Burning Stars
孤星计划
China, 2024, colour/b&w, 2.35:1, 104 mins.
Director: Xu Zhanxiong 徐展雄.
Rating: 7/10.
Smoothly assembled, suitably twisty package centred on CPC/KMT shenanigans in 1920s Shanghai.
STORY
Shanghai, 1924. Li Yimin (Wang Yuan), a young mechanic from the countryside, gets to know Ding Menghua (Zhang Xueying), a student at Shanghai University. She invites him along to a protest march and then to join the Lone Star Society 孤星社, a student protest group, led by teacher Hou Shaolie (Li Chen). Li Yimin, Ding Menghu and another student, Xu Tianping (Liang Jingkang), whose father is a senior KMT officer, become soulmates despite their different backgrounds. Hou Shaolie, who teaches at the university’s night classes for workers, invites Li Yimin to enrol, saying Shanghai’s is “a poor man’s university”. The students join in demonstrations, among which are demands to reclaim the foreign concessions in the city. But on 30 May 1925, in cold blood, a foreign policeman shoots dead one of the student protestors, He Bingyi (Ye Xiaowei). In June the military police storm the university, where the students have barricaded themselves inside, and with British and American marines manage to break in. During the fighting Li Yimin is accidentally shot and wounded by Xu Tianping. Two years later, Li Yimin has joined the armed Workers’ Patrols 工纠队, organised by the trade unions at the request of the Communist Party to protect demonstrators and maintain social order. On 12 Apr 1927 Nationalist general Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek] orders a violent purge of communists in the city, and a crackdown on Workers’ Patrols. Hou Shaolie tells Li Yimin to help escort a revolutionary VIP, Hu, secretly on to a ferry to Wuhan. The operation is codenamed Lone Star 孤星 and Li Yimin drives the car to pick up Hu in the middle of the night. But the operation has been compromised: Hou Shaolie is wounded and he and Li Yimin barely manage to escape. The next day, the garage where Li Yimin works is searched by Nationalist soldiers, among whom is Xu Tianping, who has since graduated from the Whampoa military academy set up by the KMT to staff the Nationalist army. The soldiers don’t find Hou Shaolie, whom Li Yimin is hiding there. Li Yimin later drives him to a safe building where Hu is also being hidden. But when Nationalist soldiers suddenly arrive, and a chase takes place, Xu Tianping seemingly shoots Hou Shaolie dead. Before dying, Hou Shaolie hands over to Li Yimin a special pen which signifies his authority. Li Yimin discovers his underground contact is none other than Ding Menghua, now a journalist at the prestigious and long-running Shanghai newspaper Shen Bao 申报. She recommends other former classmates to take over the work of organising tickets and permits for Hu to travel, including Luo Shiwen (Zhai Xiaowen), now at the Municipal Council, and Zhou Wensu (Li Jiaxin), now working at the ferry port. Following Hou Shaolie’s death, their leader is now Zhang Guisheng (Yin Xiaotian), a KMT section head who’s actually a double agent, as well as being from the same village as Li Yimin. A clandestine meeting of the small group is broken up by the sudden arrival of Nationalist troops, led by Xu Tianping who is hot on their trail. Xu Tianping wounds Li Yimin in the arm but the latter escapes. Zhang Guisheng is suspected of being a double agent by Xu Renchao (Yu Ailei), head of the KMT political department and Xu Tianping’s father. But before he can definitely prove it, the whole Lone Star operation starts to fall apart, as Ding Menghua is brutally murdered and Li Yimin is arrested and tortured by Nationalist army section head Xia Youqun (Zhang Xiaochen) to find out where Hu is being hidden.
REVIEW
A period drama, set in 1920s Shanghai, that morphs from a history of student protest into a KMT/CPC spy thriller, Burning Stars 孤星计划 is a smoothly assembled package that’s held together by its underlying theme of changing friendships and loyalties. With a fairly low-wattage cast – led by baby-faced singer-actor Wang Yuan 王源, 24, in his first starring role – it gets by more as an ensemble drama, and one propelled by a suspense plot, rather than on the strength of any single performances. It’s another interesting, if flawed, theatrical feature by writer-director Xu Zhanxiong 徐展雄, following Wild Grass 荞麦疯长 (2020) and period political biopic The Pioneer 革命者 (2021), with which it shares some common ground. It opened late last year to a polite RMB102 million, less than Pioneer but almost double that of Grass.
It initially looks like being a story of left-wing student activism during the chaotic mid-1920s, as seen through the eyes of a young mechanic from the countryside. There’s certainly enough drama in the first iteration of Shanghai University to fuel a whole movie: founded in 1922 by both the KMT and the CPC, and with a radical syllabus, it was heavily involved in all the student unrest of the next few years and was finally closed down in 1927 by the KMT as part of its general campaign against communism. (The current Shanghai University was founded in 1994.) After getting to know a perky, politically active student there, shy country boy Li Yimin (Wang) is invited along to a protest march by her and then enrols in the university’s workers’ night school, gradually becoming a part of early CPC anti-colonial student activity.
However, when a student is shot dead during a protest (a true event), and the fledgling university is stormed by the authorities (ditto), things become much more serious. By 1927 Li has joined the armed Workers’ Patrols and, followed the violent crackdown on communists ordered by Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek] – the so-called Shanghai Massacre of 12 Apr 1927 – Li Yimin is asked to join a team to smuggle a communist VIP out of the city. Codenamed Operation Lone Star (the meaning of the film’s Chinese title), it brings together several of his friends from university days, of whom at least one is now working for the KMT.
It’s at this point, less than 30 minutes in, that Burning Stars becomes a tense CPC/KMT thriller, as onetime student friendships are tested by political realities. After the university teacher who first inspired him is shot dead, Li Yimin finds that his new contact is the girl he first got to know, who’s now a radical journalist at the city’s oldest newspaper. She helps to put together a new team to smuggle out the VIP – but double agents are everywhere. Following a major twist at the hour mark, the film also climaxes with a complex double bluff in the final 20 minutes and a neat little twist at the end.
It took five people to write the script, including Xu and Shanghai Dimension Films’ CEO Ren Ning 任宁, but this time it pays off. Lead writer Yu Xi 余曦 had a similar position on Shanghai-set CPC drama 1921 1921, so clearly knows the period, while Huang Wei 黄苇 has a solid background from the gritty The Best Is Yet to Come 不止不休 (2020) and her boxing-mum drama Shallow 出拳吧妈妈 (2021). Script supervisor was Zhang Ji 张冀, a regular writer for the Mainland movies of Hong Kong director Chen Kexin 陈可辛 [Peter Chan]. And creative producer was veteran Huang Jianxin 黄建新, an experienced pair of hands whose own 1921 had some thematic overlap.
It’s all very much in the vein of other CPC/KMT Shanghai spy dramas, whether 1920s or 1940s, though this time with a noticeably younger edge. Wang (who last played the young Deng Xiaoping in the Paris sections of 1921) hardly has the screen presence to carry a movie of this size; but thankfully the load is spread across several actors, including Zhang Xueying 张雪迎 (so good in both Einstein and Einstein 狗13, 2013, and My Blue Summer 暗恋 橘生淮南, 2022) as the committed journalist, Yin Xiaotian 印小天 as the group’s double-agent leader, and Liang Jingkang 梁靖康 as the group’s former friend but now KMT enemy. Veteran villain Yu Ailei 余皑磊 even pops up in a small role as a ruthless KMT department head.
Atmospheric widescreen photography by d.p. Gao Weizhe 高伟喆 (The Pioneer; Black Dog 狗阵, 2024), the slick editing, and a score by Guo Haowei 郭好为 that builds tension and mood, especially with the use of a female voice a capella, maintain interest. Period Shanghai looks less backlotty than usual in the art direction by Li Chang 李畅. And the violence is sometimes surprisingly visceral.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai Dimension Films (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN). Produced by Shanghai Dimension Films (CN).
Script: Yu Xi, Chi Yicheng, Huang Wei, Xu Zhanxiong, Ren Ning. Script supervision: Zhang Ji. Photography: Gao Weizhe. Editing: Li Bingyi, Du Junlin, Zhang Yifan. Music: Guo Haowei. Art direction: Li Chang. Costume design: Zhang Rong, Zhang Mengxue. Styling: Chen Minzheng, Qin Xilin. Sound: Wu Jiang, Wu Yue. Action: Xia Xiaolong. Visual effects: Jiang Chao. Second-unit direction: Zeng Zu. Second-unit photography: Chen Zhiying. Executive direction: Dai Jingjing.
Cast: Wang Yuan (Li Yimin), Zhang Xueying (Ding Menghua), Liang Jingkang (Xu Tianping), Li Chen (Hou Shaolie), Yin Xiaotian (Zhang Guisheng, KMT section head), Han Tongsheng (Bai, KMT military commander), Yu Ailei (Xu Renchao, KMT political department head), Dong Yong (Li Dazhao), Ci Shao (Jiang Yue, sharpshooter), Zhai Xiaowen (Luo Shiwen, Municipal Council employee), Zhang Xiaochen (Xia Youqun, army section head), Chen Yusi (Yang Zhihua, Qu Qiubai’s wife), Li Jiaxin (Zhou Wensu, port employee), Yuan Wenkang (Secretary Gao), Wang Renjun (Cai Hesen), Tong Mengshi (Qu Qiubai), Yao Anlian (Master Yang), Zhang Jianya (Lin Tingming), Lin Dongfu (Qian, editor-in-chief), He Shengming (Chen Wangdao), Li Zonghan (Shen Yanbing), Xiao’ai (Hu Shousan), Matt William Knowles (Barrett, customs officer), Wang Shasha (Yu Cuiying), Chen Mingyang (Xiang Hu), Lu Qi (Luo Anguo), Ye Xiaowei (He Bingyi), Zhang Haiyu (Sun Yongjian), Cao Jun (Liu Hua), Yuan Jinhui (Cui Xiaoli, newspaper messenger boy), Jin Jingcheng (Hu), Sheng Gangshuai (Zhao Buxian), Hu Baosen (Guo He), Yu Xi (Yun Daiying).
Release: China, 7 Dec 2024.