A re-make of the Indian/Malaysian film Drishyam, this Chinese
box-office blockbuster is a Hollywood-esque cat-and-mouse crime
thriller. Working family man and self-described movie-geek Li (Xiao
Yang) is thrown into a battle of wits with the law after his daughter
accidentally kills, and his wife hurriedly buries, a fellow student who
had sexually molested her. The dead boy’s father is an ambitious
politician, and his mother (Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen) is La Wen, a steely
eyed, morally corrupt police chief. Utilizing his encyclopedic knowledge
of crime cinema, Li concocts a complicated alibi but for La Wen, the
crime is personal, and she smells a coverup. An inventive twisty-plotted
tale of blackmail, murder and justice and the two families caught up in
the deadly game.
