Lethal Hostage

Set on the China and Myanmar border, the film starts ten years back. A man in the drug trade takes the ten-year-old daughter of a dentist he works with across the border and raises her there. Years later the two of them are living as husband and wife, and he decides to get out of the business after one last job so that life can continue. The police, old scores and the girl's father are all closing in at once. Cheng Er tells it in chapters, jumping the timeline back and forth. The film's framing of this relationship as a love story sits on contested ground; what it actually depicts is a child abducted and made dependent. Sun Honglei's quiet, cold performance is its strongest element.