Blind Shaft

Customer Reviews:

Blind Shaft.......2007-07-18

Filmed in actual Chinese mines, this bleak moral fable has as much to say about worker exploitation and the hardscrabble lives of China's population as it does the attitude of the criminal mind, sporting a gritty, smudged look that works perfectly with the tone, setting, and dog-eat-dog mindset of Song and Tang. Wang is especially good as the studious innocent forced to give up an education he could not pay for, a situation that resonates powerfully with Song, a father whose meager criminal earnings pay for his own son's schooling. As their relationship tightens, Li skillfully builds tension around the question of whether Song will carry out the plan and kill Yuan. Harrowing and ruthlessly realistic, Blind Shaft illuminates the darker corners of contemporary Chinese life.

fantastic movie about the pathetic chinese mining lives.......2007-04-27

what a tough chinese lifestyle in mining industry. a very good screenplay with very good plot. the tricks, the killings, the good vs the bad, the innocent against the evil. worth watching and to be remembered.

A modern Chinese Chaucerian Tale.......2006-10-02

Judging from the opening credits of Blind Shaft, Li Yang obviously isn't troubled by an excess of modesty: 'Li Yang Presents/a Li Yang Production/Presented by Li Yang/a Li Yang film' - and that's not counting his credits on the end titles. I don't think I've seen anyone credit themselves so many times since Eddie Murphy's infamous Harlem Nights ('Eddie Murphy Productions presents An Eddie Murphy production of an Eddie Murphy film - Eddie Murphy in Harlem Nights Written by Eddie Murphy, Produced by Eddie Murphy, Directed by Eddie Murphy' - and that's by no means a comprehensive list). Luckily Li Yang isn't short of the talent to back up that kind of effrontery: this is easily one of the best films I've seen this century.

An almost Chaucerian tale set in the kind of China you don't see in the tourist brochures or even the average Chinese movie, the premise is simple: Li Yixiang and Wang Shuangbao go round the primitive coal mines in the provinces selecting a new itinerant worker to murder in a fake accident so that they can blackmail the mine owner into paying them compensation to hush it up and not file a report with the Party or the police. After all, "China has a shortage of everything but people." What's most surprising is the characterisation of the two sociopathic conmen, all-too recognisably human, primarily concerned with the future and education of their own children in an increasingly market-led economy. In many ways they're no worse than the corrupt mine owners who would happily kill them to hush up a scandal if paying off the police weren't three times as expensive: both are utterly indifferent to those who die to make them a little bit richer. Until, of course, one of them starts to take a genuinely paternal interest in their latest intended victim, a slow but guileless young boy trying to earn enough money to go back to school (Wang Baoqiang).

In a country as repressive as China, it's surprising just how critical Li Yang is of the corruption endemic throughout the country in the new capitalist society. Hookers sing subversive lyrics to old party songs on karaoke machines, arrests for corruption are everyday TV news fodder and the poor are left to fend for themselves. There's also not a single blade of grass to be seen in the entire film. This is a pitiless, harsh landscape, whether it be the slag heaps of the mines or the cities where crowds of workers hang around in search of a day's work. Nothing can grow here, least of all a conscience. But this isn't art-house fare or a self-important exercise in miserablism a la Ken Loach. It works as a drama as well, albeit one more focused on character than suspense (the ending is not exactly unexpected), and isn't without its comic moments. Very impressive indeed.

Part murderous crime story, part social commentary. A well-done, suspenseful movie........2006-06-27

Blind Shaft is just about as bleak, dry and cold as the North Chinese coal mines in winter where the story is set. The film is part crime drama, part social commentary. As the murderous intent of the two main characters becomes more complicated, the film builds a solid amount of suspense.

Tang (Li Yixiang) and Song (Wang Shuangbao), two hard, working-class men, have developed a scam that pays well. They befriend a stranger, convince him to play along with the story that he is a relative so that he'll find it easier to get work with them, then they go to a coal mine and get jobs digging deep underground. After a few days or weeks, they murder the man down in the shaft, fake an accident and work a deal with the mine operators. In exchange for not making a fuss about the death of a "relative," they accept a payment and go on their way. The mine managers know that if the police are called in, they'll just cost more in bribes than the payment to Tang and Song. And as one manager says, "China has a shortage of everything except people." Tang and Song have pulled this scam several times. Tang, the elder, is a hard case, calculating and without many feelings, with no sympathy for anyone. "You feel bad for him?" he asks Song about the last man they murdered, a peasant with a wife and a son he was trying to send to school with the wages he was earning. ""But who feels bad for you?"

Song is just as willing to murder, but he has a son, too. Some of the hush money they earn he sends to pay for his son's schooling. After the latest killing, the two spend time in a city using up their money on prostitutes. Then they spot a 16-year-old kid, fresh from a village, new to the city and trying to find work. Yuan (Wang Baoqiang) is naive, honest and trusting...a perfect candidate. It's easy to convince him to join them and for him to pose as Song's nephew. They head north and find work in a mine.

For the last hour of the film as the three dig with picks and shovels in the pitch-black mine shafts, with the only light coming from the small torches on their helmets, Tang moves steadily to kill the boy. Song finds reasons to hold back. He needs to lose his virginity, Song argues; it wouldn't be right to kill him before he has known a woman. "Okay," says Tang, "we'll get him laid today. Tomorrow we'll kill him." We need to give him a dinner celebration with wine before we kill him, Song argues, then we can kill him. All these delays take time. Song has evidently found something about the boy's honesty that is bothering him. Tang simply sees delay. He frowns but then smiles. He agrees to the delays. He is getting impatient with Song.

The end of the movie is quick, brutal, ironic and not entirely unexpected. Considering the chances for a happy future for ill-educated working men in China, whether they're grown-ups or 16-year-olds, there's probably no other ending possible. The movie is as much a bleak look at the prospects of working-class men and women, especially in the coal mines, as it is a crime story. Li Yang, who has a background making documentaries, used hand-held cameras to get into the mining operations and to follow the actors around. We also get a realistic look at life in a Chinese city. I thought the movie was fascinating, with the end depressing and unsettling.

The DVD looks fine. The extras include a biography and filmography of the director and a stills gallery.

The Blind Shaft........2006-02-24

Welcome to modern day China, a land turned ruthlessly capitalistic, providing fertile breeding ground for con-men who go the extra mile, ruthlessly. The paraphrased words here of one of the main protagonists sums up the mercantile jadedness quite succinctly: Nothing is real anymore, except a mother's love.
In this intriguing film of low-key suspense put out by Li Yang, the plot centers on two cold-blooded con men who operate in the northen part of Asia's most powerful yet troubled country. These wolves in sheeps' clothing run scams against unsafe mining companies, the likes of which haven't tormented the American worker in decades. Integral to their ongoing machinations are strays they pick up in the big city; young men from impoverished villages who come looking for scarce work and even scarcer honor, to support the loved ones back home and maintain a sense of traditional dignity. Ripe plums for the plucking.
Li Yang's portrayal of today's somewhat Red China is both disturbing yet interesting, but not in a train-wreck fascinating sort of way. The folk on vivid display are but fifty-odd years yanked from an ancient way of life, thrust for a second time into a newly emerging system, the latter almost as chaotic in its long birthing as the earlier attempt at collectivism, and presently just as unsure. The realistic scenes that unfold of casehardened citizens working, plying or roaming the harsh and dirty streets of the city impart an overarching sentiment of bleak prospect. Accentuated from beginning to end are inadequately addressed challenges of today and future China: with so many people to provide safe work, plentiful food and adequate housing for, it seems to be herculean tasks the pseudo-communist, hyper-capitalist government is just not up to. Exasperating the difficulties is the disregard of basic civil rights we Westerners take for granted, because in contemporary China, where now almost everything's for sale, the film has the viewer believe it is very unlikely the authorities ever make a comprehensive effort at keeping accurate records of one's true and legal authenticity. That dysfunctional social and legal problem of essential identity plays into one of this production's most starkest and frightening statements: a single solitary not easily identifiable Chinese citizen can not only be easily victimized, but die without hardly causing a stir. Untraceable identity is also a theme crucial on more than one level as the story-line plays out.
Also explored is the damage done to the character of the Chinese everyman. With not enough developed resources, so many must barely get by, all the while chafing under a capricious, strictly market-minded government-one not by the people, nor for the people and certainly not of the people, but overly concerned with national results at the expense of individual dignity. Such a way of life cannot help but be prone to produce much human sadness, which can make it distressingly easy for too many souls to be corrupted, which unfortunately not only enables but encourages the basest of men to inflict upon others terrible evil.
If you like suspenseful plots and interesting individual and national character studies in exotically perilous environments, then I highly recommend Blind Shaft. It's an engaging way to spend 90 minutes getting an incisively sneak peek into the underbelly of the most populous country on the planet. And if one is inclined to doubt the veracity of this film, that they might consider this video display as little more than some guy trying to trade on unfair characterizations of Mother China, they should also take this into consideration prior to renting or buying this DVD: The film is banned in China.

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Blind Shaft
Starring: Blind Shaft
Manufacturer: Phantom
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B0002JC6O2
Release Date: 2004-02-10

Album Description

Blind Shaft concerns the fate of two coal miners who earn their living by staging accidents that kill fellow workers they have passed off as relatives and collecting the compensation due family members. Directed by Li Yang, and starring Qiang Li & Shuangbao Wang. Original Mandarin (Henanese dialect) dialogue with English & Chinese subtitles. NTSC/all code. 92 mins. Slipcase. Megastar. 2003.

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