"Beijing Bicycle" has been described as a Chinese "Bicycle Thieves". This kind of plot is easy to poach if not always that easy to bring off but Xiaoshuai Wang manages it beautifully helped by a couple of wonderfully naturalistic performances from Lin Cui as the young courier whose bicycle is stolen and from Bin Li as the young thief, as well as by the superb cinematography of Jie Liu. This time the plot is less predictable and handled with a touch more humor than you might expect. It's also a great 'city' film with Wang handling the milieu of a large, and to Western eyes, a virtually unknown metropolis with all the brio of a Lumet but also with a freshness of approach and, like Lumet, he manages to balance the comic and the tragic in equally brilliant measure. This is a truly terrific film that simply shouldn't be missed.
Review of Beijing Bicycle
