Summer Detective

Chaoying is a farmer who has sold his cattle and retired; he decides to do up his house. Shuhe, a villager helping with the work, is found badly hurt at the roadside one day, struck by a vehicle that drove on. The police get nowhere. Chaoying and his friend Shuangzi start an investigation of their own. Neither of them has any authority or any idea what they are doing. Lei Xu's Chinese film carries the shape of a detective story into village life. Most of the cast are not professional actors. The telling draws its humour from the ineptitude of two old men without mocking them. The real subject is that nobody will lift a finger for a man with no money for the hospital. The tone is warm and the ending bitter.