The Asian Commercial Sex Scene  

Go Back   The Asian Commercial Sex Scene > For stuff you can't discuss with your Facebook Account > Coffee Shop Talk of a non sexual Nature

Notices

Coffee Shop Talk of a non sexual Nature Visit Sam's Alfresco Heaven. Singapore's best Alfresco Coffee Experience! If you're up to your ears with all this Sex Talk and would like to take a break from it all to discuss other interesting aspects of life in Singapore,  pop over and join in the fun.

User Tag List

Reply
 
Thread Tools
  #1  
Old 02-05-2014, 02:30 AM
Sammyboy RSS Feed Sammyboy RSS Feed is offline
Sam's RSS Feed Bot - I'm not Human. Don't talk to me.
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 466,520
Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 22 Post(s)
My Reputation: Points: 10000241 / Power: 3357
Sammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond reputeSammyboy RSS Feed has a reputation beyond repute
Thumbs up Film review: Banned for four years, No Man's Land depicts crime in the mainland

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:


Film review: banned for four years, No Man's Land depicts crime in the mainland

Text: Andrew Sun



Xu Zheng in a scene from the film.

NO MAN’S LAND
Starring: Xu Zheng, Yu Nan, Huang Bo
Director: Ning Hao
Category: IIB (Putonghua)

Rating: 4/5


If there is a Chinese equivalent of the Coen brothers, it's probably Shanxi native Ning Hao; the director's acerbic comic capers (Crazy Stone; Crazy Racer; Mongolian Ping Pong) unravel as cynical dog-eat-dog scenarios of misanthropes scheming to top each other.

No Man's Land might be the harshest of his films yet. Mainland censors were disturbed enough to shelve the movie for four years. Judging by the nice upbeat epilogue, who knows how much Ning's vision was compromised to appease the authorities. But despite the re-edits, the result is a nihilistic and delightful bender. Thanks to its cheekiness, it ends up being more captivating than disturbing.

An arrogant and opportunistic big city lawyer, Pan Xiao (Xu Zheng), represents a falcon-poaching crime boss in a small dustbowl town. He gets the defendant off, and presumes the poacher will owe him big time. But there is little honour among thieves in the lawless dusty frontier towns of northwest China.

Trying to drive home across the Gobi desert — in his client's snazzy red car, which he took as partial payment — the unscrupulous attorney runs into more than his fair share of hick crazies and amoral villains. "Extortion? We don't like that word around here," a grizzled gas station owner says to him after overcharging for a tank of gas. But when you have a dead body in your trunk (sorry, we're not explaining that here), and you're in a creepy ramshackle truck-stop, you pay the toll and get the hell out of there.

As it turns out, the lawyer is the lowest creature in the pecking order in this dry and unforgiving terrain. The only character with any redeeming qualities is Jiaojiao (Yu Nan), a hooker with a heart of gold. But even she's not above telling a lie or two to survive.

"This is a story of animals," Pan expresses in a voiceover at the start of the film, as he relates a parable about the merciless nature of wild beasts. Naturally, the sensitive Chinese government thinks the movie's corrupt and uncivil anarchy is a critique of its own rule. They wouldn't be wrong, but No Man's Land is as much about the government as No Country for Old Men is about George W. Bush.

The Coens' sensibility is most evident in the dark and dry comic tone. No Man's Land's bleak and malicious characters would not be out of place in film noirs like Blood Simple or Fargo. As the crime boss, Duo Bujie looks and drives like he belongs in a Mad Max movie, but the tragic-comic trials and tribulations endured by his henchman (Chinese star comic Huang Bo) are typical Coen character farce.

As Pan digs himself deeper into trouble, karma and causality conspire to make everyone pay for their sins. But under Ning's deft direction, justice is almost random, and seeking retribution is asking for trouble. That's not morality, but it's certainly fun to watch.

No Man's Land opens on May 1





Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.
Advert Space Available
Bypass censorship with https://1.1.1.1

Cloudflare 1.1.1.1
Reply



Bookmarks

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT +8. The time now is 09:43 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.10
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Pro) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Copywrong © Samuel Leong 2006 ~ 2025 ph