wang Baoqiang 王宝强 takes the reins for the second time with Never Say Never 八角笼中, a much more “personal” undertaking about a onetime cage-fighter who reluctantly returns to the world of his troubled youth by training a group of orphans in the same sport. Virtually free of Wang’s tendency for o.t.t. buffoonery – as seen in the Detective Chinatown 唐人街探案 series (2015- ) and many of his other films – it has a simple emotional power centred on a man coming to terms with his past that’s undercut by a way over-long running time, especially in the second half, and a script that keeps going over the same ground to no good effect. Fronted by another actor, the film would have done minimal business; fronted by Wang himself, it’s taken a very juicy RMB2.19 billion. [Final tally was RMB2.21 billion.]
Born into a peasant family in a village in Hebei province, south of Beijing, Wang, 41, knows all about growing up in deprived circumstances. After falling in love with martial arts films and training while still young, he later worked as a manual labourer away from home before becoming a film extra in Beijing and then getting his first break in the indie drama Blind Shaft 盲井 (2003), as the main scam victim. Wang is on record as saying the content of Never had been on his mind for years before making the film – and that’s where some of its faults lie. Though Wang evidently wants to make a sincere study of deprived youth, this tends to get in the way of the real drama, which gradually tries to centre more on the adult protagonist as he tries to come to terms with his own troubled past and redeem himself by doing society some good. The film ends up between two stools, with neither aspect being explored in much depth – and it’s all hung on a very thin plot that’s basically scenes of training, fighting and squabbling. The whole thing is reportedly inspired by a true story.
After a glimpse of some vicious cage-fighting by children – one of whom we later learn is the young Xiang Tenghui – the film starts years later in 2001 as, recently emerged from prison, the 30-something Xiang Tenghui is running a sandpit business, with a friend as the manager. However, it’s losing money. So, when a local entrepreneur offers to seed-fund a kids’ fighting school, to train champions like Xiang Tenghui was once himself, he reluctantly agrees – but just to make money and teach only “fake fighting” as in the movies. His sandpit pal rounds up some orphans and the training begins, and 10 years later Xiang Tenghui is rich and famous. But then his past catches up with him.
Though the script – by the pseudonymous Qiqi 七七 (“Seven Seven”) and Wang himself – focuses on two of the fighters as they grow to adulthood, it never really gets deep under their skin. Xiang Tenghui’s own background is only slowly revealed, making him difficult to empathise with. The film gets by more as a colourful collection of character thumbnails – a local bar boss, played by veteran Liu Hua 李桦 ; comedian Wang Xun 王迅 in a straight role as Xiang Tenghui’s sandpit manager and best friend; comedian Xiao Yang 肖央 as the flashy entrepreneur who funds the start-up; and so on – and also as a realistically staged portrait of on-the-edge life in southwest China. With Wang Baoqiang and Wang Xun adopting Sichuan accents as thick as molasses, the film drips local atmosphere, as well as allowing the former to indulge his love of inflected dialogue without his usual physical antics. The film is never boring; but it does take an awfully long time to change its few gears, largely thanks to Xiang Tenghui’s aversion to revisiting a youth we only learn about later.
Shot in Daliang Shan (repping the fictional Longshan) and Chengdu city (the provincial capital), in Sichuan province, it’s always visually interesting in the saturated widescreen compositions by ace d.p. Luo Pan 罗攀 (Einstein and Einstein 狗13, 2013; The Dead End 烈日灼心, 2015; I Am Not Madame Bovary 我不是潘金莲, 2016; Youth 芳华, 2017) and omnipresent background scenery. The copious training scenes have a realistic feel, though the film – despite its powerful opening – shies away from showing the kids’ fighting in too much detail. An early English title for the film was Octagonal; the Chinese means “In the Octagonal Cage”.
CREDITS
Presented by Wuxi Baotang Film Industry (CN), Tumushuk Sunflower Film (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Beijing Happy Film Industry (CN).
Script: Qiqi, Wang Baoqiang. Photography: Luo Pan. Editing: Zhang Yibo, Zhu Liyun. Music: Wang Zongxian [Nathan Wang]. Art direction: Sun Li. Styling: Wu Lilu [Dora Ng]. Sound: Li Anlei. Action: Zhuang Yuanzhang. Visual effects: Liu Qin.
Cast: Wang Baoqiang (Xiang Tenghui), Chen Yongsheng (Ma Hu), Shi Pengyuan (Su Mu), Wang Xun (Wang Feng), Zhang Yitong (Su Mu’s elder sister), Hu Haofan (Su Xiaobu), Ma Hu (young Ma Hu), Zhou Debowen (young Su Mu), Jiayangqiulang (young Su Xiaobu), Xiao Yang (Wang Jingfu), Liu Hua (Li, bar owner), Li Yang (Li, school headmaster), Li Chen (Xie, council member), Li Meng (TV presenter), Shi Yanneng (CJ club owner), Wang Dazhi (Ermengzi), Zhao Liang (Li Sancai), Bao Zhenjiang (family head), Zhang Qi (leader of provincial team), Dong Qi (news presenter), Chi Peng (Xiang Tenghui’s mother), Li Ruotian (judge), Wang Yongfang (Xiang Tenghui’s elder sister).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Gala), 16 Jun 2023.
Release: China, 6 Jul 2023.