Direction: Zhang Yimou
Country: China
The experienced Chinese director Zhang Yimou is known for the rigorous detail and emotional richness of his luxuriant period films. His latest work, an espionage thriller set in the snowy, Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, promises a lot but ends up in a dissatisfying entanglement. This is his first attempt in the historical spy thriller genre.
Four Chinese communist party agents return to the state, after receiving intense training in Russia. They plan to carry out a secret operation known as ‘Utrennya’, whose purpose is to expose the nefarious atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese Unit 731 against humanity. The mission, already demanding, becomes all the more complex when a comrade, on the verge of being executed, decides to reveal important information to the Japanese.
The problem with the film, which is told in seven chapters, is the convoluted plot and its lack of narrative cohesion. Yimou and Quan Yongxian wrote it from a story by the latter, but the questionable loyalties, arcane codes and secret agendas never get us close to the characters. Moreover, the plodding storytelling together with an ineffective use of the score (by Jo Yeong-wook), and the extreme contrast between violent and emotional scenes don’t facilitate our engagement in the story. What stands out is the cinematography of Xiaoding Zhao, who had previously worked with the director in Shadow (2018), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Coming Home (2014), among other titles.
Action and intrigue, which should be the go-thing in Cliff Walkers, are in clear deficit, and the film, duller than exciting, got me bored.
