The Troubleshooters

Beijing at the end of the eighties. Three young men, Yu Guan, Ma Qing and Yang Zhong, set up a company that will take on a customer's trouble for a fee. They absorb the scolding meant for a husband, they take the blame for someone else, they stage a full awards ceremony for a writer nobody reads. Adapted from Wang Shuo's 1987 novel, it effectively opened the vein that Chinese cinema came to call urban comedy. Mi Jiashan cuts in rock songs, fashion shows and disco sequences, and what comes out shows the new money of the reform era and its new emptiness at the same time. Ge You, Zhang Guoli and Liang Tian play the three.