Vengeance Is Mine
六连煞
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 108 mins.
Director: Xu Chao 徐超.
Rating: 6/10.
Quirkily structured serial-killer mystery is interesting but doesn’t deliver in the final stages.
STORY
Dongyuan city, somewhere in China, 17 Sep. The body of a middle-aged man, Zhou Jianjun (Huang Shaoxiong), is found dead in a car, with a red fingerprint on his forehead. He is the third victim to be found strangled by wire thread in the past few weeks, following two women – personnel manager Zhang Rong (Tan Wenhui) on 29 Aug and TV reporter Ma Yueyue (Wang Lei) on 2 Sep. Police detective Lin Kun (Chen Xi) has no clues to work with and the victims seemingly had no connection. It is finally decided to bring in maverick police detective Gu Yifeng (Wang Longzheng), who was transferred to another district under a cloud a while ago. Two weeks later, on 3 Oct, a fourth victim is found – Wang Huimei (Wu Xiaoli), a teacher colleague of Gu Yifeng’s pregnant wife, Song Xin (Huang Lu) – and Gu Yifeng agrees to help Lin Kun’s investigation. As his arm is in a sling, he asks Song Xin’s younger brother, Song Yu (Liu Lin), a lab technician, to be his temporary driver. One suspect is Liu Xiao (Zhu Pengfei), assistant general manager at Sanye Digital Network, who was Wang Huimei’s lover, but on 13 Oct he is also found murdered in a similar manner. Gu Yifeng wonders if the dates of the five murders have any significance. Meanwhile, Song Yu, a fan of crime fiction, pursues a theory that the killer may be an aggrieved ex-employee of Liu Xiao’s company. He finds the name of one person, Tang Anwei (Qu Bo), who also went to the same high school as the second victim, Ma Yueyue, and was considered a brilliant student. Separately, Gu Yifeng comes to the same conclusion after he learns that the first victim, Zhang Rong, was a personnel manager and Liu Xiao was also involved in hiring. From company files he discovers Tang Anwei’s name and recognises him as the young man on a motorbike who crashed into his car when he was going to dinner with a lawyer friend, Guo (Wang Dazhi), who used to be a legal advisor to Zhang Rong. Guo confirms how Zhang Rong once arrogantly rejected Tang Anwei’s application, and how he also laughed at the young man in her office. Fearing Guo may be the next victim, Gu Yifeng puts him under police protection. But next morning a sixth victim is found, trading company chairman Li Xianghui (Ma Jie), along with forensic evidence linking Tang Anwei. But according to witnesses and CCTV, Tang Anwei could not have murdered him as he was in a university library at the time, and there was no obvious connection between him and Li Xianghui.
REVIEW
In his debut feature, Mainland writer-director Xu Chao 徐超 tries for a fresh approach to the serial-killer genre – and almost succeeds – with Vengeance Is Mine 六连煞. Quirkily structured, with a maverick detective trying to solve an escalating number of strangulations, it has a suitably quirky lead performance from TV’s Wang Longzheng 王泷正, 39. But Xu’s biggest dare is the way in which he deliberately misdirects the viewer and then gradually confirms the audience’s growing suspicions before coming up with another twist. Unfortunately the air goes out of the bag during the final 15 minutes, which laboriously explain the why and the how but hardly convince as to motivation. In failing to quite come off, the movie strongly recalls Blood 13 血十三 (2018), another quirky, low-budget serial-killer mystery, in which, coincidentally, the same actress, indie icon Huang Lu 黄璐, 36, also starred.
Xu’s games with the viewer start with the opening sequence, set during a rain-drenched night, that is only much later revealed to come from a different part of the story. As the main narrative begins, two women have already been strangled and a third victim – a man – is now found. The crime scenes are always forensically clean, the only “clue” being a red fingerprint on each victim’s forehead. The police are at a dead end; should they call in maverick detective Gu Yifeng (Wang), who was transferred to another station under a cloud?
As Gu Yifeng and his character quirks are leisurely introduced, so is a woman (Huang), whom we later learn is his wife, newly pregnant. After a work colleague of hers is strangled – the fourth victim – Gu takes up the case, but only as an assistant to the by-the-book lead detective (Chen Xi 陈曦, reliable). Also milling around during home scenes between Gu and his wife is the latter’s younger brother, a lab technician who’s a fan of crime fiction and keeps telling Gu he should look after his wife more. Following a fifth victim, the brother privately pursues a line of enquiry suggested by an incident at his workplace, while Gu separately deduces the same link between the victims.
All of this screams: not a routine crime procedural. By the halfway mark a major suspect has been revealed to the audience, but as the younger brother pursues his theory the script starts playing with time again, with one long flashback threaded into the narrative with no introduction, and the audience deliberately misdirected as to one character’s intentions. The misdirection continues, as a sixth victim is strangled at a time when the main suspect had a solid alibi elsewhere, and the whole case is revealed to more than just a serial-killer mystery.
Without dominating the movie, TV actor Wang – whose best-known prior film role was the never-say-die villain of crime drama Strangers 缉枪 (2017) – remains the emotional heart of it. But he’s run a close second by newcomer Liu Lin 刘霖 – the slacker in likeable indie Couch Boy 睡沙发的人 (2017) – as the detective’s wide-eyed, inquisitive brother-in-law. Wang and Liu should form a strong lead trio with Huang; but the actress, who gets lead billing, is wasted in the underwritten role of the wife, drifting through the part in her default blank mode until being given more prominence in the second half. As a somewhat sleazy lawyer friend of Gu Yifeng, Wang Dazhi 王大治 (the title character in anti-war black comedy Wang Mao 我不是王毛, 2014) is entertaining.
Shot in late 2017, the production makes good use of an obviously limited budget, with smooth editing by Taiwan veteran Chen Bowen 陈博文. The natural, largely handheld photography by Taiwan American d.p. Zhu Zhigang 朱志刚 [Jeffrey Chu] is okay, though he’s capable of much more nuanced work (Stand by Me 奋斗, 2011; The Chrysalis 女蛹之人皮嫁衣, 2013; Suddenly Seventeen 28岁未成年, 2016). Mainland box office was microscopic (RMB300,000).
CREDITS
Presented by Anhui Paimont Pictures (CN). Produced by Anhui Paimont Pictures (CN).
Script: Xu Chao. Photography: Zhu Zhigang. Editing: Chen Bowen. Music: He Yujia. Art direction: Zheng Zhihan, Dang Zhaolou. Styling: Sun Lixuan. Sound: Gao Yuguang, Hao Geng, Wang Wei. Executive direction: Qi Ke’nan. Police advice: Jiu Dishui [Liang Miaomiao].
Cast: Huang Lu (Song Xin), Wang Longzheng (Gu Yifeng), Liu Lin (Song Yu), Wang Dazhi (Guo, lawyer), Qu Bo (Tang Anwei), Ma Jie (Li Xianghui, victim no. 6), Tu Hua (Li Xintong, Song Yu’s girlfriend), Li Xinghong (Song Chang’an, Song Xin’s father), Yu Ping (Lu Xiaoling), Chen Xi (Lin Kun, police captain), Xu Nannan (Yu Xiaochen, policewoman), Kuang Shengning (stepmother), Guo Zijie, Ye Bicheng (young Song Yu), Wang Yiduo, Zhao Tiange (young Song Xin), Wu Xiaoli (Wang Huimei, victim no. 4), Huang Shaoxiong (Zhou Jianjun, victim no. 3), Zhu Pengfei (Liu Xiao, victim no. 5), Tan Wenhui (Zhang Rong, victim no. 1), Wang Lei (Ma Yueyue, victim no. 2), Zu Lei (Liu Zhi, police captain), Zhang Weibin (Zhang, police chief), Zhang Li’an (monk), Ma Ziqiang (He Dabao, Liu Xiao’s brother-in-law).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Refreshing Chinese Cinema), 15 Jun 2019.
Release: China, 6 Sep 2019.