Overstuffed & Underbaked
This could be one of the year’s funniest movies. It’s not a comedy.
Under the Light
Director: Zhang Yimou • Writers: Zhang Yimou, Chen Yu
Starring: Lei Jiayin, Zhang Guoli, Yu Hewei, Zhou Dongyu, Sun Yizhou, Li Naiwen, Xu Yajun, Tian Yu, Lin Boyang, Joan Chen
China • 2hrs 7mins
Opens Hong Kong October 20 • IIB
Grade: C-
Dear god what a hot mess Under the Light | 堅如磐石 is. Does anyone know if Zhang Yimou’s gotten himself put in the dog house again? Why did he dive into the nonsense on display here? Are there incriminating naked photos of him in a vault somewhere? We’re talking about Zhang Yimou, the guy’s been known to have mad movie making skills: Ju Dou? Raise the Red Lantern? Hero? It was similarly messy but Full River Red made a boatload of money. We’re not out to get Zhang, but there has to be some rational explanation for this abomination.
Don’t take that to mean Under the Light isn’t… entertaining. It is. But it’s a white hot mess that layers on characters and subplots that go nowhere and tell us nothing – in between gratuitous lens flares. It has Zhang’s signature stylistic flourishes and saturated colours, with lurid cinematography by Luo Pan (I Am Not Madame Bovary) that makes the fictional city the story unfolds in look like some kind of bastard hybrid of the most garish parts of Shanghai and Hong Kong (that party boat is like Jumbo on crack). It’s hard to put into words just how jumbled and overstuffed the film is – narratively, aesthetically, thematically. What could be a lean, old-school crime-noir is neutered by a IIB rating and censor-approved messaging. It’s as if Zhang’s thrown in the towel on the creativity front and settled into late-period repetition. Assuming he’s even awake.
Our hero
So let’s see if I can get this right: There’s a mad bomber on a Jinjiang City bus and he wants to talk to Deputy Mayor Zheng Gang (Zhang Guoli, The Battle at Lake Changjin) because he’s going to spill the corruption beans on him and takes a bull horn and tells everyone listening Zheng is a “bad man” and then he blows up real good and Zheng’s son-not son Su Jianming (Lei Jiayin, Full River Red) saves his father-not father even though his partner Li Huilin (Zhou Dongyu, Better Days, Born to Fly) is always poking him about being the mayor’s son and that’s why he has his job, but they used to date so it’s okay and then the police department brass put Su in charge of the bombing case because computers, and he finds out the dude was the fall guy for a dude who’s pals with Zheng and his billionaire pal Li Zhitian (discount Francis Ng, Chun-yu Yu Hewei, Cliff Walkers) and Li was going to retire and put his son-in-law David (Sun Yizhou) in charge of his giant company and retire even though he likes to do his own dirty work, but David cheated on his daughter so no dice, which is too bad because he was just trying to cover up the secret about the other chick with all those Teletubbies, Xiaowei (Lin Boyang), and her auntie, but Zheng’s wife He Xiuli (Joan Chen) knew about her all along, so the guy at dinner that first night didn’t have to put his arm into the Sichuan hot pot.
That makes precisely as much sense as watching Under the Light does. For all its visual flash, Light has no guts, and is notably hampered by what could be one of the blandest leading men of the year so far. As the dogged detective on the hunt for the truth, whatever it is – literally, whatever it is. I sitll have no idea what the central crime was – Lei’s somnolent performance makes Su seem inept rather than conflicted, and Zhou is straight-up insulted as his ex-girlfriend-partner-house plant, whose constant cracks about Su’s family connections getting him his job would make an much more interesting B plot than what we’ve got (again, not sure what that is, so I’m just assuming it’s there). The shoehorned message about authorities busting corruption in government and business doesn’t help; it just further muddles an already muddled suggestion of a story. The fear-mongering No More Bets was narratively histrionic but it made a level of sense that Under the Light only flirts with. But, like I said earlier, that doesn’t mean the film wasn’t an absolutely fantastic watch, enjoyable in its abject illogic and engaging in its singular lunacy. There’s a drinking game in here somewhere. If only we could make enough sense of the plot and players to find it. — DEK