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Tuesday, March 28, 2023

XUAN YA ZHI SHANG / CLIFF WALKERS (2021)

Typically lux/lush Yimou Zhang, this Precursor-to-WWII ‘impossible mission’ yarn, an award-winning hit in Asian markets, cut a low profile Stateside.  Partially explained by pandemic concerns, but equally by the film’s pileup of spies and counterspies on all sides of its early ‘30s Japanese Invaders/Chinese Collaborators/Nationalist Chinese conflict.  At its core, a dangerous wintry assignment for two pairs of mixed-doubles spies, patriotic Chinese Communists unaware their cover & codes have been blown when they parachute into Japanese-controlled Manchukuo for a yet to be revealed mission.  Shhh . . . they’re to find and escort an important couple across the border under the noses of Chinese soldiers working for the puppet regime.  Got that?  Well, never mind, Zhang barely gives those hostages a second’s thought, concentrating instead on crosses and double-crosses between spies & military officers as everyone tries to ascertain loyalties.  And while it may take you half the film’s running time to get a handle on who’s stabbing, throttling, garotting, torturing or sabotaging whom, the flushed, wintry look of cast, costumes & settings has massive appeal simply as glamorous artifice.*  In fact, feints toward heroic Communist rhetoric come off as de rigeur pablum, pasted on to check all the necessary boxes of officialdom and green light production & release.  Eye candy & martyrdom for the masses, courtesy of Yimou Zhang.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Equally overlooked among Zhang’s recent output (at least Stateside), the even better YING/SHADOW/’18.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/ying-shadow-2018.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *If M-G-M’s motto was ‘Ars gratia artis‘ Zhang’s must be ‘Artificium gratia artificis.’

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