Directed by Diao Yinan • 2019 • China
Starring Hu Ge, Gwei Lun-mei, Liao Fan
When small-time mob leader Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) accidentally kills a cop, a dead-or-alive bounty is placed on his head, forcing him on the lam from both the police as well as dangerous gangsters out for the reward. Hiding out in China’s densely populated (and deeply divided) Wuhan province, Zhou becomes entangled with a beautiful, enigmatic woman, who has mysterious intentions of her own. Featuring gorgeous, neon-drenched cinematography and bursts of shocking, expertly choreographed action, this spellbinding neonoir is a bracing plunge into the darkest margins of contemporary Chinese society.
Up Next in Chinese Crime Thrillers
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Only the River Flows
Directed by Wei Shujun • 2023 • China
Starring Zhu Yilong, Chloe Maayan, Hou TianlaiWhen a woman’s body washes up on the shore in small-town China in the 1990s, the local chief of police, Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), is tasked with leading the investigation. An obvious suspect leads to a hasty arrest, ...
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Chongqing Hot Pot
Directed by Yang Qing • 2016 • China
Starring Chen Kun, Bai Baihe, Qin HaoThis wild, genre-blasting blend of rollicking comedy and blood-spattered crime caper follows three friends who, when they open a hot pot restaurant in a former bomb shelter, are surprised to discover that it’s linked by a...
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Streetwise
Directed by Na Jiazuo • 2021 • China
Starring Liu Jiuxiao, Huang Miyi, Sha BaoliangAn at once gritty and intoxicatingly stylized portrait of a group of outcasts struggling to survive in a fading riverside town, STREETWISE unfolds in 2004 in Zhenwu, one of the many small villages in the Sichuan ...
