A film produced by Ning Hao but directed by another. This is already saying a lot about a film from the director of Crazy Stone, which recalls its rhythm, heart and dark vibe, but without the humour this time. From the opening shot of the faces of the two protagonists, Sun Honglei and Ni Dahong, seemingly unmoved, although we perceive the emotional chaos lurking behind, the tone of the film is immediately set. The story unfurls around a group of criminals who operate in the “hot” zone, the border between China and Burma, where the drug trade is thriving (literally translated, the film’s title means “storm at the border”). During a police operation which unmasks a gang of dealers, the boss of the gang dies and his henchman, before making a run for it, hides the cash and takes a young girl hostage, the daughter of the dentist in whose surgery the shoot-out took place. After having seen off rival dealers, the man becomes the boss of the gang, while the father of the girl is intercepted as he tries to bring the cash back to the gangland boss as ransom for his daughter. Despite being morally innocent, he ends up in jail. The girl therefore remains with the criminal, who brings her up and then marries her. Ten years pass, the father is released from jail and the couple decide to change life, leave Burma and start anew in China. But there is just one last operation to conclude…
The narrative is divided into four chapters which tell the story cutting from present to past and vice versa. The first is dedicated to a dog, one of the first victims of the war between the dealers and the police; the second chapter – which, in truth, is the prologue of the story, is entitled The Past; the third is dedicated to the daughter while the fourth jumps back to the past. The story is somewhat convoluted, as is the norm in thrillers, but the originality of the film lies in the relationship portrayed between the victim and the perpetrator of the crime. He is an intelligent, calculating criminal, cold-blooded and capable of great acts of evil, but he has one weakness: his affection – which is later transformed into love – and his dedication to the innocent girl he took hostage and towards whom he then develops deep feelings. And she, perhaps a victim of Stockholm syndrome, after having been forced to grow up alongside her kidnapper, also develops feelings for him as an adult, although with a veil of melancholy, almost resignation. Her father, whose life was ruined by the dealer who, in the meantime, has become his daughter’s husband, is unable to understand the relationship between the two of them, but is equally unable to abandon them to their fate. And so it is to him that the dealer turns in the crucial moment which will decide the future of the woman. You get the feeling that this thriller, a constant source of suspense, masks a tale of melancholy and regret for a life that could have been but was not, due to the wrong choices one makes at crucial moments, ones which have lifelong consequences. These sensations are not transmitted by the dialogues, which are minimal, but by the expressiveness of the faces of the main characters, which reveals all their internal drama. The film was shot in Beijing and at the Yunnan border by two different directors of photography, who gave the two areas different colours but the same sinister atmosphere of places abandoned by the tyranny of physical and spiritual deterioration.
Maria Barbieri