Review: Let the Bullets Fly (2010)

Cast: Yun-Fat Chow, Xiaogang Feng, Wen Jiang
Director: Wen Jiang
Country: China | Hong Kong
Genre: Action | Comedy | Western
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Let the Bullets Fly opens for limited release in the U.S. on March 2nd 2012.

Actor-director Jiang Wen’s latest production, Let the Bullets Fly, has become the highest-grossing domestic film in Chinese film history, surpassing the record once held by Aftershock (2009, Feng Xiaogang). By extension, it is now the second highest-grossing film in Chinese film history (James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar still holds the number one place). It thus has a lot to live up to as it finally makes its way to North American theatres. But as the film’s title indicates, one should allow something its own time to unfold, one should have patience. If one does precisely that when watching Let the Bullets Fly, the rewards are magnificent to behold. Jiang fashions a veritable audiovisual feast of western trappings to present a story of bandits, a gangster bloodletting, a town, and an endless play of donned identities and power struggles, set during China’s Warlord Era (1910s to 1920s). It is filled to the brim with humour, whiplash-flashing dialogue, and wonderfully painted characterization, executed in full by a superb cast led by Jiang himself. As such, it requires nothing less than unwavering attention from the spectator, which one should be only too happy to give.

…the rewards are magnificent to behold. Jiang fashions a veritable audiovisual feast of western trappings to present a story of bandits, a gangster bloodletting, a town, and an endless play of donned identities and power struggles, set during China’s Warlord Era (1910s to 1920s).

Let the Bullets Fly is a return to form for Jiang, following his previous film, the rather bland magical realism-like The Sun Also Rises (2007). ‘Return to form’ for Jiang is the unexpected and unbridled way that he plays with genres. His second film as a director, Devils on the Doorstep (2000), takes place towards the end of the Japanese occupation of China in the 1940s, upends the war film, and interrogates Chinese historiography and attitudes of the Asia Pacific War in the process. Though not a war film, Let the Bullets Fly taps into the epic sweep of ironic situations, earthy drawn characters, and great narrative tension of Devils on the Doorstep. Like Devils on the Doorstep, Let the Bullets Fly takes place in a small town, this time in the Sichuan province. Also like Devils on the Doorstep, Let the Bullets Fly lays bare the sometimes sadomasochistic dynamics that constitute the running of a small town among the leaders of the community. In Devils on the Doorstep, the townsfolk endlessly discuss, bicker, and cooperate as to what to do with a Japanese soldier and Chinese translator that fall into their laps. In Let the Bullets Fly, bandit leader Zhang (Jiang), gangster Huang (Chow Yun-fat)—who has made Goose Town his headquarters—and wily conman Tang (Ge You) butt heads, minds, and words in the struggle for power in the town.

With Let the Bullets Fly, Jiang plays exuberantly with the western genre. Such exuberance expresses itself in the first sequence, when Zhang and his group of bandits stop a train on its way to Goose Town. The train’s passengers are governor Ma Bangde (played by Feng Xiaogang, no less), his secretary Tang, and Tang’s wife (Carina Lau). In the process, Ma dies, Zhang takes up his identity and Tang’s wife as his own, and spares Tang’s life by making him his secretary. They then mosey on in to Goose Town, a town not unlike the one sunk in chaos and populated with hungry peasants in Kurosawa Akira’s Yojimbo (1960). With that, the series of power tug-of-wars begins between Zhang and Huang, with Tang in the middle and ready to be swayed by the one who currently has the upper hand. While Zhang wants to finagle Huang’s money and give it to the poor, and later on avenge the deaths of several of his bandit cohorts, Huang hopes to run Zhang and company quickly out of town, with the use of an inane body double, among other things. In their duels, more often than not words take the place of guns or swords. Due to Jiang’s meticulous attention to rhythm, elocution, and editing, all of the suspense, vanity, and degrees of masculine performance that go into such confrontations comically emerge, such as in the rapid-fire first official meeting at a table between Zhang, Huang, and Tang.

With Huang and his body double and Zhang constantly changing his biography so as to not reveal his identity, the multiple levels of role-playing, meaning, and comedy between characters are numerous. As a result, the film has the lovely feel of a joint circus-carnival, with Jiang (as director and Zhang) the ringmaster and MC juggling all of these elements with aplomb. In particular, Zhang’s band of bandits, with its coded bird calls and scenes in which each member utters a line of dialogue and plays against the others’ lines to wonderful comic effect, is like a circus or carnival act unto itself. What makes the comedy sharp and surprising is the film’s great equilibrium of quiet and loud, of quick-fire dialogue and more normally paced exchanges, to temper the flow of humour, elaborate narrative information and development, and action scenes. This equilibrium is in no small part due to the cast—led by Jiang, Chow, and Ge (who steals practically every scene)—as it brings to life such engaging and nearly cartoon-like characters. Though Let the Bullets Fly is a masculine world, actresses Zhou Yun as one of Huang’s prostitutes and Lau as Tang’s wife need to be singled out, especially Lau, for going neck and neck with the guys, in their limited amount of screen time.

What makes the comedy sharp and surprising is the film’s great equilibrium of quiet and loud, of quick-fire dialogue and more normally paced exchanges, to temper the flow of humour, elaborate narrative information and development, and action scenes.

At a visual level, Jiang also achieves a nice equilibrium of wide open spaces of action (e.g. the opening train hijacking sequence, the uprising by the town’s inhabitants) and funny conversational scenes in close quarters (e.g. the bedroom scenes with Zhang and Tang’s wife, those with Zhang’s band of bandits). In each case, Jiang populates the frame with a richness of details (dialogue, décor, gesture) that may overwhelm some spectators while also winning over others. If given such ample and varied room in which to play, the will to play is that much greater. As a result, Let the Bullets Fly provides immense spectatorial pleasure and takes up a notch the evolution of the Chinese blockbuster.

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Rowena Santos Aquino

Sr. Staff Film Critic

Film lecturer at CSULB. Transnational, multilingual, migratory cinephilia.

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