CinemaSerf

It might well be the soundtrack from the Shanghai Restoration Project that is most notable about this gangster feature. Otherwise, it's all a rather poorly put together animation that follows the story of a suitcase with ¥1 million in it that's been pinched from a boss who is maybe just a bit past his sell buy date. Just to reiterate that point, he puts it's retrieval into the hands of an hit man who has gone a bit from ninja to nanny as he tries to track down the bloke whom we know, pretty much all along, has the cash and hopes to make to to his struggling girlfriend. What are the chances of him getting out alive? Well actually that's not really much of a question - the whole drama sort of meanders along with a degree of inevitability to it that rather draws (unwelcome) attention to the very linear style of the animation. Many of the characters remind me of those rub-on transfers I used to get as a kid. Very two dimensional and rarely in proportion to their contemporaries or their surroundings - especially if there's movement or changes in pace, light/shade going on. It relies on the dismal surroundings of their dilapidated environment and the weather to create much of it's sense of menace and the dialogue does little to put any meat on the bones of their characterisations. Perhaps it's meant to be an allegorical indictment of communist China - a cityscape that, like everything else here, has seen better days? Possibly, but as a crime thriller it's quite literally as flat as a pancake.