Product Details

• Actors: Nick Cheung, Francis Ng, Anthony Wong
• Directors: Herman Yau
• Format: NTSC, Import
• Subtitles: English, Mandarin Chinese
• Region: All Regions
• Number of discs: 1
• DVD Release Date: December 26, 2006
• Run Time: 107 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000JVIU8Y
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #318,781 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding Heart, November 7, 2006

By 

Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: On the Edge (DVD)

A stony, serious man Takata has spent the last ten years of his life living and working in a small coastal town as a fisherman. Seemingly content, he lives a solitary life. However, Takata's quiet life is given a shock when his daughter-in-law calls him and informs him that his son is sick and in the hospital. Takata rushes to Tokyo to see his son whom he has not spoken to for over ten years after a falling out between the two. When he arrives at the hospital, Rie, his daughter-in-law, informs him that his son does not know that he was coming and his son who refuses to see him soon turns him away. Distraught, Rie gives Takata a video of traditional Chinese dancing that Kenichi filmed in Yunnan.

After he has returned home, Takata watches the video and learns of his son's, an arts professor at the University of Tokyo, love of Chinese Dancing. In the video Kenichi interviews a man named Li who is able to perform a difficult piece called "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles", but because he is sick he is unable to perform the piece that day, so he invites Kenichi to come watch him perform the piece the following year.

A short time later, Rie calls Takata and informs him that Kenichi has stomach cancer and that the disease is terminal. In order to become closer to his son Takata travels to China to film Li performing "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles," but he soon learns that Li is imprisoned for stabbing a man. His translator Jasmine wants him to return home, but Takata is determined to film the piece. With the aid of Lingo, a nice fellow who speaks to Takata in a mixture of broken English and Chinese, Takata through some extreme measures is finally able to see Li perform, but Li is unable to perform because he wants to see his young son whose existence he has only known of for a short time. Although Jasmine and Lingo want him to go home and although Rie wants him to return as well, Takata is determined to fetch Li's son Yang Yang and bring him to Li in order for him to be able to film the performance. However, Takata, in the end, is able to gain much more than what he originally set out for.

Famous for his portrayals of gangsters and cowboys, the deadpan Takakura Ken strikes an opposing figure even at the age of seventy-four, stone silent throughout most of the film, most of Takakura's words are through internal dialogue through which he enlightens the audience on such topics as his own difficulties expressing emotion and the ways in which he is moved by the kindness of the Chinese people and the Chinese people's willingness to express emotion which is very unlike the Japanese. Takakura's character in fact has so much trouble expressing his emotions that he has to talk through a video camera to an official in order to get his feelings across. Takakura's glacially cool performance is truly able to move audience when cracks appear in his hard exterior. Moments such as when he smiles at Yang Yang or when his tears flow in the video truly tug at the heartstrings.

While Riding Along for Thousands of Miles might not be a hard hitting social commentary in the same vein as To Live, Not One Less, or the Story of Qiu Ju, it is still quite a good film especially for the fact that Zhang centers the film around Japanese characters in a time in which relations with Japan are at their worst in quite a number of years.