The Wild Goose Lake

2019 [CHINESE]

Action / Crime / Drama

14
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 67% · 81 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 67% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.7/10 10 8537 8.5K

Plot summary

A gangster ends up making a mistake that causes every gun on both sides of the law to point at him. While on the run, he comes across a mysterious woman who might get him out of trouble or make things worse.

Director

Yi'nan Diao Photo
Yi'nan Diao

Top cast

Chloe Maayan Photo
Chloe Maayan as Ping Ping
Jiahao Chang Photo
Jiahao Chang as Cat Eye
Jiazhuang Chang Photo
Jiazhuang Chang as Cat Ear
Zijie Chen Photo
Zijie Chen as ZhilieYang
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1019.75 MB
1280*672
Chinese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 3
2.05 GB
1920*1008
Chinese 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 11

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by roger-99-171599 8 / 10

Fast Paced, Visually Arresting Mobsters-On-Bike Tale

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.
Reviewed by Vartiainen 6 / 10

How far can you run?

Hu Ge plays Zhou Zenong, an ex-con and a leader of a minor crime family mostly specializing in motorcycle thefts. Unfortunately, a quarrel with another crime family has him accidentally shoot a police officer, mistaking the man for one of his enemies. Now he's on the run and ends up near Wild Goose Lake, a lake resort known for its prostitutes. You can definitely disappear in a place like that. But does he manage to pull it off?The story revolves around Zhou and Liu Aiai (Gwei Lun-mei), one of the local prostitutes, whose pimp is a known associate of Zhou's. Liu is made to contact Zhou because she's not immediately known to the police, and the rest evolves from that.If I had to describe the style of the film, I'd say it's a weird mixture of John Woo and Kim Ki-duk. With more emphasis on Kim. It definitely wants to be a crime thriller, but it's very slow and thoughtful about it. The film has this serenity to it. People are in a rush, it's a tense situation, but there are still moments just to have a conversation or to get lost in your thoughts. Have a moment of introspection.Until the film decides it's time for the final action scene, when all bets are suddenly off. It's a jarring mixture to say the least, but I can't say I minded it.If I had to name one flaw, I'd say the plot is a touch meandering. The slow style works surprisingly well, but whenever the story needs to move forward, it takes a while to do so and jumps through a few hoops too many.Still, if you're looking for a Chinese crime drama, you could do a lot worse.
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