Rating: D
Dir: Wang Xiaogang
Star: Li Yan, Liu Peiqi. Zhang Nan, Zhang Nan
I was lured into watching this by the intriguing synopsis, which reads: “Two detectives show up in an abandoned town after a swarm of deadly bugs arrived, along with a concubine, and ran its population into the desert.” While, I guess this is technically accurate, it only covers about the first five minutes of the film. Thereafter? Based on my understanding, I really would not be prepared to bet on more than that, in terms of plot. For this went from zero to uncertainty, faster than any other film I’ve seen, then blew past that and reached “abject confusion” before the first Tubi commercial break. I doubt I could tell you with any certainty in what century it was set.
To start with, our police heroes, the father and son duo of Sangjiu (Liu) and Xiaowu (Li) are sporting caps with yellow bands on them, so I couldn’t help think of them as warrior traffic wardens. They find the missing inhabitants hiding out in the desert, where an unrelenting darkness has descended. They’re attacked by soldiers from the Qin dynasty, and capture its leader. He tells them the cause of the darkness is a misfiring artifact called the Book of Heaven, hidden in an underground palace nearby. Xiaowu is involved in this too, because of his tie to a concubine from the Song dynasty, Yanruyu (Zhang), probably in a previous life. She calls him ‘Pimple’, which makes as much sense as everything else.
Normally, I would be inclined to write this off as bad subtitling leading to incomprehension by a foreign audience. But Derek Elley, who has been writing about Asian cinema for fifty years, called it “hopelessly garbled in overall plotting and exposition.” So I genuinely think it’s not me. I’m glad he did review it, because that gave me something, against which to check my loose knowledge of the story-line. It may not help that it appears to have had three directors. In addition to Wang XG, there was “chief director” Wang Yingjiao, and “late-stage director” Sun Xiaohan. It feels like a case of too many cooks, not just spoiling the broth, but leaving the consumer uncertain as to whether they were being served soup at all.
Not to be confused with 1983 animated feature, The Legend of Sealed Book, the best thing I can say about this is, it looks decent. They clearly did find a desert in which to shoot (top), though once we get into the underground palace part of proceedings, it becomes more obviously artificial. Otherwise? It throws characters across the screen, with no real effort at giving them… well, character. The story lurches from element to element and never achieves anything in the way of momentum, before finishing with a climax in severe need of some Viagra. I suspect that the “Sealed Book” of the title, might refer to the script, and this remains unopened to this day. It would explain a great deal.