Tian zhu ding

One additional star for the topic that few has tried to film.

In about ten or twenty years, these 120 minutes of social depicting will be one of the very rare and precious visual stories for people to understand and entertain what is going on in the first ten years of the 21st century China. It offers a prospective with some interesting details that makes sense to the westerners or maybe its fellow countrymen in the future. But it doesn't really add up for the people living in China nowadays, or at least, the details are not enough.

Stories are too short that they can barely touch the real psychology that the Chinese laborers are having today. I'm not sure whether it is something that the director fails to do or he is not allowed to do. For example, there are lots of complexities existing between a complaining Shanxi miner and a mad murderer. Throughout the first story, the only real attempt Dahai, who has learned the laws and has close relatives living in the city, has made to disclose the corruption is a mail letter without a specific address. This is far away from the countless efforts that a Chinese miner would make before he explode himself with the illegal riches. To me, the efforts, the struggles, and the final desperate in Dahai's mind are the most interesting parts of the story. However, nothing really happens in the movie. The result is that, Dahai seems more like a legendary cowboy coming from a classic American western movie than a struggling Chinese worker who has relatives to care about.

It touches the social issues we are all witnessing in China today, it is entertaining and somewhat heroic, but it fails to restore the story into reality, let alone into a provoking level.

Do not focus on the rate. The film is worth watching even if it could have been much better and some of the details in the scenario are clearly a fail beginning with the lack of coherence of the characters. In clear, it's hard to follow them and to understand them. A Touch of Sin turns out to be a hell of a lot of sins, of violence, of crimes and of desperation. During the film I hesitated between skepticism, bewilders or admiration for this rough and tough portrait of China through different stories that are not necessarily linked together. A touch of sin is about four characters in four different regions in China who are going through hard times, because of globalization, corruption or a closed system. All these things will lead them to crime, suicide and the metaphor of the collapse of the system. It is always better to make a critic out of a movie you have fancied but not all of it is to throw away, and I would recommend to watch that movie for its originality and the ambitious scenario of the director. In short it was a great project and maybe some mistakes could have been avoided, but in the end it's indeed an interesting director to follow in the upcoming years.

As always with portmanteau films, I found the quality of these four tales (or tellings) varies quite a lot, as does one's sympathy or empathy for the characters. As such, as others have commented, I thought that the rest of the film did not match up to the first quarter. However, the other three parts were not *bad*, and for me added to the overall tone of societal bleakness. I've made brief visits to China but would in no way say that qualifies me to judge how "realistic" a picture this is, despite the factual bases of the component stories. However, as we increasingly observe and debate the effect of China's actions on the wider global stage, this film perhaps provides helpful context, if this is the domestic backdrop...

after finally watching A Touch Of Sin this evening at ACMI with some friends, it's left me stuck in 2 worlds - missing Jia Zhang-Ke's meditative & lyrical work of the past & liking the new approach to these social wrongs in a more brutal / violent / cynical manner...

first thoughts were quite similar to when i watched another master film maker Kim Ki-Duk's "Pieta" which after further digestion, thought & reading became my fave film of 2013 - both films show violence in a heavy way but still portray it in a meditative & profound manner, using symbolic moments to remind the audience about these issues...

in hindsight i really like this film and where Jia is going with his approach... considering this is a narrative driven film over his powerful and thought provoking documentaries, all the killings were based on real events the director read in blogs... the film is a vessel to show these separate events as one about alienation, the varying classes in china & corruption / political flaws...

here's a good article from Slant which covers a lot of how i feel towards the films - 8/10

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/a-touch-of-sin

Beautiful movie about living at the bottom of the economic class may lead to random violent acts of aggression - as your only way of releasing the anger inside - , it was close but didn't quite make it ..

Story could have been told more visually , with less but useful dialogue , as the cinematography and beauty within the scenes are amazing . But like most art-houses the story doesn't fully add up . -----------------------------------------------------

Part 1: A man living in a village getting drained by the coal mine industry reaches his ultimate limit - and takes out everyone involved in the corporate scandal 8/10

Part 2: A motorcyclist with an excitement to gun violence ; sibling in an aging family, he "robs" people as his way of making a living 5/10

Part 3: A woman is having an affair with a married man but calls it quits for fear it'll ruin her image . Being false accused for being a slut , she makes a drastic decision. 6.5/10

Part 4: A kid gets blamed for injuring a coworker and has to pay his debt through checks for the next 100 days . He calls quits instead and decides to fall in love with a sex worker during his free time . When his life reaches a dead end he decides to end it there . 7.5/10

Overall 7/10 6/10 Script 9/10 Level of Violence 11/10 Violence Shock Value (Realism of Violence) 100/10 Beauty of the Cinematography