★ 8 / 10
Owing a debt not only to Refn, but
SWITCH.
Owing a debt not only to Refn, but to the Zen-like simplicity and nocturnal ambience of Walter Hill’s ‘The Driver’ and Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Le Samourai’…
Owing a debt not only to Refn, but to the Zen-like simplicity and nocturnal ambience of Walter Hill’s ‘The Driver’ and Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Le Samourai’, Diao’s ‘The Wild Goose Lake’ may be little more than an exercise in style, but it’s certainly a dazzling and mythic one.
- Jake Watt
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https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-the-wild-goose-lake-supremely-stylish-neon-noir
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★ 8 / 10
Fast Paced, Visually Arresting Mobsters-On-Bike Tale
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Rain falls hard over a remote area where a mobster-on-the-run awaits instructions from a mysterious woman; the camera captures the dazzling, stylish and…
Rain falls hard over a remote area where a mobster-on-the-run awaits instructions from a mysterious woman; the camera captures the dazzling, stylish and inventive visions of director Diao Yinan as he opens this action-packed thriller demonstrating how poetically he conceives a scene. Bleeding, hurt and wanted, Zenong has wrongly shot a cop, while on a competition with other gangster families, in order to claim control over the drug/theft most profitable streets. Aiai is a hustler and "bath lover"- a Chinese modern version of prostitution- who is working on both sides, struggling to survive as a mediatior on the bloodshed war between the gangsters' families and the police seeking to avenge their colleague. As they wait for their next move, they both narrate in flashbacks the circumnstances prior, when the street war sparkled a revolution on the local criminal business. An electrifying, fast-paced, ultra violent and seductive neo-noir thriller, Yinan obviously understands of visual techniques, conceiving each frame as a piece of art in movement, with lyrical, glamorous observations on the details, on the silent moments embracing the unexpected, the subtle eroticism, the rain, the neon lights on the roads, but most impressively how he extracts poetry from the bloody confrontations and its uncontrollable shootings. Addressing male rivalry and dominance, pride and greed, it's a riveting, visually-arresting and superbly crafted mobster-on-bikes tale.
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no seeds :'(