Project Gutenberg

无双

Hong Kong/China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 129 mins.

Director: Zhuang Wenqiang 庄文强 [Felix Chong].

Rating: 6/10.

Pulpy counterfeiting caper is entertaining enough until it becomes too Big Twisty for its own good.

STORY

Hong Kong, late 1990s. Counterfeiter Li Wen (Guo Fucheng) has been extradited from a Thai prison and brought to Hong Kong to assist in a police investigation into the identity of a master counterfeiter known only as The Painter 画家 who has left a trail of bodies behind him. As the last surviving member of The Painter’s gang, Li Wen is pressured by the team led by inspector He Weilan (Zhou Jiayi) – daughter of deputy police commissioner He (Fang Zhongxin) and with her own private agenda – to reveal The Painter’s identity. But he refuses, saying The Painter will kill them all. Claiming to be an old friend of Li Wen, well-known artist Ruan Wen (Zhang Jingchu) arrives and makes a deal with the police that, if she can persuade Li Wen to co-operate, he will be released. She adds that she wants to get even with The Painter as he killed her fiance. Li Wen finally agrees and tells his story, starting with how he and Ruan Wen had first met in Vancouver when both were idealistic young painters on the breadline and had then become lovers. However, she went on to artistic success while he ended up working for master counterfeiter Wu Fusheng (Zhou Runfa) who had spotted his talent for imitation. In 1996, Wu Fusheng, who claimed to come from a long line of forgers who had never been caught, invited him to join his team – including veteran Wu Xin (Liao Qizhi), organiser Lin Lihua (Sun Jiajun) and enforcer Bobby (Zhang Songzhi) – in a scheme to produce perfect copies of the new, “unforgeable” US$100 note. The detailed technical work went smoothly enough, though when the gang hijacked a security van carrying special ink in the Vancouver countryside, Li Wen was appalled by the violence in which Wu Fusheng had embroiled him. The counterfeit notes were sold to clients all over the world, including a druglord known as The General (Gao Jie) in the Golden Triangle; Wu Fusheng used the opportunity to settle a score with The General, who had had a hand in his father’s death years earlier. Amid all the mayhem and destruction, Li Wen rescued a badly burnt member of The General’s team, Wu Xiuping (Feng Wenjuan), who was a specialist in counterfeiting; after lovingly overseeing her recovery, he later brought her into Wu Fusheng’s team. Wu Fusheng, however, kept urging Li Wen, now he was a success in his own right, to make contact again with Ruan Wen, despite the fact that she was by now engaged to her agent. Around this time, He Weilan was working undercover with Chinese Canadian detective Li Yongzhe (Wang Yaoping) to infiltrate the counterfeiting gang, and both had developed a liking for each other. Li Wen wraps up his testimony by claiming that it was during a crucial meeting in a Hong Kong hotel suite that Wu Fusheng not only killed Li Yongzhe (who was posing as a buyer) but also Ruan Wen’s fiance, leading to a bloodbath from which only he and Wu Xiuping escaped alive.

REVIEW

Project Gutenberg 无双 is a fairly standard counterfeiting caper that relies a lot on its charismatic cast and a series of Big Twists. The second solo outing as a director by Hong Kong writer Zhuang Wenqiang 庄文强 [Felix Chong] – more often teamed with Mai Zhaohui 麦兆辉 [Alan Mak], who just takes an “artistic supervision” 艺术总监 credit here – it’s solidly rooted in Hong Kong crime pulp of the past 40 years while trying to convince the viewer otherwise by some corkscrew plotting and magicianly sleight-of-hand. With a smoothly charismatic performance by veteran Zhou Runfa 周润发 [Chow Yun-fat] that shamelessly riffs on his iconic character in A Better Tomorrow 英雄本色 (1986), and strong support from players like Mainland actress Zhang Jingchu 张静初 and Hong Kongers Liao Qizhi 廖启智 [Liu Kai-chi] and Zhou Jiayi 周家怡, it’s an entertaining and sometimes gripping ride in its first half before the twists take over. Despite a typically fussy performance by co-star Guo Fucheng 郭富城 [Aaron Kwok] that’s never convincing and doesn’t really engage, the film has enjoyed a strong run on the Mainland, grabbing a hunky RMB1.27 billion across more than a month.

Zhuang is still best known for his collaboration with Mai on the Infernal Affairs 无间道 (2002-03) and Overheard 窃听风云 (2009-14) trilogies. Amid all the acclaim for those movies, however, it shouldn’t be forgotten that as a team the pair have had more misfires than hits – remember racer romp Initial D 头文字D (2005), buddy movie Moonlight in Tokyo 情义我心知 (2005), crime dramas Confession of Pain 伤城 (2006) and Lady Cop & Papa Crook 大搜查之女 (2008), plus period spy drama The Silent War 听风者 (2012)? – and that Zhuang’s previous solo effort, the light satire Once a Gangster 飞砂风中转 (2010), was decidedly hit-and-miss. He remains a film-maker who’s stronger on tricks than characterisation and can’t really break free of what Hong Kong used to do best in the 1980s and early 1990s.

As it sets up an intriguing story that promises much – a frightened, rather geeky painter-turned-forger (Guo) is extradited from a Thai jail to Hong Kong and persuaded, against his will, to rat on his fearsome boss, known only as The Painter – the first hour holds the viewer as it launches into a huge flashback that takes up most of the two-hour-plus running time. The dramatic hook is not who The Painter is (the audience is shown very early on that he’s played by Zhou Runfa) but whether he’ll be caught and whether Guo’s character, Li Wen, is a reliable narrator. If not, why spend so much time recalling the history of his character, who began as a wannabe painter in Vancouver during the late 1980s and was then recruited into The Painter’s gang for an ambitious counterfeiting operation involving US$100 banknotes?

Zhuang’s script delights in the technical details of the operation – paper, engraving, inks and so on – to a point where the viewer is effectively distracted from the larger game being played. Other distractions are also brought into play: Li Wen’s infatuation with a fellow painter (Zhang) who went on to become a successful artist, his own position in life as an endless “supporting player”, his abhorrence of physical violence that a “star player” like The Painter takes in his stride, and smaller details like other roles having the same surname (Wu) as The Painter and other characters being real painters. With its forgery plot, Zhuang evidently intended the film to be about reality vs fakery, and by extension truth vs fiction, and he commendably nudges the drama into a world where identities as well as banknotes are forged. But as the demands of the genre gradually take over – a security-car hijacking with all guns blazing, a Golden Triangle shootout with lots of Hong Kong-style mayhem, a bloodbath in a hotel suite – character yields to pulp cliches and finally, during the last half-hour, to an overload of Big Twists.

To Zhuang’s credit, most of the twists do in fact make sense (given a large dose of suspended belief) but are more to be admired for their cleverness than really dramatic. There’s never that waah! feeling, of the ground giving way, that accompanies a character-based twist in which an audience’s emotional investment is suddenly betrayed. And as the surprises pile up (with an especially cheap one at the end) their effectiveness is diluted.

With a less fussy actor than Guo, the effect could have been stronger but, as so often, the hard-working Hong Kong star never really engages the viewer nor establishes any real chemistry with his co-star. Zhou cruises along in full Big Star mode, Zhang brings a suitable mystery to her part, and Zhou Jiayi (the PR boss in Heaven in the Dark 暗色天堂, 2016, but mostly in TV) registers strongly as the investigation’s driven, tomboyish inspector with an agenda of her own. Taiwan veteran Gao Jie 高捷 [Jack Kao] phones in a cameo as a Golden Triangle druglord and Mainland actress Feng Wenjuan 冯文娟, 29, who was so good as the sparky PA in rom-com Love Contractually 合约男女 (2017), is solid in a more winsome role as the druglord’s counterfeiting specialist that recalls her small part in The Last Tycoon 大上海 (2012).

Technical credits, from the cool, bleached, widescreen images of d.p. Guan Zhiyao 关智耀 [Jason Kwan] and on-the-nose editing by Peng Zhengxi 彭正熙 [Curran Pang], are top drawer, and action (by Li Zhongzhi 李忠志 [Nicky Li]) is solid enough apart from the rather untidily staged van hijack. The film’s Chinese title, which often crops up in those for heroic movies, means “matchless” or “peerless”.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Bona Media (CN), Emperor Motion Pictures (HK), Shanghai Alibaba Pictures (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN), Bona Film Group (CN), Bona Entertainment (HK), Really Happy Film (CN). Produced by Popcorn Movies (HK).

Script: Zhuang Wenqiang [Felix Chong]. Photography: Guan Zhiyao [Jason Kwan]. Editing: Peng Zhengxi [Curran Pang]. Music: Dai Wei. Production design: Lin Ziqiao. Styling: Wen Nianzhong [Man Lim-chung]. Action: Li Zhongzhi [Nicky Li]. Artistic supervision: Mai Zhaohui [Alan Mak].

Cast: Zhou Runfa [Chow Yun-fat] (Wu Fusheng/The Painter/Wu Zhihui), Guo Fucheng [Aaron Kwok] (Li Wen), Zhang Jingchu (Ruan Wen), Feng Wenjuan (Wu Xiuqing), Liao Qizhi [Liu Kai-chi] (Wu Xin), Zhou Jiayi (He Weilan, police inspector), Wang Yaoping (Li Yongzhe), Fang Zhongxin [Alex Fong Chung-sun] (He, deputy police commissioner), Gao Jie [Jack Kao] (The General), Xing Jiadong (The General’s sidekick), Sun Jiajun (Lin Lihua/Hua Nv), Zhang Songzhi (Wang Bo/Bobby), Zhang Jiansheng (Shen Sihai/Si Zai), Wu Jialong (Ruan Wen’s agent), Lin Jiahua (art dealer), Liang Jianping (police detective).

Release: Hong Kong, 4 Oct 2018; China, 30 Sep 2018.