Review of Cliff Walkers

There's no end to China's revolution-themed movies because the depth of humaneness and literal drama could be excavated in every possible angle into a nutritious script. Cliff Walkers succeeded in combining a revolutionary operation with director Yimo Zhang's personal art style. Regarding photography, costume design, and environmental layout, the movie flawless depicts an era of polarization and conflict like the extremely contrasting colors. As to the plot, tension is naturally formed through dramatic ironies and the intricate objectives of every characters. The amount of attention is mandatory to completely understand the implication and intention behind the seemingly irrelevant conversations. However, even for a native speaker like myself, the exposition of the film is still confusing as I try to catch on to who each characters are (because they all look the same to me), what they want (imagine a spy of the good but serves the bad who tries to talk to the good without spoiling his identity to the bad), and how they do it, because all the details can cause later speculations and gamble between every vigilant minds. Now then, I have to praise Hewei Yu's performance as the secret reinforcement of our protagonists: all the expressions and body languages of this complicated agent is deliberately acted out to ensure his place as a loyal servant of the bad in front of the antagonists, while covertly aiding the safety of the good for the protagonists. There's no exaggeration in commending him for connecting all elements of the movie. With that said, I didn't really enjoy the sudden ending of mission accomplished, emotional agitation, and traitor execution, since the reality is a lot more merciless, and if the unobtrusive danger lives, there's no time for mourning before daybreak. There's only endurance for the martyrs who carried on with the fiery faith. Definitely an unparalleled production, and probably the best Chinese movie of this year.