Oh, how the mighty have fallen! I wrote the same thing when I reviewed Zhang Yimou/張藝謀’s film CLIFF WALKERS back in 2021. The once-revered (outside of China, at any rate) filmmaker who gave us such classics as RED SORGHUM, JU DOU and RAISE THE RED LANTERN, is now deep in the employ of the Chinese propagandists who have turned that country’s film industry into a conduit for educating the masses on all sorts of patriotic matters. With his latest film, ARTICLE 20, Zhang turns his lens towards the legal statute of “justifiable defence”.

Han Ming (Lei Jiayin/雷佳音, CLIFF WALKERS; THE WANDERING EARTH) is a middle-aged prosecutor whose life has become a lot more complicated since he was seconded to the municipal prosecutor’s office. He and his co-worker, Lü Lingling (Gao Ye/高葉), who is an old flame of his, are under pressure from all sides to close a couple of cases involving disputes that resulted in homicide. While this is going on, his teenaged son comes to the aid of a schoolmate who is being bullied by the son of an Education Department official. After the teen breaks the bully’s nose, the civil servant wants Han’s son to publicly apologize or face legal consequences that could jeopardize his chances of getting into a good university. Unlike Han, who just wants this distraction to quietly go away, his wife, Li Maojuan (Ma Li/馬麗), fiercely supports her son and her passion only serves to escalate the situation.

I’ll be very generous and say that there’s an interesting premise here. Unfortunately, it’s buried under a comedic subplot involving Han and his wife that is not just completely unnecessary, it also tacks on an extra hour to the film’s 141-minute runtime. While my audience found the humour to be right up their alley, my Western colleague and I sat there thinking that there’s clearly a cultural divide going on. The banter between all the characters is loud, fast and furious with actors often talking over each other. As a result, my eyes rarely left the bottom of the screen as I speed read the subtitles as they flew by.

Zhang not only throws some comedy in with the drama, there are also a few scenes that are supposed to elicit tears from the audience as we’re meant to mull over the injustice of how Article 20 is being, or not being, applied. (Basically, no matter what the circumstance, the wounding party is always the guilty party.) He does that by cranking up the melodramatic music to 11. It’s the kind of ham-fisted direction we would expect from a shlocky or less-experienced filmmaker. Even that, though, is not the movie’s pièce de resistance. The climax is a ten-minute, highly emotional diatribe delivered by Han on how Article 20 is being and should be applied. It is capped off with a standing ovation from his colleagues in the Procuratorate, a word that I must admit having never heard of until I watched this movie. It’s enough to make you want to stand up and sing the March of the Volunteers.

ARTICLE 20 opens in Hong Kong on Thursday (April 18th). It’s easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen so far this year. I’m clearly not patriotic enough. 

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