Cliff Walkers (2021)
Directed by Zhang Yimou
In the puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, four Communist party special agents, after returning to China, embark on a secret mission. Sold out by a traitor, the team find themselves surrounded by threats on all sides.
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3 films that influenced Cliff Walkers
What critics say influenced Cliff Walkers
Having famously mastered wuxia tropes with Hero (2002) and House Of Flying Daggers (2004), the venerable Fifth Generation director proves just as adept when it comes to the espionage thriller, somehow marshaling almost every conceivable stock element into a reassuringly familiar whole.
Then, at the beginning of this century, he turned his attention to lavish, color-coordinated spectacle: Hero , House Of Flying Daggers , the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.
The creator of such visually striking films as Hero , House of Flying Daggers , and Shadow , Zhang moves from the martial arts (or “wuxia”) genre and delivers an intriguing, if not somewhat convoluted, espionage thriller for his 25th feature film.
Zhang Yimou will perhaps always be known for his colorful wuxia martial arts films, such as House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and 2018’s double-identity film Shadow.
It’s a change of tone for the director of Shadow , House Of Flying Daggers and Hero , who also helmed Matt Damon-starrer The Great Wall in 2016.
The Chinese filmmaker's 1988 debut Red Sorghum won Berlinale's Golden Bear, 1991's Raise the Red Lantern remains stunning on multiple levels, and 2002's Hero, 2004's House of Flying Daggers and 2018's Shadow remain dazzling examples of the wuxia genre at its finest.
He’s alternated those with lavish action epics including the West-leaning Flowers of War and The Great Wall (which respectively starred Christian Bale and Matt Damon).
Inevitably, like many an international auteur, he’d run into rocky territory utilizing Western stars, like Christian Bale in The Flowers of War (2011) and then ruin his studio reputation on the back of Matt Damon in 2016’s The Great Wall (despite being a commercial success overseas).
2016's Matt Damon-starring The Great Wall might've threatened to prove otherwise, but when Zhang Yimou makes a movie, it usually demands attention.
Though there are moments of intensity (fisticuffs, shoot-outs, escapes, and captures befitting a wartime spy thriller), this is not The Great Wall (2016), which relied so heavily on spectacle that it’s nothing more than frivolous fare.
He may have spent his career wildly hopping genres, from historical melodrama ( Raise the Red Lantern ) to wuxia epic ( Hero ) to gangster flick ( Shanghai Triad ) to Coen brothers remake ( A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop ) to however you would classify The Great Wall but, no matter what mode he’s working in, you can expect grandeur from a Zhang Yimou film.
The unpredictable auteur behind "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Hero" but also "The Great Wall" delivers a spy yarn that's hard to pin down.
Unlike spy films like Red Sparrow , that focus on one or two protagonists, this is almost too democratic in the multiple agents it follows — there’s no time to develop any of their characters fully.