Customer Reviews

The Missing Gun

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
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The Missing Gun (Xun Quang) is a surprising film. At first it appears to be a comedy, but soon reveals itself to be much more.

Ma Shan (Jiang Wen) is a detective in the People's Republic of China who wakes up one day to find that his gun was stolen at his sister's wedding the night before. This is a very serious matter that threatens to end Ma's career - or worse - and bring shame upon his department. The movie follows Ma's efforts to find out who stole the gun, which is subsequently used in a murder. It also presents an accurate picture of life in China.

I couldn't help admire Ma's abilities as a very sharp detective, but it is his devotion to duty that left me thinking about this film long after it finished. There is a wonderful scene where Ma is chasing a criminal and, after arresting him, explains where his power to catch him comes from. But the film touched me most as a meditation on personal integrity, and what it means to honor that integrity.

The Missing Gun aka Xun Qiang is one of those films that creeps in under the radar and surprises you. Arriving on DVD with no reputation and packaged as an action movie, it's really a rather good drama with more in common with The Bicycle Thieves than your average Hong Kong action movie (although thankfully the hero leaves his kid at home on his quest). In fact, it's not even that, but a Chinese drama about a small-town cop (the wonderfully hangdog Wen Jiang) who wakes after a drunken wedding reception to find his gun missing and no-one able to remember the previous night's events any better than he can. The poor small town China setting is intriguing, a mixture of mostly old with flashes of the new China - supermarkets, imported cars and Italian suits. Of course, this being a Chinese film, the latter are frowned upon as the fruits of corruption, but it's not an overt propaganda piece, more a character driven drama executed with an interesting but strangely appropriate visual style (the shot of a murder victim's hair spread out on the ground is hauntingly beautiful) and compassion. The final revelation feels a bit awkward (that pesky Asian cinema habit of having the killer become Irving the Explainer), but it even finds its way out of that with some imagination. Quietly impressive.

I wanted to like this movie, but I had some issues with it. The pacing was slower than I would have liked, and it seemed like too many people had a motive to take the gun except for the person who actually did take it. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense and unanswered questions. For instance the cop said that he was carrying his gun while at the wedding because there was an escaped convict, but then he got so drunk that he couldn't remember what had happened the next day. I also didn't believe that people would be put in jail one day and let loose the next without anything happening to clear their name. I don't want to ruin the ending for anyone, but it left a couple of questions unanswered. It wasn't a bad movie, it just wasn't that exciting either.

This is a nice police drama import from mainland China. I picked this up brand new at
a very good discount price from one of Amazon's marketplace sellers. Gives you some
insight into life as a policeman in a rural small town in communist China. Very well
acted by all the leads. This film is packaged as an action flick which is a mistake.
People expecting the typical Hong Kong action movie might not be happy with it. It
moves kind of slow in spots but the story is really good and pulls you back. I
am pleased with this new DVD purchased at an overnight rental price.

First of all the locations are real. A small village in China, where people leave to find better lives in big cities. The people all want to fit into the larger China and feel they have an important part in the China that lures their young away as real, small Chinese villagers who are parents and grandparents feel.

The main character is an honor-driven police detective, Ma, who has lost his gun with three bullets in it at a wedding party for his sister the night before the movie starts. The detective has a family as he is a responsible member of the village that has stayed in his hometown, and earned awards for the police department.

Kind of like Kurosawa's "Stray Dog", guns are forbidden by the government so this is seen as a big foul up with possibly fatal consequences. The police who are an extension of the Communist Party see the mistake as criminal if he can not correct the mistake before anyone challenges their authority by using the gun.

Enter the people who have left the village to seek a better life but returned. The woman that Ma used to be involved in challenges his honor but quickly ends up dead thus casting suspicion on Ma and the "entrenpeneur", both have gotten used to "Big City" living and sacrificed some small village honor in the meanwhile.

Ma calls in his favors from his circle of friends all to no conclusion but tenaciously pursues his honor and the real criminal. In the end he uncovers the truth behind everyone that makes this a great detective story and more than an action thriller (not quite that fast paced except for the opening credits).

Jiang Wen'', the celebrated Chinese actor, spends a lot of time furrowing his brow and looking pretty blank in this movie. The credit sequence, suggestive of the extraordinary opening of "Chungking Express'"''', is all about madly sped-up traveling shots--but nothing in what follows is speedy. The rather boneheaded detective stumbles from point A to B to A to C, without much reason or compulsion. The tone alternates between HK absurdity and the heaviness of "characterization scenes" meant to tell us something about a rather unlikable character. The best thing about the tedious movie, by far, is the location. The old town of Qingyan ', called Yunao ''in the movie, is quite located close to the provincial capital of Guizhou province, Guiyang, which accounts for the quite odd accents in the movie.

This is the first major film presented by the genius Lu Chuan. Mountain Patrol (Kekexili) is the second masterpiece of his. Like his second film, Lu Chuan has the ability to bring real, Dickens-like characters to life in a modern world of plastic people. This brings a breath of fresh air to Western viewers who can now barely conceive of serious, in-depth, long-term relationships between people.
I was asked recently if these films were in English or subtitled. Having watched them an endless number of times, I was not able to respond. That is how transparent these tales are; how engaging and masterful in their suspension of disbelief. See this film.

The storyline is simple enough. The main character, Ma is a respected policeman in a rural town in China. He woke up after having too much to drink the night before from his brother's wedding. As he readied himself to work, he realised that his gun was missing. For those of us who were accustomed to international news regarding human rights issue in China, about the police & military being gun totters, you would be surprised to know that gun is strictly forbidden in China & to lose it is a serious offence. That's when the movie starts to warm up, with Ma's frantic search for his gun with three bullets remaining. He requires to do it in the nick of time. His supervisor says it well that for an amateur, that means three potential loss of lives. For a professional, that would mean six potential loss of lives! Ma endeavours to retrace his steps the night before & naturally, there are many potential suspects. The matter gets worse when his girlfriend from the past was killed by his own gun & that, he's listed as a potential suspect. Therefore, not only he needs to solve the crime as soon as possible but that he needs to prove his innocence as well. I wouldn't term this movie a gut-wrenching, white knuckle, guess-till-the-last-minute-who-did-it kind of thriller movie but a bit of everything. The movie can be hillarious at times and ocassionally, oddball-ish depending upon how you see it. It's assuring that this movie is not two-dimensional but character driven as well. Ma is revealed to have his issues with his wife & his son (good cop but lousy husband & father situation), the contrast between the capitalist who owns an Italian suit, driving a huge sedan, living in a big mansion and the rest of the town that lives on the edge of bread line. The cinematography style has spruced up with the Western technique, i.e. visually stimulating, MTV-style. The ending is a bit abstract for me, though. Overall, a well-done movie. Suffice to say that the movie has lost its steam towards the final quarter, or in another words, anti-climax. Still, a movie worth watching, even just to compare the old Chinese movies against the new.