Let the Bullets Fly

Sichuan in the 1920s. A bandit holds up the train of a man who has bought himself a governorship and decides to take his place. In the town he reaches, the real power belongs to a local usurer. A verbal duel begins between three parties: who is deceiving whom, who anyone actually is, and where the money goes. The subject is not banditry but authority being nothing more than performance. When the bandit in the governor's clothes refuses to tax the population, the town's order breaks down; the film shows power resting on habit rather than consent. The form is fast and talkative. The dialogue is almost continuous and runs on double meanings, so watching it with subtitles means missing part of the film. The action is exaggerated and deliberately showy. It was a large commercial success in China and one of the highest-grossing domestic films of its period. Its political references were argued over at length inside the country; it is regarded as a text that passed the censor while carrying readings in plain sight. Jiang Wen directs and plays the bandit, Chow Yun-Fat the usurer and Ge You the false governor. Who it is for: viewers who like fast dialogue, black humour and genre mixing. Who it is not for: anyone who will struggle to keep up; the plot is crowded and information goes by quickly.