Classical, mythic, generic gangster film set in the Golden Age of the Thirties, albeit in the Far-Afield East. The merely and excessively decorative element in the work of Zhang Yimou (in Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, and Raise the Red Lantern, less excessive in The Story of Qiu Ju and To Live) has not altogether been banished: the thickish yellowish atmosphere adds little to the proceedings but a coat of warm melted butter. Sometimes -- nighttimes only -- the atmosphere is bluish, and the coat is of ice. Yet at all times the director is also doing his most and best directing. The secret of his success on this occasion resides in the decision to tell the story from the fairly strict point of view of a fourteen-year-old country "bumpkin" who, through the offices of his well-placed but menial uncle, is brought to the big city to be the personal gofer of Mr. Big's mistress, and becomes a close-up witness to a power play by Mr. Right-Hand Man, with the two-timing mistress as the wishbone in the middle. (The ever-present Gong Li gets to show a new side -- a fun side -- as the slinky chanteuse, trilling racy ditties in front of a well-drilled chorus line, and dolling herself up in furs and inch-thick paint even when in hiding on a godforsaken rustic island. ) Subjective camerawork virtually compels a director to concentrate on fundamentals such as line of vision and field of view: i.e., angle, frame. And Zhang Yimou here maintains that concentration in exemplary fashion. All of the movie's many killings take place discreetly off screen, à la Mamoulian's gangland classic from the actual period, City Streets. The violence, to put it more forcefully, is not for the benefit of the audience but rather for the benefit of the drama: not staged as spectacle, but placed, quite precisely, among the cast of characters, and in particular barely beyond the compass of the central character. Wang Xiao Xiao, Li Baotian, Shun Chun. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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