[Our thanks to Mark Popham for the following review.]
Gao Shuqun's Old Fish can only be described as a social realist action film that manages to shoehorn in some genuinely touching character portraits in between some genuinely gripping bomb-defusing. Visually beautiful in the style of Zhang Yuan's Seventeen Years, another (far less action-y) film set in urban northeastern China about the bureaucracy of criminal justice, Old Fish goes so far beyond your normal terms of emotional investment in action cinema that it seems almost faint praise to mention that the actual action sequences are fantastic.
After a century or so of serving as reluctant host to invading and local armies, Harbin- a megalopolis in northeast China- is riddled with forgotten, unexploded ordinance, from Japanese gas bombs to Chinese mortars to Russian landmines. Old Fish, the only member of the Harbin police department with any explosives experience, is constantly on call, rushing from one situation to another on his motor scooter, pulled this way and that on his ever-present cell phone. Old Fish himself is well into middle-age, equal parts curmudgeonly and avuncular, and already has enough problems- his son is getting out of the Red Army without a hope of employment, his old army buddy has been imprisoned- even before a series of makeshift bombs wrapped in distinctive yellow tape begin to make his life a living hell. The problem is, Old Fish doesn't really understand how to defuse bombs; in an early scene, he rids himself of a landmine by wrapping it with a shoestring and hurling it into the Songhua River. His major interest in the bombs themselves comes from trying to learn from them after defusing them fairly rudimentary ways. Can he defuse everything the bomber throws at him, winning accolades and a spot in the police academy for his son? Or will his luck run out?
On paper, this remains a pretty conventional action plot- oddball technician saves day- and there are even a few Hollywood action tropes enacted before your eyes, when a plucky young female cop and a college-age deputy have to prove their worth to Old Fish. But the film itself is by far the most unconventional thriller I've ever seen. Old Fish - portrayed by an actual bomb squad technician - is followed throughout his day, from loving spats with his wife to ice-fishing to preparing his catch, even before he begins receiving ever more urgent calls summoning him to deal with the insidious bombs. Throughout the scares, we continue to follow Old Fish, becoming intimately acquainted with both his deep fear and understated sense of duty, completely aware that his luck must run out at some point. And the film's post-script, wherein a news report over the credits explains the actual culprits and their motives, leaving the audience to slowly realize what this means for the storyline in general, is simply crushing.
As previously stated, Ma Guowei, the actor who won a well-deserved Best Actor for the titular part at the Shanghai International Film Festival, is a retired bomb squad technician himself; his performance is an amazing piece of characterization. Gu Erli is excellent as Old Fish's wife, creating in a few short arguments and shots a fully-realized portrait of a relationship where routine and familiarity paper over an unspoken love. Well-written, well-shot and mordantly hilarious, Old Fish is one of the rare action thrillers that reveal the possibilities of the form.
Review by Mark Popham