Who Killed Cock Robin
目击者
Taiwan, 2017, colour, 2.35:1, 116 mins.
Director: Cheng Weihao 程伟豪.
Rating: 8/10.
A complex and absorbing whydunit, carefully written and well played, that marked a big step-up for young Taiwan film-maker Cheng Weihao.
STORY
Xindian district, Taibei, Taiwan, 30 Aug 2007. Sleeping in his broken-down car on a deserted road in the hills on a rainy night, rookie reporter Wang Yiqi (Zhuang Kaixun), who monitors police radio to get stories, is woken as a car passes. He then hears a crash in the road ahead and runs with a torch to investigate. Scared at what he sees, he goes back to his car and initially can’t get the engine to start. Nine years later, he picks up a police-radio report of a car accident and finds the two people in the car are a well-known politician and a young model; he takes pictures and immediately files a juicy story. While chatting on the phone to his office superior (and girlfriend) Maggie (Xu Weining), he’s hit by another vehicle; a mechanic friend, Ji (Zheng Zhiwei), tells him the second-hand car was previously tampered with, so Wang Yiqi asks a police friend, Wang (Mario), to check if it has any history. Wang asks a junior policeman, Wei (Li Chun), to handle it. Meanwhile, Wang Yiqi finds himself pilloried on TV by the politician for false reporting; and his police officer friend tells him the second-hand car was involved in a hit-and-run back in 2007 in which a man died and his girlfriend was seriously injured, the same accident that Wang Yiqi witnessed. (That night he’d seen the hit-and-run car drive away and then the two victims inside the vehicle.) Back at the office Wang Yiqi finds he’s been sacked due to pressure on the publisher by the aggrieved politician; even chief editor Qiu Jingkai (Li Mingshun), who likes Wang Yiqi, was unable to protect him. With Maggie’s help he investigates the 2007 hit-and-run case, which was never solved, and suspects deputy editor Zhongwen (Tang Zhiwei) was somehow involved in the cover-up as he knew Wang Yiqi had photos of the event. Wang Yiqi and Maggie discover that, after leaving hospital, the female survivor, Xu Aiting (Ke Jiayan), disappeared, so they set out to track her down. They find her hiding out under the name Zhang, still lame from the car crash; she tells them she doesn’t want to talk about the event. Later, however, she’s attacked in her flat and Wang Yiqi, alerted by a phone call, almost catches her assailant. Going back to his blurred pictures of the 2007 case, he asks Wei to check up on possible variants of the hit-and-run car’s licence plate. One of them belongs to someone Wang Yiqi knows. And then one night the car mechanic Ji is found murdered.
REVIEW
A complex and absorbing whydunit that expertly manipulates its audience but still manages to deliver the goods in a satisfying way, Who Killed Cock Robin 目击者 was a major step-up by young Taiwan film-maker Cheng Weihao 程伟豪, then 32, after his debut feature The Tag-Along 红衣小女孩 (2015). Though that horror film was strikingly different from the norm, it was still little preparation for the ambition of Cock Robin, a crime drama in which an ambitious young journalist re-investigates a hit-and-run case to which he was an eyewitness (the meaning of the Chinese title) nine years earlier, only to find that everything he believes in is called into question. Strongly cast and impressively mounted at every level, it’s still Cheng’s best film of his four to date.
Long in the works, it was originally intended to be Cheng’s first feature but was unable to get financed until the surprise success of The Tag-Along in late 2015. Shooting finally took place in Mar-Apr 2016 but on release a year later the local box office was only a meh NT$52 million, some two-thirds of his debut film. Cheng’s next feature, released later the same year, was The Tag-Along 2 红衣小女孩2 (2017), which hawled in twice the amount of Cock Robin. It was to be his last feature for almost four years, until the futuristic whodunit The Soul 缉魂 (2021).
Though the audience doesn’t realise until much later, the carefully crafted screenplay by Chen Yuli 陈昱俐, Chen Yanqi 陈彦齐 and Cheng – developed from an original story by Cheng Zeqing 成泽青 and Chen Yushan 陈玉珊 – promotes an edited version of reality, from the perspective of the journalist, right from the beginning. We first see him asleep in a car one rainy evening on a road in the hills outside Taibei. He’s woken by a passing car, then hears a crash in the road ahead, and runs with a torch to investigate. Inside a car are two bodies, one (a woman) seemingly still alive; next thing, the journalist is back in his car, scared by what he’s seen and still unable to start his car. Without any dateline, the film then cuts to the present day (which we subsequently learn is nine years later) and the journalist is listening to police radio in search of stories. He hears of a car crash on a motorway, and there finds a juicy story when he recognises the victims as a well-known politician and a celebrity model. But after filing the story and pictures, he’s involved in a car crash; only then, thanks to some help from his car mechanic and a friendly policeman does he learn that his second-hand car is the same one in which he saw the bodies that rainy night back in Aug 2007.
It’s an impressive opening, setting up any number of possible avenues, especially when the journalist is sacked after pressure by the politician and he finds himself with time on his hands. He decides, along with his girlfriend/office superior, to re-investigate the hit-and-run, which was never solved and whose female victim disappeared soon after being hospitalised. Just as the audience is fed more scenes from the original hit-and-run as the film progresses, so it’s also subject to some classic misdirection about characters’ motives and what actually happened. Despite being borderline credible, the plot, unlike so many East Asian crime dramas, does all make sense in the end – by which time much has been revealed about everyone, including the lead character with whom we have been identifying throughout.
Performances are top-notch down the line. A busy supporting actor who started in Hakka TV, Zhuang Kaixun 庄凯勋 (The Tenants Downstairs 楼下的房客, 2016) is not top-billed but dominates the movie as the ambitious, initially unlikeable journalist who becomes more sympathetic as his world is gradually rearranged around him. Zhuang gives as good as he gets opposite such veterans as Malaysian Chinese actor Li Mingshun 李铭顺 [Christopher Lee] (Kidnapper 绑匪, 2010) as his smooth-talking chief editor, Zheng Zhiwei 郑志伟 as his trusty car mechanic and Tang Zhiwei 汤志伟 as a superior who keeps throwing him black looks. Also impressive in their various ways are half-Italian American actress Xu Weining 许玮甯 (The Tag-Along), as his office superior-cum-girlfriend, and especially Ke Jiayan 柯佳嬿 (so good in wacky comedy Welcome to The Happy Days 五星级鱼干女, 2015) as the female victim of the hit-and-run – a role that requires major emotional breadth and continues to surprise. Also dominating the second half is US-born Li Chun 李淳 [Mason Lee, son of director Ang], whose boyish features have never been so creepy as he leads the film into its darkest moments near the end.
The largely hand-held camerawork by Chen Qiwen 陈麒文 (The Tag-Along 2) gives a sense of involvement without being distracting wobble-cam, and is strikingly composed in night scenes; the delicate score by Li Mingjie 李铭杰 (The Tag-Along; The Tag-Along 2) is an atmospheric blend of sound effects and music that doesn’t play to the obvious. Aerial photography of the spaghetti-like motorways that surround Taibei, teeming with cars like blood through arteries, is a repeated metaphor for the film’s moral universe, in which everything is interwoven and nothing absolute.
In the Mainland the film is known under the Chinese title 目击者之追凶 (literally, “The Eyewitness: Chasing a Killer”), to distinguish it from the Mainland film Witness 目击者 (2012). However, despite having four Mainland companies as associate presenters, it has yet to be released there, apart from a showing at the Shanghai Film Festival in Jun 2017. Cheng originally planned a Mainland edition with reduced violence; but some of the film’s morality is also out-of-kilter with Mainland censorship requirements.
CREDITS
Presented by Rise Pictures (TW). Produced by Rise Pictures (TW).
Script: Chen Yuli, Chen Yanqi, Cheng Weihao. Original story: Cheng Zeqing, Chen Yushan. Photography: Chen Qiwen. Editing: Lin Jiebo. Music: Li Mingjie. Production design: Guo Yijun. Art direction: Chen Xuanshao. Styling: Song Guanyi. Costumes: Lin Lvwei. Sound: Chen Weiliang, Gao Weiya. Action: Hong Shihao. Visual effects: Ye Renhao.
Cast: Xu Weining (Maggie), Ke Jiayan (Xu Aiting/Zhang), Zhuang Kaixun (Wang Yiqi), Li Mingshun [Christopher Lee] (Qiu Jingkai, chief editor), Li Chun (Wei, police junior), Zheng Zhiwei (Ji, car mechanic), Hong Zhangshi (Zhang Chaoliang, politician), Rebecca (G-cup model), Huang Jiayan (Davis), Mario [Bu Guogeng] (Wang, police sergeant), Cai Wuxiong (De), Tang Zhiwei (Zhong Wen, deputy editor), Zhang Changmian (Rou’an, Qiu Jingkai’s wife), Sun Bingsen (Qiu Jingkai’s father-in-law), He Guanhan (Lin, politician), Zheng Wenyu (Chen, counsellor), Pan Zi’an (Liu), Hua Qi (Ji’s wife), Sun Qianrong (nurse, Maggie’s cousin), Peng Yi, Chen Shufang (Xu Aiting’s old neighbours), Li Jin, Ding Meiqing (teashop owners), Bai Minghua (Xu Aiting’s grandmother), Chen Yanyong (Liao Zifan, Xu Aiting’s boyfriend), Cai Zhewen (tenant), Lai Wanzhong (local police station chief), Zheng Baocai (Wei’s landlady).
Release: Taiwan, 31 Mar 2017.