From its initial setup, there’s quite a lot to like about Ren Pengyuan’s newest thriller A or B, from its clever premise, well-established stakes and even the cinematography is pretty nice – it’s just a shame that this movie assumes we’ve never seen any other thriller before in our lives.
What begins as a pretty original spin on the subgenre of “Man forced to make consequential decisions” (which includes Cheap Thrills, Would You Rather? and 13 Sins), unfortunately descends into a pretty predictable piece of disposable junk. It’s not only its script, but even the way the camera tells a story that goes from interesting to generic, and while its social commentary is on the right path, it’s nothing we haven’t seen or heard before.
Not An Easy Choice
On the surface, Zhong Xiaonian (Xu Zheng) appears to have it all – he’s the majorly successful CEO of his own investment firm, incredibly wealthy and he currently lives in a secluded mansion with his childhood sweetheart Wei Simeng (Wang Likun).
Just one look underneath the surface quickly paints a different picture though – Xiaonian is actually on the brink of divorce, his wealth has been accumulated by a long history of fraud and money laundering, his business partners are scheming to topple his empire and most of his ill-obtained earnings sit within an encoded USB drive that’s hidden in a safe, which is not exactly a good indication of ‘legal tender’.
Just when things couldn’t get any worse for the dodgy investor, he awakens one morning to find himself completely trapped within his own bedroom. A collage of wood logs cover his windows, whilst his key-activated doors remain securely locked and of course, no reception on his phone. This claustrophobic situation is exasperated when the faint echo of a walkie talkie can be heard, which kicks off this very Saw-like mind-game, when an anonymous voice calls out to the kidnapped man.
The unseen voice invites Xiaonian to a game, the titular A or B. The rules are simple: At every morning at 9:30am for the next 5 days, the voice is going to give him a choice of 2 secrets, one which he must pick to release to the public. Like most people would think, the captured millionaire simply assumes it’s an elaborate prank, when he is given the choice of declaring his upcoming divorce or revealing his long history of tax evasion. When he fails to pick either one, both are simultaneously revealed, which causes chaos for Xiaonian, his company and the media who are quick to jump on the bizarre event – revealing this game to be very real indeed.
A Departure From What Was Working
It’s a neat idea, a psychological thriller where one person’s past misdeeds have to be selectively confessed to a ravenous corporate and media landscape, a modern platform that dissects any element of a high profile celebrity’s private life (just look at the state of TMZ), but where A or B loses itself is when it completely abandons this premise very early on.
It’s only after the 2nd round of questioning that Xiaonian manages to escape his confinements, through a pretty intelligently executed escape plan that involves the creative combination of a hairdryer and a coat hanger to make a makeshift heat gun, which feels reminiscent of the clever tactics of Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character from 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Forced to become a hidden fugitive, Xiaonian teams up with an aspiring financial news reporter Tian Yu (Duan Bowen) and his own wife as they try to find out who’s ruining his life and why. For anybody who has had the pleasure of ever watching Johnnie To’s 1999 hit film Running Out of Time will find some real plot similarities here, including the identity of the culprit and the final denouement.
For those who haven’t, you will have no trouble working out what’s really going on pretty early, as it’s insultingly obvious who is conducting this technological symphony. Those who like to track plot holes and the real life practicality of movies are bound to have a field day here, from the mysterious antagonist’s god-like ability to have high definition video and audio equipment at every possible location, down to the convenience of how everything seems to fall in line with the invisible enemy’s avenging desires.
Cinematographer Liu Yizeng gets to have some moments of intermittent inventiveness, employing a variety of split screens, dutch angles, split diopters and even a segment done in a first person-found footage style to great effect, but this sense of visual creativeness lasts just as long as the script’s sense of genuine imagination done as well, a screenplay penned by the director himself.
Another questionable section of Ren Pengyuan’s writing is his decision to move all of the payoffs and narrative climaxes into a series of thumbnail-sized scenes within the ending credits, including a post-script title card that fully details the fate of most of the established characters, describing resolutions that would’ve been nice to see illustrated on-screen.
A Or B: Conclusion
Ren Pengyuan ‘s A or B attempts to deliver a cinematic middle-finger to the corrupt elite whose individual pursuits of absurd wealth have caused harm to so many others, but any form of ridicule has been softened by an unfocused script that never quite knows what it wants to say about the Chinese high-class aristocracy.
There are flashes of genuine artistic ingenuity, but not enough to cover the frequent amount of glaring plot holes, inconsistent character decisions and general implausibility of the whole scenario. It’s not a bad film, and it’s definitely a perfectly fine piece of watchable entertainment, it’s just not one that demands any urgent viewing.
Can you think of anymore films like A or B and Cheap Thrills?
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