Chow Yun-fat is forced to protect his domain in goofy Eastern Western LET THE BULLETS FLY
LET THE BULLETS FLY (Jiang Wen, 2010)
Wednesday, April 27, AMC Loews Village 7, 8:30
Friday, April 29, AMC Loews Village 7, 3:00
www.tribecafilm.com
www.emp.hk
Based on a novel by Ma Shitu, Jiang Wen’s Let the Bullets Fly is a very funny action comedy set during the Warlord Era of the 1920s. After a train robbery doesn’t quite come off as planned, wanted gangster Pocky Zhang (Jiang) and his sidekicks team up with shady swindler Tang (Ge You) and a treasure-hunting woman (Carina Lau) to pose as the new county governor (Zhang) and his team, attempting to take over Goose Town and abscond with its money. But Goose Town already belongs to the crooked Huang Silang (Chow Yun-fat), who is not about to let Zhang take away what’s his. What follows is a goofy battle of wills that involves self-gutting, an idiot body double, some excellent gory violence, and lots of double entendres. A huge critical and commercial success in China, Let the Bullets Fly is way too long at 132 minutes, and the pacing often feels scattershot, perhaps the result of at least six screenwriters having poured out some thirty scripts before Jiang was ready to proceed. Jiang is wonderfully understated as Zhang, while Chow is a hoot as the local mobster whose domain is suddenly threatened. Filled with plenty of sly references and homages to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, Let the Bullets Fly is a flawed but entertaining Chinese popcorner.