Hidden Blade, written and directed by Cheng Er. Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Wang Yibo. China, 132 minutes, IIB. Opened Mar 9. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Hidden Blade starts in 1938 with the bombing of Guangzhou and ends sometime around 1946, in postwar Hong Kong. In between, writer-director Cheng Er slips and slides back and forth through time under the constant specter of the Japanese surrender. All the while, he weaves a wartime crime noir reminiscent of Casablanca (1942), and replete with spies, unbending Axis-power villains, sinister streets and femmes fatales. As rich as the film’s images are — and as outstanding as Cheng’s own cinematography and (uncredited in press notes) production design are — Hidden Blade too frequently gets reduced to a series of still photos of people in impeccable period costumes, sitting in a perfectly re-created midcentury teahouse and smoking artfully without having real conversations. Still, it’s a seamless blend of nationalist messaging and old-school noir filmmaking that’s incredibly easy on the eye and entirely engaging on its surface, spy-jinks level.
After surviving Guangzhou, He (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) lands in Shanghai to take up the post of security director for Wang Jingwei’s puppet government, working under the politically ambitious, occupying General Watanabe (Hiroyuki Mori) and Minister Tang (Dong Chengpeng). Helping He carry out various cloak-and-dagger missions are Ye (pop star and motorcycle racer Wang Yibo) and Wang (Wang Chuanjun). Cheng connects the dots between collaborators and communist sympathizers, reveals the double crosses, and unravels the conspiratorial knot in stages. Following a slightly jarring, overly edited opening, the film settles into a nice, spy-thriller rhythm that crescendos with a fight to the (near) death between He and Ye.
Hidden Blade, written and directed by Cheng Er. Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Wang Yibo. China, 132 minutes, IIB. Opened Mar 9. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The film is a step up from Cheng’s laborious and scattered The Wasted Times (2016), and at the very least displays a mastery of style and atmospherics. The 1940s Shanghai sets ooze menace, with hard light and shadows suggesting a threat around every corner. The film ranks up there with the best of what seems like a rush of Asian period spy thrillers: Zhang Yimou’s Cliff Walkers (2021), Jiang Wen’s Hidden Man (2018), Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination (2015); in some ways kicked off by Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution way back in 2007. Hidden Blade is among the most visually assured of the lot.
Which is why it’s disappointing that the storytelling isn’t quite up to par. In the end, the whole doesn’t add up to the sum of its considerable parts. Cheng has a strong cast committed to the material, and in many ways the performances keep the film from going off the rails altogether. Leung is his usual reliable self, effortlessly telegraphing inner conflict laced with a ceaseless alertness. And while Wang is a little flat, he gives Ye a subtle physicality that makes the character as curious as he is dangerous. Unfortunately, the women in Hidden Blade are less well-served. Zhou Xun is criminally underused as the mysterious spy and sympathizer Miss Chen, and Zhang Jingyi (2021’s Love Will Tear Us Apart) as Fang exists solely to be brutalized.
But what’s truly frustrating about Hidden Blade is what it doesn’t bother doing. There’s a rich thematic vein to be tapped deep in the script somewhere about the nature of wartime collaboration, why it happens, the emotional and moral toll it takes, and whether or not everyone who colludes with the enemy can be tarred with the same brush. It’s not a decision that comes with absolutism in every circumstance, but Cheng cleaves closely to easily digestible shades of black and white — never gray, which is where the real drama lies.
