Shou yi ren

My Dear Liar is definitely not Da Peng's finest work, but it is still distinctively his. A not so funny comedy but a heartfelt love story that is elevated by the brilliant work by Liu Yan. Never would I thought that she is able to deliver such a tantalizing performance, morphing herself into a character that is so believable.

Absurdity of black humor comedy obsessive, think the punchline is higher sense of these were no acosmia joke amused don't don't of, the scene plot and sometimes warm and sometimes dark, the mood also follow ups and downs, naturally compact plot let you call, close range shots and chongqing dialect is undoubtedly a major highlight of the film, when the actors online + score was just right, the subject has a realistic meaning, you will sigh is more than two hours of visual feast. This is a heavy topic, through the packaging of black humor, the life of the little people forced to the last lamenting the real meaning of true love than money jumped on the paper.

This is the one which combined with the evilest thinking and the most heart-touched spirit. I have to commit there are still some flaws in the film, but it is an undoubted good movie.

This movie essentially begins with a man by the name of "Zhong Zhenjian" (Zixian Zhang) learning that an investigation has just been started which will probably identify him as one of the people responsible for embezzling a huge sum of money from the financial institution where he works. That said, his only chance to avoid going to prison is to somehow replace the stolen money within a few days' time. The problem is, he doesn't have the money. So, in a state of complete panic, he tries to manipulate a friend named "Wu Hai" (Chengpeng Dong) into helping him with an insurance scam that would not only resolve his current situation, but also give Wu Hai the money he desperately needs for his sick child "Yoyo" (Shaobo Zhang). That being said, the plan calls for Wu Hai to marry a woman, get her name on an insurance document--and then turn around and kill her in a supposed accident. What they don't count on, however, is that the woman they choose to kill in the accident by the name of "Yue Miaomiao" (Yan Liu) presents her own set of unique problems which neither of them could have ever possibly imagined. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this movie started off rather slow and, just when it finally started to get interesting, fizzled out and ended with a thud. That being said, while I'm not really sure what the director (Ao Shen) was trying to achieve, what I do know is that this film wasn't nearly as entertaining as it should have been. To that effect, I honestly cannot rate it any higher than I have. Average.

Well, the synopsis for "Shou Yi Ren" (aka "My Dear Liar") sounded interesting, and with it being an Asian movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I had to sit down and watch it.

Writer and director Ao Shen failed to concoct a script and storyline that fell into my liking here. I have to admit that I didn't really grasp the concept of the script as it unfolded on the screen. It felt random, cluttered and just lacking a cohesive and comprehendible red thread throughout the course of the nearly two hours that it ran for. And the fact that the character gallery was rather one-dimensional didn't really help to sell the movie either.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Shou Yi Ren", but I have to say that I wasn't overly impressed. Not because the acting performances were bad, but because the character gallery had about as much appeal as watching grass grow. Writer Ao Shen really dropped the ball here, and the Yue Miaomiao (played by Yan Liu) character was seriously one of the most dislikable characters I have seen on the screen in a long, long time.

"Shou Yi Ren" was not a movie that entertained me, and this is definitely not a movie that I would recommend to fans of the Asian cinema to waste 118 minutes on watching. Some of us suffered through this, so you don't have to. You're welcome.

My rating of "Shou Yi Ren" lands on a generous two out of ten stars, given the production value.