Tag: Liu Fengchao

Wings of Dread (万米危机, Ashton Chen Xiaolong & Qin Pengfei, 2026)

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Perhaps surprisingly, aeroplanes seem to be dangerous places in recent Chinese cinema. From the hardware failure of The Captain to Oxide Pang’s hijacking drama High Forces, something always seems to go seriously amiss when it comes to air travel. Streaming actioner Wings of Dread (万米危机, wàn mǐ wēijī) is the latest in this growing genre and once again carries a mildly patriotic message in praising the Chinese air police who are willing to put their lives on the line to ensure passenger safety.

Then again, former cop Chaoyang (Ashton Chen Xiaolong) may feel a little bit inferior after giving up his police career to become an aeroplane security officer in order to spend more time with his girlfriend, air stewardess Dong Lu (Nita), who also gave up her opportunity to work abroad. Dong Lu has evidently had enough of Chaoyang’s grumpy behaviour and moved out their flat, though he is carrying a ring he still hopes to give to her. Rushing to the airport in an attempt to convince her to move back in before her next flight, Chaoyang becomes distracted by a drug user and decides to take down their entire gang first. From a certain point of view, his priorities may be all wrong, though the main problem in the relationship seems to be that Chaoyang expects Dong Lu to be in stewardess mode all the time by being constantly cheerful and treating him like a prince without seeing her as a real person who needs to be able to switch off and relax after a long shift.

This relationship issue is never resolved in a concrete way but only through the action movie trope of Chaoyang’s proving his heroism by saving Dong Lu when the plane they’re both on after he flew to her destination to win her back is hijacked by a criminal gang. One of China’s most wanted has been arrested in a fictional South East Asian nation and is being escorted back to the mainland. Among the passengers, there are both undercover members of the gang planning to break him out and plain-clothes security officers ready to deal with any trouble. Slightly confusingly, the gang have also brought a bomb and are threatening to blow everyone up if the captain doesn’t fly to their chosen destination, which at the very least seems counterproductive and a little bit reckless on behalf of the crooks.

That the bomb got on board along with a lot of 3D printed plastic guns can be attributed to lax security procedures at the airport in the fictitious South East Asian nation, but the point is that this plane is well protected by Chinese air police. Villain Paquet (Iko Uwais) sneers that Chinese police are “pathetic”, which proves quite irritating to Chaoyang who immediately bounces back to win the fight and prove that they are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure passengers reach home safely even at the cost of their own lives. The passengers too are unusually co-operative after being made aware of the bomb threat, giving up their bags to form a barrier and even joining in with the final fight against the bad guys. 

Qin, who is known for his skill in shooting action sequences in confined spaces, does some of his finest work in a fight between a female officer and gang member set entirely within a toilet cubicle, while otherwise making full use of the environment as passengers grab tray tables to attack the hijackers who equally throw opponents over shelving units and smash their heads into arm rests. Casting top international action star Iko Uwais as the villain adds a degree of prestige unusual for a streaming film, though choosing to dub his voice seems like an odd decision, especially as all his dialogue is in English. Nevertheless, the film is impressively put together and largely transcends its streaming origins in scope and ambition despite the looseness of its plot and occasionally awkward attempts at humour. 

Wings of Dread screens 21st August as part of Big Bad Film Fest.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Butcher’s Blade (手遮天, Liu Wenpu, 2026)

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Laws are meaningless if no one’s prepared to enforce them. According to the opening titles of The Butcher’s Blade (手遮天, shǒu zhē tiān), the Song had a complicated criminal code with lots of rules to be followed. However, in the real world, they only really apply to certain people. Xue Buyi (Liu Fengchao) has been a constable for 10 years but has become a bitter, broken man who feels himself to be a coward for remaining complicit with this corrupt regime.

A courtesan reports the local coffin maker for rape and violence having slashed her face and thereby not just physically and psychologically harmed her, but destroyed her livelihood. The courtesans complain they’ve reported him before and that no one helps them because they’re not the sort of people who matter in this world. Buyi announces he’ll get them justice and does indeed arrest the coffin maker, but the villagers then turn against him. The coffin maker is well connected and Buyi’s boss lets him go. The courtesans are unsurprised but disappointed, while Buyi’s self-loathing only deepens. His pride and masculinity are further eroded when he tries to help a woman selling noodles that he’s fond of fend off an exploitative landlord who’s been upping the rent in an attempt to coerce her into a sexual relationship. Wei simply asks him for the money instead, but Buyi has nary a penny to his name. Deliberately humiliating him, Wei makes Buyi drink flasks of soy sauce in exchange for reducing Erniang’s (Gao Weiman) debt which Buyi does until Erniang puts a stop to it.

Given all that, it’s easy to see why he might turn to the dark side and allow this world to remake him in its image. The war inside him is between his upbringing as a pupil of Eagle Hall, a brutal police training facility designed to churn out thugs who heartlessly carry out the will of the powers that be, and his natural compassion which baulks at the brutal torture and murder expected of him as a law enforcement official. Buyi is directly contrasted with former colleague Li Zhen (Yuan Fufu) who is keen to get him back on side and working for Eagle Hall, while Buyi struggles with himself over the degree of moral comprise he’s comfortable accepting to be one of Huang’s elite policemen. By remaining complicit, he hopes he can get the money to save Erniang’s noodle stall and protect her from Wei, but she quite obviously can’t stand what Buyi is becoming and didn’t envisage having brutal policemen as her main clientele.

There seems to be a subversive allusion to the present day in the world that surrounds Buyi which is filled with corrupt officials and supported by a rotten regime that policemen like him prop up with thuggish authoritarianism, serving the interests of the powerful over those of the people. Buyi finds himself at the centre of conspiracy when he takes a job guarding government funds intended for disaster relief in the hope of getting extra money to help Erniang only to be accused of robbing the place himself. Recruited by former mentor Huang (Chunyu Shanshan), he witnesses his indifference to the disaster victims who have largely fallen into exploitation at the hands of corrupt landowner Wei. Huang plans to sacrifice them for his own personal gain by framing them as a revolutionary army led by a rival official seeking to overturn the regime which he will then heroically surpress. 

Buyi, however, has to decide whether he can really continue going along with all this or rise up to resist it. Liu Wenpu frames Buyi’s intervention in heroic terms in which he’s surrounded by an eerie blue glow and the sound of firecrackers as he finally decides that he can’t let people like Huang continue with their authoritarianism and indifference towards the welfare of the people. His rebellion, however, seems to make himself something of an outlaw condemned to a life of wandering while ultimately pointless. Huang was just one many and now others are trying to use his fate as a means of advancing their own position. The elegantly choreographed fight scenes take on a symbolic quality as Buyi progresses towards his showdown with Huang while battling himself and his inner conflict, torn between the what it takes to succeed in a world as corrupt as this and his essential humanity before finally coming down on the side of justice for all rather than continuing to serve the interests of an exploitative elite.

The Butcher’s Blade is released on Digital in the US on May 4 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance (目中无人2, Yang Bingjia, 2024)

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The wandering swordsman returns but this time to a world much more in disarray than when we last left it in the sequel to the surprise hit streaming movie An Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman, An Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance (目中无人2, mùzhōngwúrén 2). Less origin story than endgame, the film finds bounty hunter Cheng Yi living in another dusty town and working for Youzhou Prefecture to bring in wanted criminals dead or alive but finally forced into the role of protector for a little girl dead set on vengeance against this world.

Richer in scope and ambition, this time around we’re given a little more backstory about the former lieutenant who is now using his martial skills to enact justice in an otherwise lawless society if only when he’s paid to do so. One of his targets turns out to be a man who served under him in the war and is disillusioned about its aftermath. “What did we gain in the end?” he asks, justifying himself that he may have killed a few people and taken some money but he was only claiming what he was owed. The argument doesn’t wash with Cheng Yi, but the war also took his sight from him and he too is a disillusioned exile from his home in Chang’an living a nihilistic life of drink of killing on the behalf of a distant and compromised authority. 

His wilful isolation may be why he is not originally motivated to help the orphan little girl Xiaoyu (Yang Enyou) who says her mother starved to death during their escape. Xiaoyu had tried to protect her little brother who seemed to be mute only to see him trampled beneath the hooves of a debauched nobleman who had just murdered an entire family because they had dared to tell on him to his father. The family had been planning to flee at dawn but Li Jiulang (Huang Tao) got there first. Xiaoyu witnessed his crime after sneaking in to steal the bread they were baking and was then freely given to her by a young woman Li later killed, further stirring her desire for revenge. Cheng Yi ends up saving her from Li on two separate occasions, though the second time it isn’t overly clear whether it was intentional or a drunken coincidence. Nevertheless, he continues to counsel her against pursuing her revenge, especially towards a man like Li who is wealthy and connected and has no compunctions about killing children. 

Li is also seen to abuse drugs and have a sadistic streak though no real explanation is given for his cruelty save that he is evil and has enough money and power to do as he pleases. No one except the little girl is going to put a bounty out on him, as she naively tries to do by selling her brother’s silver whistle to get a poster mocked up though Li simply offers a double bounty on her and it seems plenty are desperate enough to consider killing a defenceless girl to get their hands on it. Perhaps it’s this that eventually moves Cheng Yi’s heart as she continues to insist on an impossible justice even at the cost of her own life. Like him, she no longer has any family nor any place to call home and is displaced within the chaos of late Tang. Through bonding with her, he begins to rediscover his humanity and considers leaving the world of the bounty hunter behind to become an “ordinary person” in Chang’an to raise her away from this nihilistic way of life.

Building on the success of the first film, Yang Bingjia makes the most of an increased production budget to fully recreate the atmosphere of a bustling frontier town while continuing the Western influence as Cheng Yi hunts down wrongdoers in an otherwise lawless place. The connection between the cynical swordsman and his tiny charge has genuine poignancy as he continues to caution her against the path of revenge, reminding her that it is a continuous cycle and one act of vengeance merely sets another in motion, yet finally deciding that he must teach her what he knows anyway because like him she has no other way to live. Still, what he envisions for her is a peaceful life in Chang’an, far away from the chaos of the frontiers in a world that may not quite exist anymore but may yet come again if not, perhaps, for all.

Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance is released in the US on Digital, Blu-ray & DVD March 4 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)