Review: The Bullet Vanishes (2012)

Cast: Nicholas Tse, Ching Wan Lau, Mini Yang
Director: Chi-Leung Lo
Country: China | Hong-Kong
Genre: Action | Drama | Mystery
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Note: The Bullet Vanishes opens in select cities on 8/31/2012

The Bullet Vanishes is an exciting genre-busting action film, bursting with a strange mix of frenetic and confused energy as it negotiates its various twists and turns with breathless ferocity. It is an easily accessible film with a relatively cohesive narrative that combines with enthralling action and exquisite set-pieces to create a film that will appeal to diverse audiences. If a Burton-esque Sherlock Holmes mashup murder mystery with high-flying action sounds like your cup of tea then you’re not going to want to miss this one, just be prepared for a bit of confusion as you try to negotiate through the various twists and turns that constitute this entertaining mess and hold on for an exciting and beautifully shot ride.

If a Burton-esque Sherlock Holmes mashup murder mystery with high-flying action sounds like your cup of tea then you’re not going to want to miss this one

The film takes place in a munitions factory and its surrounding meager community, walking a fine line between a post-industrial modernized world and one of wuxia legend. Inspectors are renowned for their investigative prowess and innovative techniques, and often sacrifice their own personal safety in pursuit of justice in perpetually unjust times. In placing the film in this era, Chi-Leung Lo’s cameras can explore fantastical worlds in transition from adherents to old values as they clash with their more modern and morally bankrupt oppressors. The camera moves through alleys illuminated by traditional paper lanterns as they clash with the unwanted impositions of the booming population of automobiles that monopolize the once pedestrian friendly walkways. The Bullet Vanishes is a film that values a well choreographed action sequence as much as it values the simplicity of light playing beautiful tricks on the frame. It explores its wonderfully intricate and endlessly expansive period settings with complete freedom, but still finds moments to contemplate shadows and moonlit rain falling on blood soaked concrete.

This is a film universe of shifting ideals and moral ambiguity as industrialization permanently disfigures the hearts of men, where the nobility of one’s actions is defined by the severity of evil rather than its complete absence. Workers are exploited as commodities as their bosses are fattened through the use of their sly games and manipulative transgressions against their underlings. Their clandestine indiscretions catch the attention of a team of post-industrial wuxia Sherlock Holmes, and as they begin their investigation into the heart of the truth behind evil deeds they cannot help but be forever changed by their findings. They can no longer be impartial to the injustices as they witness the atrocious acts perpetrated against the huddled masses, and workers are ruthlessly exploited for their adherence to superstitions and lack of viable options.

This is a film universe of shifting ideals and moral ambiguity as industrialization permanently disfigures the hearts of men, where the nobility of one’s actions is defined by the severity of evil rather than its complete absence.

The Bullet Vanishes is ultimately the distilled spirits of the genres of yesteryear, quaffable but lacking in subtle complexities, but even Chivas Regal can sometimes work in a pinch. Despite its convoluted police procedural plot that the experienced viewer will stay ahead of at every step, it manages to come together as an entertaining whole. One is left with the impression that the creators of the film have a deep admiration and respect for the genres and films that they lovingly borrow from. Once upon a time a train pulled into a station after its journey through fields of unimaginably beautiful exotic wind-caressed flowers; mysteries are unraveled by complex and highly skilled inspectors, and after the purely cinematic story is told, the same train exits in the opposite direction; off to villages containing new mysteries and more oppressed citizens, an unfortunate commodity that is never in short supply.

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Matthew Blevins

Director of Home Entertainment & Sr. Staff Film Critic

Behind me you see the empty bookshelves that my obsession with film has caused. Film teaches me most of the important concepts of life, such as cynicism, beauty, ugliness, subversion of societal norms, and what it is to be a tortured member of humanity. My passion for the medium is an important part of who I am as I stumble through existence in a desperate and frantic search for objective truths.

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