Huang Jianxin's XIAN'S FINEST (2000) review

The 'cop soap opera' genre has enjoyed a long and storied history over the past few decades, with notable contributions from all over the world. The idea of a small brotherhood of men (and women) fighting the good fight against both petty and organised crime drove a significant part of the Hong Kong film industry's golden age, and its staying power is plainly obvious from the work of blockbuster Hollywood auteurs down to primetime comfort food on sundry television networks across the globe.

Xian's Finest is director Huang Jianxin's attempt to capture the allure of the thin blue line, and it proves to be generally worth watching, but ultimately severely hobbled by mainland Chinese conventions (or to an extent, Huang's own creative decisions); equal parts amiable character drama, gritty crime narrative and patriotic rabble-rouser, its biggest flaw is Huang can't seem to balance these different elements as well as he'd like.

Cutting back repeatedly to a brief prologue shot in stylised flashbacks the film starts as Wu, a veteran small town officer, ends up demoted to a community policing centre when a hostage situation goes awry. Not that he seems to mind; the younger officers are in awe of him but Wu settles into his new assignment without complaint, whether it's routine busts or pitching in clearing the local drains.

Despite an early chase scene and some quick gunplay this is a loose, almost genial narrative, at least to begin with. There's little if anything here any fan of the genre won't recognise, from the provincial dislike of red tape to the easy banter around the conference table to the bickering over the constant want of funding. Predictable or otherwise it is smoothly lensed, though, workmanlike yet polished, and with solid acting from all concerned. Then the same criminal who featured in the opening hostage standoff is released from prison, and the story takes (or attempts to take) a decidedly darker turn.

Genre elements are generally not Huang's metier - the 1994 period piece The Wooden Man's Bride or the science fiction aspects of Dislocation (1986) are the closest he's come to directing them. Once Wu's family are dragged into the escalating problems he's beset with Xian's Finest seems to veer too far away from Huang's signature style for the director to keep his rhythm going. Every other scene (however well shot) becomes an uneasy mix of popcorn emotional manipulation and clumsy moralising, plot points thrown in far too eagerly, party slogans ever more awkwardly shoehorned between bouts of exposition.

The more casual storytelling remains, but it suffers as a result; unlike The Marriage Certificate, Huang doesn't seem comfortable enough here to make such broad tonal shifts without the film coming off as seriously disjointed. Despite the efforts of the cast, they come off all too frequently as mouthpieces for a public service announcement rather than human beings, which sits poorly next to the director's record of standing up for the man on the street.

There is some ambiguity in the interests of humanising the characters, with Wu struggling to weigh his duty to the populace against his personal involvement. It's still not much more than a quieter riff on the archetype of the maverick cop and it's certainly not enough to salvage the ending, where subtlety is largely thrown out of the window in favour of painting Wu as an exemplar of patriotic heroism.

The climax coming out of the blue on top of the nationalist aspects make the whole thing extremely difficult to swallow - obviously this is a production aimed primarily at a domestic audience but it still bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the chest-beating excesses of any number of 'main melody' films.

The individual pieces of the production come across fairly well in isolation, and many of them - the chase scene, the day-to-day banter, quibbling over what the team can afford to order from a restaurant - prove memorable enough in a detached, academic sort of way. It's just the film fails to gel into any sort of coherent, compelling whole, falling into a loose, lazy structure more like a television series that's in no hurry to get anywhere, throwing in a hurried denouement to wrap things up at the last minute.

Xian's Finest is still worth watching. Despite its flaws enough of it's shot through with Huang's particular brand of heartfelt dedication to the Chinese everyman that the film ranks well above any number of forgettable cop shop entries the world over. But it remains desperately frustrating at times, with the languid pace of the opening seeming to promise much more than the film can ultimately deliver, and it comes only cautiously recommended.