Cheng feng po lang (2017)

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Siskoid
Ok, I'm not sure why the English title is Duckweed (the Chinese title translates as Ride the Winds, Break the Waves), but I let myself be completely charmed by this riff on Back to the Future. Director Han Han returns to a race car driver protagonist (after Pegasus), this one sent back in time after an accident to not so much change history as understand it and come to terms with it. Eddie Peng's character goes back to 1998 (there's some chuckles to be had with the retro here) and becomes friends with his estranged dad, gets to meet the mother he never knew, and get up to some amusing street gang action. Han knows how to have, not just with the car stuff, but with stylistic flourishes as well. Though it's played for laughs, the dad's inability to correctly predict the future fits perfectly with the older man he's become, and there's some poignancy to how Fate plays with all their lives. It gets a bit sentimental at the end - I would do away with the curtain call flashbacks - but not overly so given Peng's journey. I liked this a lot. 3 years 5 months ago