LET THE BULLETS FLY, the highest-grossing Chinese film, comes to the US

Probably no time this weekend, but looks like I'm there eventually. Subversive comic violence w/ a well-dressed Chow Yun-fat.

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/jiang-wens-let-the-bullets-fly

Highest-grossing domestically produced film in China, that is. (I'm sure Avatar made more.)

yes, Avatar is not a Chinese film.

heh

I will watch this

Yeah, sorry, you're right.

I do want to clarify this further, though:

1. Highest-grossing film in China: AVATAR
2. Highest-grossing Chinese film in the world: ???
3. Highest-grossing Chinese film in China: LET THE BULLETS FLY

Number two *might* be Hero, which has grossed $177 million worldwide. I know Let the Bullets Fly has made more than $100 million in China alone, but I'm not sure what its receipts elsewhere look like.

i got it

I saw this movie, it sucks

while it was playing in china, no less. I think it got to be the highest grossing film in china by bussing in moviegoers and by state-owned enterprises giving employees the day off + money to go see it when it opened

I think they did that for Beginning of the Great Revival, too, right?

yeah, I think the gov does it for every big film they want to back. or maybe that's the one they did it for. anyway this film sucks

hmm. what was so terrible about it?

it tries to do that joon-ho bong style where it crams in elements of a comedy, tragedy, thriller, action movie, romance into its 2 1/2 hours - but you don't ever really get the sense that it's for some grander artistic purpose - rather, it's like the director is just checking off a list

also the lead actor, jiang wen, is also the director, so you get a lot of gratuitous scenes of jiang wen preening/being a bad ass

this is available via VOD, but guess I won't bother.

it tries to do that joon-ho bong style where it crams in elements of a comedy, tragedy, thriller, action movie, romance into its 2 1/2 hours

always thought of this as a Bollywood approach - which I don't have a problem with, except this movie is probably lacking in awesome dance sequences/wet sari scenes

I haven't seen any bollywood films so it may very well be! joon-ho bong happened to be my closest reference point.

it's supposed to be done in a wuxia* manner where the good guys and bad guys take turns trumping each other and you're supposed to marvel at how clever the heros and villains are. that's what this film tries to show. I'm sure it read very well on paper, but it doesn't translate to the screen at all imo - felt very forced and awkward.

*I know wuxia is often used as shorthand for 'martial arts dudes who can fly around but it really means a mode of the chinese novel involving lots of hero archetypes, the martial arts stuff is really secondary in the actual novels

or maybe wuxia is the wrong touchpoint to. it's a TEDIOUS movie regardless.

i havent seen it but "highest grossing film in china" really doesnt mean anything to me tbh

i'd see this tho

only something like 8 foreign films a year get released in china anyway (but that doesn't stop all the chinese dvd pirates amirite)

"highest grossing film in china" really doesnt mean anything to me tbh

sorry dude, didn't feel like adding 3 lines of credits/promo copy.

didn't know you were on the communist party street team

For the New York Times' Jeannette Catsoulis, it's "an unfortunately exhausting experience": "At least 30 minutes and several scams too long, the plot passes from amusing to confounding long before the final double-cross.

this, really

seems to fare best with those who thought it was funny enough

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/let-the-bullets-fly/critic-reviews

so dayo you're not buying the Grady Hendrix quote leading off the Mubi roundup: "the most cynical comedy about state-sponsored criminality..."

that may be true, but it didn't make the mechanics of the film work any better.

like hero is probably the most blatantly pro-CCP movie released this century, but political leanings aside it's just a gorgeously done film.

nobody is unreservedly giving fahrenheit 911 plaudits simply because it's anti-bush

i'd just hope this film is up to ILX-blessed all-timers like Scary Movie 2

and I don't think it's a egg in china's face that this movie 'got past' the chinese censors - the CCP, at least at the national level, hates corruption as much as the people do, if only because it lessens the people's 'faith' in the CCP. the chinese people feel the effects of corruption most at the local level, where farmland is taken away and dissidents are locked up etc. the CCP would rather have corruption be eliminated at the local level (while of course giving all the fruits to national officials.) the mountains are high and the emperor is far away etc.

maybe you could spin a broader anti-CCP message from this movie - my Chinese isn't good enough to catch all the allusions and double entendres that were going on in the movie, so that's certainly possible. but if there really was one I don't know that it would have gotten past state censors.

nobody is unreservedly giving fahrenheit 911 plaudits simply because it's anti-bush

Not sure this is true at all, tbh.

that was rather clumsily put. it's just that I don't buy that this film is subversive, because the national communist party has as much interest in getting rid of local corruption as the people do.

jiang wen is a genius, but this is probably the least of the films he's directed. it's pretty rousing at times but yeah the narrative is a bit slack (and needlessly confusing at times, though there may be a cultural barrier that intensifies that).

devils on the doorstep is one of the best films of the 2000s IMO, and the sun also rises is quite good, albeit weird. actually all of his films are weird, in different ways, which is why i'm sort of surprised that this one took off as it did even though it had a lot of official support.

his first film, which i've only seen on a crappy VHS, is very different than the later ones. it's extremely pictorial and reminds me more of the 5th generation stuff than anything. but it leaves a more effectively bitter aftertaste, in terms of its politics, than all but the best 5th gen films (yellow earth, king of the children...).

i like jiang wen as a director, in the heat of the sun and devils on the doorstep are fucking good and i'm a sucker for that setting, 1920s warlord era sichuan. i halfwatched it on mute in a chinese restaurant in vancouver and thought i was impressed. picked up the dvd and yeah i think TEDIOUS is the best description.

did zhang yimou's a simple noodle story get an american release?

xpost w amateurist

yes, i'd tell everyone to check out <i>devils on the doorstep</i>, if they haven't before.

devils on the doorstep is great but brutal