Well Go U.S.A. will be releasing both DVD and Blu-ray
editions of writer/director Yi’nan Diao’s stylish murder mystery, Black
Coal, Thin Ice, on Sept. 29.
The winner of the prestigious Golden Bear for Best Director
at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival, filmmaker Yi’nan Diao’s Black
Coal, Thin Ice takes a different path than the epic historical dramas
or the high-tension action films coming out of Mainland China these days (all
with top-notch production values we might add).
This noirish entry
follows the efforts of disgraced detective Zhang Zili (Fan Liao — Chinese
Zodiac, Ocean Flame, etc.) to both gain redemption and to solve a five-year
old case that was his undoing during his first attempt.
In the film’s prologue we meet Zhang as he launches into the
investigation of a serial killer who likes to chop up his victims and scatter
their body parts within coal shipments.
What message is being sent proves elusive and Zhang botches the
investigation … fellow officers die and his career is at an end.
Now skip ahead five years and our fiendish serial killer is
back at it. Zhang is a drunk, barely
hanging on as a rent-a-cop, but he sees in the new round of body part shipments
a path to his salvation and jumps at it.
If he could just solve the case all would be right with the world again.
His path leads to a dry cleaners and a woman named Wu (Lun
Mei Gwei — Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Girlfriend Boyfriend,
etc.), who seems very much out of place.
He sees in her a connection between both series of murders … and is
strangely, perhaps fatally, attracted to her.
Black Coal, Thin Ice is presented in Mandarin with English
subtitles.
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