Evacuate from the 21st Century
从21世纪安全撤离
China, 2024, colour/b&w, 1.55/2.1/2.4/3.77:1, 97 mins.
Director: Li Yang 李阳.
Rating: 6/10.
Sci-fi fantasy-cum-VFX head trip is an eclectic spin on youth movies, loaded with WTF moments, by film-maker Li Yang, in his feature debut.
STORY
Planet K, orbiting Kepler 160, summer 1999. Planet K has a similar atmosphere and climate and civilisation to Earth’s, but its days only last 12 hours instead of 24. A group of friends at No. 3 Senior High – leader Wang Chengyong (Li Zhuozhao), narrator Wang Zha (Chen Yichen) and tubby idiot Paopao (Kang Qixuan) – are challenged to a fight at a ruined factory by the dwarf Zhao Changjiang (Liu Yongqi) and his gang. Wang Chengyong is almost killed by Zhao Changjiang’s powerful adult protector, who pushes him off a cliff into a lake polluted with barrels of chemicals. Wang Zha and Paopao rescue him, but Wang Chengyong finds his mind travelling forward 20 years, to 1 Nov 2019, when he is working in some unspecified job in a super-modern hospital, the Long Life Institute, under a man who says he’s his superior. Before he can discover any more, his vision implodes and he finds himself back in 1999. But then Wang Zha finds himself plunged into the future, working alongside aggressive journalist Liu Lianzhi (Zhong Chuxi) as she investigates illegal organ trading at LLI, which is run by the ruthless San Ye (Zhu Yanmanzi). When San Ye orders her heavies to capture the two of them, Liu Lianzhi proves to be a mighty fighter. Back in 1999 the three friends wonder whether the chemicals that spilled into the lake have distorted their brains in some way. Finally Paopao manages to travel to 2019 and finds, to his huge surprise, that he’s living with Yang Yi (Zhu Yanmanzi), the onetime high-school beauty (Ma Fanding) who used to be Wang Chengyong’s girl. Back in 1999, Paopao tells Wang Zha the news but neither of them dares to tell Wang Chengyong. Intrigued by all their glimpses of the future, Wang Chengyong insists on going to 2019 to see Yang Yi. However, Yang Yi tells Paopao she doesn’t want to see Wang Chengyong again as they already split up four years earlier and she now loves (the slimline) him. Paopao and Wang Zha do their best to stop Wang Chengyong meeting Yang Yi by pretending no one knows where she’s living. Meanwhile, when a senior editor, Yu (Ji Fangjie), brazenly takes credit for Liu Lianzhi’s highly-praised expose of LLI’s organ trading, Wang Zha goes ballistic and destroys the magazine’s office. He’s fallen for Liu Lianzhi, though she says she already has a boyfriend and is not interested. She’s also angry at him for getting her sacked, as she needs the money. San Ye sends the indestructible Han Guang (Wu Xiaoliang), LLI’s security chief-cum-assassin, to kill Liu Lianzhi in the caravan where she lives. After a huge battle in which she loses her right eye, she ends up in hospital, where a blood transfer from Wang Zha saves her life. Despite trying to find out where Yang Yi lives through the local Community Watch head, Mrs. Busy (Zhang Suli), Wang Chengyong still hasn’t been successful, so he suggests the three friends organise a class reunion to find out of anyone knows where Yang Yi is now. However, when it’s revealed that Wang Chengyong’s superior at LLI is Han Guang, this sets Wang Zha against him. And when Wang Chengyong learns that Yang Yi is now living with Paopao, the three friends realise their future lives are seriously messed up, and maybe unsalvageable.
REVIEW
Li Yang 李阳, one of China’s most eclectic but least-known film-makers, makes an eye-rolling feature debut with Evacuate from the 21st Century 从21世纪安全撤离, a sci-fi fantasy-cum-VFX head trip that’s loaded with waah! and WTF moments. Some of them aid the movie, some of them are simply show-offy; and the film barely makes it across the ninety-odd-minutes line without its fragile content imploding. But the whole thing manages to just about make sense (in its own universe) and is kept grounded by its sense of humour and some strong lead performances, especially actress Zhong Chuxi 钟楚曦 (the dancer in Wild Grass 荞麦疯长, 2020) as a no-nonsense, super-heroine journalist. Box office this summer was only a polite RMB112 million, a slim return on all the years that went into the film – the script was originally passed by China Film Administration back in 2016 – but also signalling that Mainland audiences aren’t necessarily attracted any longer by VFX extravaganzas. Five weeks after opening in cinemas, Evacuate was released online.
Qingdao-born Li, 43, started out with Lee’s Adventure 李献计历险记 (2009), a 20-minute online short about a computer geek who wants to travel back in time to search for a lost love. Li spent 2½ years making it on his own, in his spare time, and the result completely mystified most who saw the mixture of animation, found footage and cut-out effects. The central idea was subsequently expanded by director Guo Fan 郭帆 and others – with Li supplying new animation sequences – into the feature-length Lee’s Adventure 李献计历险记 (2011), starring Fang Zuming 房祖名 [Jaycee Chan], Wang Ziwen 王子文 and Jiang Wu 姜武. It also mystified the few who saw it and proved that a vague concept was not enough to fill 90 minutes, however elaborate its flights of fancy.
Li next made the online short Bad Future 坏未来 (2013, see left), a 36-minute sci-fi fantasy-cum-love story centred on a young man (played by Duan Bowen 段博文) who thinks he was born as a meteorite. He has two personality settings, good and bad, which get him involved first with a beautiful classmate (Feng Wenjuan 冯文娟) and later in a world war between East Asia and Oceania (= China vs the US). Both shorts used aliases for Li in the Chinese credits: 年轻懮秀的飞行员 (“Excellent Young Pilot”) on Lee’s Adventure and 坏飞行员 (“Bad Pilot”) on Bad Future. He subsequently made the seven-minute 少年异能事件 (literally, “The Case of the Young People’s Super-Powers”), an offbeat promo for youth movie The Ark of Mr. Chow 少年班 (2015, dir. Xiao Yang 肖洋, with Sun Honglei 孙红雷). Done in the form of a vintage propaganda documentary, it spoofily mixes found footage with newly-filmed stuff and a suitably hectoring commentary.
All of the themes in his shorts bleed into Evacuate: people with super-powers, people bending time, and a generally pessimistic view of the future, old age, life and love. the same techniques also recur: variable screen ratios, rapid-fire editing, animation to enhance live-action sequences, and pop-culture imagery and references. In terms of structure, Bad Future (especially) can be seen in retrospect as Li starting to grapple with how to shape his scatter-gun, collage-like approach into a more narrative form, essential for a feature-length movie. Does he succeed in Evacuate? Partly.
From the start, Li lets his audience know that he’s now got a big bag of toys and he’s going to use every one of them. After an intro setting the story in 1999, our three young heroes, in the final stages of senior high school, are introduced climbing an old smokestack and then escaping on a motorbike as it suddenly collapses in a deluge of VFX. From its setting on “Planet K”, described as having a climate, atmosphere and civilisation similar to Earth’s, it’s made clear this is to be a youth movie with a strong fantasy element – soon made explicit when, after a gang fight in which the three end up in a lake polluted with chemicals, they start travelling forward in time by 20 years. As the chaotic, jokey plot swings back and forth between 1999 and 2019, a broader theme gradually emerges of our teen heroes realising they have nothing to look forward to in the future, i.e. make the most of the present, as the future is bleak and uncertain.
The main character appears to be the handsome, cocky Wang Chengyong – played okay as an adult by Song Yang 宋洋, here more in short-fused vein as in Wrath of Silence 暴烈无声 (2017), than underplaying as in Trending Topic 热搜 (2023) – whose emotional travails drive much of the plot as he searches in the future for a lost love. In fact, the film is driven by its (generally mild-mannered) narrator, Wang Zha (TVD pin-up Zhang Ruoyun 张若昀, Nuts 奇葩朵朵, 2018, in a rare big-screen outing), who becomes involved with a fearless journalist as she exposes illegal organ trading at a shadowy hospital. Guangzhou-born Zhong, a former dancer with a distinctly smokey screen presence, impressed from her earliest film roles (Youth 芳华, 2017; Dude’s Manual 脱单告急, 2018) and here she dominates the screen whenever she’s on, either as the feisty journalist or as an athletic action heroine. As the indestructible villain, Wu Xiaoliang 吴晓亮 (the elder brother in Wisdom Tooth 日光之下, 2019) is well cast, as is Inner Mongolian-born actress Zhu Yanmanzi 朱颜曼滋 (so good in Puppy Love 小情书, 2017) as the onetime school beauty who’s now become a disillusioned woman in her mid-30s.
The use of various screen ratios – chiefly 1.55:1 for the present and the ultra-wide 3.77:1 for the future – keep the audience always aware of which time period they’re in. Photography by Iranian Canadian d.p. Saba Mazloum (Night Peacock 夜孔雀, 2015; Wine War 抢红,2017; The Game Changer 游戏规则, 2017; The New King of Comedy 新喜剧之王, 2019) is typically versatile, adapting to the film’s many changes of mood; and the physical and car action are both viscerally staged, with a manga edge. All the effects, from CGI to added animation, are slick, though the film would have been just as good with only 50% of them.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Scity Films (CN), Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN), Beijing Huanxi Media Group (CN), Desen International Media (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Beijing Scity Films (CN), Desen International Media (Beijing) (CN).
Script: Li Yang. Photography: Saba Mazloum. Editing: Huang Shang. Music: Hu Xiao’ou. Art direction: Zhong Cheng. Costumes: Ma Xing. Styling: Long Xiaozhu, Zhang Jinyan, Zhai Shuo. Acton: Tang Tengfei. Car stunts: Li Baoliang, Feng Yanzheng. Visual effects: Li Yang, Qiao Le, Song Peng, Ye Zi. Animation: Liang Zhuohong. Special makeup effects: Wang Xu.
Cast: Zhang Ruoyun (Wang Zha), Zhong Chuxi (Liu Lianzhi), Song Yang (Wang Chengyong), Wu Xiaoliang (Han Guang), Zhu Yanmanzi (Yang Yi), Li Chenhao (Paopao), Wen Zhengrong (San Ye, Long Life Institute head), Shi Liang (Wang Chengyong’s father), Chen Yichen (teenage Wang Zha), Li Zhuozhao (teenage Wang Chengyong), Kang Qixuan (teenage Paopao), Ma Fanding (teenage Yang Yi), Liu Yongqi (Zhao Changjiang, dwarf), Zhang Suli (Mang Dajie/Mrs. Busy), Liu Tianwei (McDonald’s employee), Shang Chengguang (Mrs. Busy’s husband), Ji Fangjie (Mrs. Yu, senior editor), Li Liang (editor-in-chief), Marina Malaya (Han Guang’s girlfriend).
Release: China, 2 Aug 2024.