Ash Is Purest White
Director: Jia Zhang-Ke
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 2.0
Yet another Chinese crime movie - I feel like I've seen so many - about a mobster named Bin (Liao Fan) and his girlfriend Qiao (Zhao Tao): she goes to jail for five years for him (after brandishing a pistol in public and setting off warning shots) and while she's incarcerated he decides to ditch her and find another girlfriend. For whatever reason (love?), she then spends the rest of the movie chasing him around while he more or less makes it crystal clear he's not interested, and Jia has never been one for subtlety - or realizing when his movie is entirely too long for the premise - so it just goes on and on (he addresses it in a bit of self-criticism during a card game but does nothing to fix it). Honest question: do they really have theme nights in China where they sing and dance along with The Village People?