This is the second feature film release in 2017 to be based on the popular IP "Xin Li Zui", and has an even bigger cast than the earlier one, with A-Lister Deng Chao starring. Sadly, most aspects of the film can best be described as "average", or to be expected.
The film attempts to utilize (thought about using the word exploit, but then decides against such a cynical expression) various controversies of yesteryear (referencing plenty of infamous cases that any adult living in China should be familiar with) to make the film appear "up-to-date", relevant, and socially conscious, and it more or less works. Other than this, however, the story has little that hasn't already been done to death by other filmmakers.
*spoiler alert* My major complaint about this film, is the similarity of the last 15-20 minutes of Act II to genre classic Se7en. Really, swap the identity of the poor victim from the male protaginist's wife (Gwenyth Paltrow in Se7en) to his adopted daughter, and you will have yourself an almost scene-by-scene, plot point-by-plot point repeat of the final 20 minutes of Se7en. I don't know about movies, but if you do something like this when writing an academic paper, your dissertation perhaps, those anti-plagarism softwares will be flagging like crazy and you will likely get caught for doing something that is really lame. *spoiler alert ends*
The technical departments are mostly fine with one exception, the editing. The editing in this film is absolutely terrible, to the point of being actively disruptive to my normal moviewatching process. Either cutting away from a scene-ending shot too soon, or ending a scene-starting shot too soon, or making a random cut out of nowhere, the editing is often clueless and I actively complained to my friends multiple times during the screening, and they were also annoyed by it. Granted, it is not AS consistently awful as in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but that's not saying much, is it?
Most of the characters are built in your typical cookie-cutter fashion. The female lead delivers a particularly wooden performance that fails to measure against the even second most important female character in this film -- a 13 year old school girl played by an early teenage actor, which is quite something when you think about it.
Overall I would have rated this a 6/10, ie. okay to decent, if not for the obviously similarity to Se7en in the final 15 minutes of Act II. As it stands, a slightly disappoiting 5/10.
The film attempts to utilize (thought about using the word exploit, but then decides against such a cynical expression) various controversies of yesteryear (referencing plenty of infamous cases that any adult living in China should be familiar with) to make the film appear "up-to-date", relevant, and socially conscious, and it more or less works. Other than this, however, the story has little that hasn't already been done to death by other filmmakers.
*spoiler alert* My major complaint about this film, is the similarity of the last 15-20 minutes of Act II to genre classic Se7en. Really, swap the identity of the poor victim from the male protaginist's wife (Gwenyth Paltrow in Se7en) to his adopted daughter, and you will have yourself an almost scene-by-scene, plot point-by-plot point repeat of the final 20 minutes of Se7en. I don't know about movies, but if you do something like this when writing an academic paper, your dissertation perhaps, those anti-plagarism softwares will be flagging like crazy and you will likely get caught for doing something that is really lame. *spoiler alert ends*
The technical departments are mostly fine with one exception, the editing. The editing in this film is absolutely terrible, to the point of being actively disruptive to my normal moviewatching process. Either cutting away from a scene-ending shot too soon, or ending a scene-starting shot too soon, or making a random cut out of nowhere, the editing is often clueless and I actively complained to my friends multiple times during the screening, and they were also annoyed by it. Granted, it is not AS consistently awful as in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, but that's not saying much, is it?
Most of the characters are built in your typical cookie-cutter fashion. The female lead delivers a particularly wooden performance that fails to measure against the even second most important female character in this film -- a 13 year old school girl played by an early teenage actor, which is quite something when you think about it.
Overall I would have rated this a 6/10, ie. okay to decent, if not for the obviously similarity to Se7en in the final 15 minutes of Act II. As it stands, a slightly disappoiting 5/10.