Bureau 749
749局
China, 2024, colour, 2.35:1, 123 mins.
Director: Lu Chuan 陆川.
Rating: 4/10.
Sci-fi monster movie is a wannabe blockbuster holed by a shapeless script, colourless lead actor and endless VFX.
STORY
Hongkuang city, somewhere in central-south China, 5 Jun 1992. After a mining disaster in which 47 workers are killed, one miner is rescued from the collapsed pit. He says that, while trapped underground, he came into contact with an unknown life form and also with the skeleton of a foreign body. Later, huge metal fragments from some craft are discovered underground. The whole case is immediately classified and turned over for investigation to the top-secret 749 Life Sciences Research Centre 749生命科学研究中心, aka Bureau 749 749局, which has five centres around the country as well as many laboratories. After eight months the rescued miner suddenly dies and his pregnant wife’s foetus develops abnormalities. For security, the authorities decide to fill in the pit and send the skeleton and metal fragments to Bureau 749’s research centre in Hongkuang for a thorough investigation. Eighteen years later, Hongkuang city becomes covered by a mysterious thick white mist; but after tests it is deemed non-harmful by the authorities. Cao Guojiu (Xin Baiqing), a retired, wheelchair-bound scientist who with his wife Sun Erniang (Zhang Junning) runs a large, warehouse-like bar/disco by the side of the mining pit, receives an anonymous email containing confidential reports by Bureau 749. These reports detail how, after unknown life forms started to appear in the pit’s lake, on 12 Jul a team from Bureau 749 collected samples of larvae, which were shown to have high levels of adaptability and survival, as well as being able to injest all types of metal; subsequently, on 15 Jul, huge tentacles were seen emerging from the water, with the result that, to help in its investigations, Bureau 749 decided to recall the sole person connected with the original 1992 event – Ma Shan (Wang Junkai), the son of the dead miner. Born with small wings on his back, Ma Shan had initially been raised, along with other children from that time with special powers, at Bureau 749; but he had rebelled and left, and had been adopted by his uncle Cao Guojiu and Sun Erniang. Cao Guojiu tries to book Ma Shan on a flight from Hongkuang to Xiamen, where he can hide out with an old army friend of Cao Guojiu; but heavies from Bureau 749 suddenly arrive at the bar, from which Ma Shan and Sun Erniang only just manage to escape. After a vertiginous chase through Hongkuang city, Ma Shan escapes into the metro, where he’s trapped by Xia Hua (Miao Miao), another of the special-powers children raised at the bureau. She escorts him on the train direct to Bureau 749’s research centre inside a mountain outside the city, where he’s sarcastically welcomed by all the other special-powers kids whom he grew up with and who bullied him when he was young. Ma Shan is taken to meet the centre’s head, Qiao Dongbei (Zheng Kai), but refuses to work for him until Qiao Dongbei threatens to go after Cao Guojiu for tax evasion and Sun Erniang for selling fake spirits. He’s ordered to undergo some dangerous agility tests against large metal balls in a training arena, and only survives when he’s pushed to the limit and his special powers break out. Blood tests reveal that Cao Guojiu has long been giving him regular doses of strontium to suppress his special powers so he can live a more normal life. When he’s shown one of the life forms in the bioscience lab, it communicates with him through the glass, saying, “We are your family. Together we’ll annihilate the human race, annihilate the evil virus on this planet, make this planet free. The human race is destined to be exterminated by us.” Qiao Dongbei and head scientist Chen Guang (Li Chen) cannot hear what is said, but Li Chen later realises that some kind of communication took place. Using Ma Shan as a guinea pig, the bureau discovers that the huge metal fragments can somehow drain the energy out of the life forms, but they don’t know how. Ma Shan is unwilling to sacrifice himself any longer in the cause of science and the bureau’s top people realise they’re running out of time before the life forms burst out of the pit and engulf Hongkuang city – followed by the rest of the country and then the world.
REVIEW
Eight-and-a-half years in the making, and with a reported budget of some RMB600 million, sci-fi monster movie Bureau 749 749局 is a wannabe blockbuster that’s fatally holed by a mediocre, confused script and a colourless lead actor. Playing an 18-year-old with special powers who’s drafted by the eponymous secret state bureau to combat some nasty space monsters, baby-faced onetime boybander Wang Junkai 王俊凯 (Namiya 解忧杂货店, 2017), then 19, comes over as simply Gen-Z bland rather than emotionally and spiritually complex, especially when surrounded by more experienced actors with whom he has no chemistry. However, it’s ultimately the confused (and confusing) screenplay – made worse, maybe, by heavy editing during post-production – that’s to blame, with a second half that’s just a VFX-athon of monsters vs characters the viewer couldn’t care less about. Released as a National Day attraction, it performed poorly for such an ambitious production, taking RMB376 million – a very decent amount for an average movie but in Bureau’s case a long way from the RMB1.8 billion it reportedly needed to start showing a profit.
On the surface it’s also a long way from the kind of film one would expect from Mainland writer-director Lu Chuan 陆川, now 53, who initialy carved an eclectic, festival-friedly career with black crime comedy The Missing Gun 寻枪 (2002), the Tibetan western Kekexili: Mountain Patrol 可可西里 (2004) and the very fine Nanjing Massacre drama City of Life and Death 南京！南京！ (2009), the last strikingly shot in b&w. But Lu has actually been in monster-movie territory before – in Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe 九层妖塔 (2015), which starts with the discovery of some mysterious underground skeletons, and the foundation of Bureau 749 to investigate them, and climaxes with a monster VFX-athon six years later. Chronicles reaped a handsome RMB680 million and, given the box-office failure of his previous film, costume drama The Last Supper 王的盛宴 (2012), Lu was no doubt encouraged to stay in the same sci-fi/action genre. Less than six months after Chronicles was released, he had already started pre-production on Bureau 749. (Also, in the early 1990s, after graduating from a military institute, Lu had actually worked for a couple of years at the real Bureau 749, prior to taking a master’s degree at the Beijing Film Academy, so his fascination with the shadowy, top-secret unit has deep roots.)
The parallels with Chronicles go beyond just the subject matter: both screenplays (solo written by Lu, who really should start using co-writers) begin promisingly but then have no clear sense of narrative direction. The first 20 minutes of Bureau are very entertaining on their own: 749 is introduced, amid secret files on paranormal events, spaceships and monsters, before a mining disaster takes place, weird things are discovered in the pit, and the son of the sole survivor is somehow affected in his mother’s womb. Eighteen years later, Ma Shan (Wang) is a moody teen living with his adoptive uncle and aunt in a giant punk-metal bar near the pit when goons from 749 come looking for him to help with a new crisis. The subsequent chase – a vertiginous parkour exercise atop high buildings – is brilliantly staged, as is a sequence at 749 itself, where Ma Shan’s skills are tested in an arena vs giant metal balls. But these setpieces have almost nothing to do with advancing the main narrative. Only half-an-hour into the movie is the audience let in on the crux of the plot – that Our Young Hero is being asked, against his will, to battle monsters with whom he shares some kind of genetic connection.
And that, basically, is the plot for the next hour-and-a-half. Lu’s screenplay is opaque even on its own fantasy-science level, as well as being chaotically structured, with bits and pieces of character background filled in here and there. A onetime friendship with a 749 girl (played okay by former dancer Miao Miao 苗苗, Youth 芳华, 2017, The Best Is Yet to Come 不止不休, 2020), who also has special powers, is introduced but frustratingly left dangling, And a whole platoon of 749 soldiers, former childhood colleagues who used to bully Ma Shan, are scarcely developed as individuals.
Miao’s real-life husband, Zheng Kai 郑恺, 32 at the time and more often in jokey rom-commy roles, is cast as 749’s surprisingly youthful head, making up for his lack of physical authority with a faintly jokey approach to the whole thing that’s actually quite refreshing. The rest of the cast take it all very seriously, from veteran character villain Yu Ailei 余皑磊 in a throwaway part as a military trainer, through Taiwan-raised actress Zhang Junning 张钧甯 (A Place Called Silence 默杀, 2024) as Ma Shan’s gutsy aunt, to a heavily made-up Xin Baiqing 辛柏青 (the hippie dolphin trainer in Water Boys 五个扑水的少年, 2021) as Ma Shan’s mysterious adoptive father. Other actors come and go in undeveloped smaller roles.
Because the script has no clear architecture or dramatic thrust, the action in the second half feels bitty and opportunistic, involving characters the viewer has no emotional connection with. The final, VFX-thick half-hour is especially ridiculous and increasingly hysterical, ending in a faux-poetic resolution accompanied by a well-known slice of J.S. Bach. Visual effects are okay but nothing special; Ma Shan’s angelic wings have a second-hand look; and the sight of armed troops battling giant, vulture-like birds and a tentacular super-monster is hardly new. More original is the look of Bureau 749 itself, hollowed out of a large mountain, in which the offices have an old-fashioned style that’s easy on the eye. And as is usual with Lu’s films, the whole thing is strikingly shot, this time by Hong Wei 洪伟 and UK-born David Tattersall, the latter hugely experienced on big US action films. The music score by Liu Tao 刘韬 (Forever Young 无问西东, 2018) is conventional.
Making-of footage during the end titles charts the film’s eight-and-a-half years of production, which involved 6,526 people between 5 Mar 2016 and 24 Sep 2024. The footage starts with sketching and modelling in Mar 2016, the start of main shooting in Beijing in Dec 2018 (plus later re-shoots from Mar 2024), how all the international crew (except one) left in late 2018 because of a shortage of finance, the wrapping of principal photography in Jul 2019, and Lu making commercials (in 2020) and doing other jobs (2022-24) to keep post-production financially afloat during the pandemic period. The film was shot in Chongqing (the parkour chase sequence, started in Nov 2018), followed by Beijing, and then Baiyin, Gansu province.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Primal Force Pan Entertainment Cultural Development (CN), Huayi Brothers Pictures (CN), Huawen Picture (Beijing) Group (CN), Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism (CN), Tencent Pictures Culture Media (CN), Hunan Lejing Media (CN), Xinjiang Primal Force Entertainment (CN), Beijing SPower Media (CN). Produced by Beijing Primal Force Pan Entertainment Cultural Development (CN).
Script: Lu Chuan. Photography: Hong Wei, David Tattersall. Editing: Guai Niao [Lu Chuan], Teng Yun, Cao Xiaoyue, Gao Lu. Music: Liu Tao. Art direction: Mao Fen, Colin Gibson. Artistic supervision: Liu Qing. Costumes: Tian Ye. Styling: Li Zhou. Sound: Wen Bo, Wang Chong, Lou Kun, Zhao Gujin. Action: Chen Jiafu, Stephen Griffin. Car stunts: Du Zihao. Visual effects: Ferran Domecnech, Manolo Mantero, Bhanu Prakash, Jonathan Neill, Peter Travers, Sun Yicun, Jia Guanglei (Double Negative Films). Executive direction: Zhao Yisui, Liu Yan, Pu Shuangcheng, E’renbeihe, Zhao Yawei, Xue Runtian.
Cast: Wang Junkai (Ma Shan), Miao Miao (Xia Hua/Shea), Zheng Kai (Qiao Dongbei, 749 head), Ren Min (zombie girl), Xin Baiqing (Ma Jue/Cao Guojiu), Li Chen (Chen Guang, 749 head scientist), Zhang Junning (Sun Erniang), Yang Haoyu (Zhang), Yu Ailei (Ba Ye/Scarface, 749 training head), Li Meng (Wu Han), Li Junmo (Tie Fo/Iron Buddha, third platoon), Dong Shaohui (Ban Xian, third platoon), Qi Kai (Xiaoqi, third platoon), Fei’eduosi (Bai Ya, third platoon), Zhang Yunpeng (Tang Ren, third platoon), Bao Yu (Huang Mao/Yellow Hair, third platoon), Guo Shibai (Xiaoguo, third platoon), Wang Xiaotong, Guo Daixin, Feng Baikai, Zhang Chenxi, Yan Xinyu, Zhang Zihao, Sun Yi (third platoon soldiers), Jin Shijia (Fei Dao/D-Blade, training-balls manipulator), Li Guangjie (old director), Zhou Yiwei (Ma Shan’s father), Cao Weiyu (Lu), Li Qinqin (woman at newspaper office), Liu Lu (Ma Shan’s mother), Liu Kun (Wang Pangzi/Fattie Wang), Liu Liyang (DJ at bar), Zhou Yige (Ma Shan, aged 5-11), Pei Jiaxin (Xia Hua, aged 5), Feng Xueya (Xia Hua, aged 11).
Release: China, 1 Oct 2024.