Li and his family are excited when teenage daughter PingPing is accepted to an elite school, more expensive than they can really afford but still a great chance for the family. They don't know that a fellow student is a very entitled bully, who drugs PingPing's drink at a social gathering and films himself raping her; they also don't know that this bully is the son of the police chief of the city. When the boy tries to blackmail Pingping into further humiliation, her mother trails them and, in the ensuing confusion, mother and daughter kill the boy. They manage to bring his body back to their home by the cemetery, unfortunately seen by the 6-year-old girl in the family. And so starts a cat and mouse tale: the police chief wants, naturally, to find her son; one of her lieutenants has had it in for Li for ages, and is determined to pin the crime on him with no evidence, and Li knows how to create a reality that creates an alibi, along with the help of myriad friends and neighbours. Who's version of the truth will win out, after all is said and done?
What's great about this film is that, yes, the family is the culprit, but yes, the boy deserves his fate - and whatever his parents feels about it, they must know that too. The most interesting character to me was the cop who hated, hated Li, for apparently no reason; he was the driving force behind the persecution of this family and yet we never really know why. In the end, it's quite puzzling, but essentially, on both sides of the equation (minus the bad cop), you understand why each person did what they did. I can't say I liked the film, because of its content generally, but I certainly respect its ambivalence. Recommended.
