Wrath of Silence [Bao lie wu sheng] ** (2017, Wu Jiang, Yang Song, Zhuo Tan) – Movie Review

In the recent past in a small town in Northern China, a mute shepherd father goes on an increasingly desperate, do-or-die search when his son disappears.

It all tracks back to a gang, run by an evil boss, who is illegally exploiting the rich mineral resources in the mountains. The gang’s bent lawyer then finds his daughter is missing too.

Writer-director Yukun Xin mixes endless scraps with serious issues about the environment in an upmarket action thriller. There are good moments in this interesting, sometimes tense and exciting, but uneasy and ultimately unsatisfying movie that resolves itself in a perplexing sort of way. The performances and staging are largely good, though much of the exciting action is so lusty as to be over-the-top and unrealistic.

With a little more urgency in the shooting and editing, and a shorter running time than its long-seeming two hours, it would have been better as a straight thriller, allowing the ecological issues to arise more naturally out of the story. 

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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