Assassin in Red (2021)

The pen is mightier than the sword.

This is a very entertaining action fantasy movie with absolutely stunning world building and production design. Unlike this year's more pretentious Dream of Eternity, this is much more than a showy demonstration of cinematic pyrotechnics. This production truly breathes life into the absolutely amazing animations and convincingly fuses them with live actors who are actually in the moment and evoke a sense of imminent peril. This drama spent two years in post production and it is clear that a lot of care went into the visual effects that sweeps one into an addictive, thrilling virtual reality fantasy game world.

There are two main plot lines to this action loaded story within a story, the first takes place in the real world and the second in a fantasy world. The spectacular Lei Jiayin plays Guan Ning, a distraught father who is searching desperately for his daughter who went missing six years ago. He is tasked to assassinate an online novelist Kongwen who is writing a fantasy novel about a young warrior's quest to bring down an evil overlord Redmane. At the sweep of a pen that is mightier than the sword, the two plot threads fuse into an epic, action packed showdown. What stands out is the crazy, creative energy in the action sequences and how they snuck in some really wild, ingenious and unconventional moves that wowed me. I absolutely loved Guan Ning's almost superhuman ability to throw rocks, that was incredibly entertaining to watch.

Despite the intense action orientation, the narrative is not secondary to the action and the humanity at its core shines through as a result of superb acting by Lei Jiayin, Dong Zijian (who plays Kongwen) and the very talented Yu Hewei. This is a cast you can't go wrong with... except for the insipid Yang Mi, whose character was not necessary to the plot and her wimpy voice yet again had me wishing they dubbed her. I don't know why Lu Yang always makes such terrible casting choices for his female characters.

While it doesn't dot every i or cross every t; the backstories of some characters could be tighter, there are minor plot holes and logic flaws in the real world antagonists, overall it is a very cool story that broadly hangs together. This movie takes a bold swipe at both China's communist past and capitalist present - it is very obvious the major corporation with the Aladdin's lamp logo in the present plot is Alibaba and Redmane's red army represents the Red Guards in the fantasy plot.

This is a great way to indulge in two hours of pure escapism. I give it 8.5.

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I was stunned by the amazing CG!

I was lucky enough to see this at the cinemas on the first day of the lunar new year and was glad I went to see it on the big screen!

With a very unique storyline, it brings together the modern day world and a written fantasy world through Kong Wen's story writing. I definitely get "death note" vibes from this movie - from the monsters and I was mostly amazed at how real and in-depth the CG was. The movie kept me entertained and as non-sichuan dialect speaker, I found myself needing to read the subs (there's a great amount of sichuan dialect spoken in this movie!)

Overall, a great movie to watch for this lunar new year!

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