Something to watch tonight: Thursday 13 February

Cliff Walkers (Zhang, 2021)

It’s turn­ing into “Spy Week” here at F&S, as we show­case anoth­er title filled with double-agents, trait­ors and moles.

Boutique Australian phys­ic­al media label Imprint recently launched a sub-brand called Imprint Asia in which they show­case hard-to-find con­tent from China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Some are older (Takeshi Kitano’s 2003 reboot of Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman) and some are very recent (the 2023 sequel to the Chinese smash hit, The Wandering Earth II).

Cliff Walkers was an abso­lute smash in China, win­ning the Golden Rooster (the domest­ic Best Picture award) and becom­ing the Chinese nom­in­ee for the Best International Feature Oscar.

It’s dir­ec­ted by legendary film­maker Zhang Yimou, a fest­iv­al fave from the days of Red Sorghum (1988), Ju Dou (1990) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) but who has more recently used his eld­er states­man status to make some abso­lute block­busters – Shadow (2019) was “a styl­ish and oper­at­ic mar­tial arts epic” accord­ing to this crit­ic.

In Cliff Walkers, a quar­tet of Chinese Communist Party agents para­chutes into the pup­pet state of Manchukuo, con­trolled by Japan after they invaded in 1931. It’s where The Last Emperor, Pu Yi, was nom­in­ally head of state and it’s a fas­cin­at­ing place at a fas­cin­at­ing time in history.

The spies are on a mis­sion to find evid­ence of, and sub­sequently reveal, details of Japanese atro­cit­ies in the region but they soon dis­cov­er that there are double-agents and trait­ors everywhere.

They make it to the city of Harbin where I had to pause for a moment so I could learn why all the sig­nage was in Chinese and Russian. It turns out that Harbin was on the main train line between China and Russia and there­fore a major trade route. Our her­oes have been trained for this mis­sion for years by the Soviet Union but, clearly, they would not have made it into the ter­rit­ory the tra­di­tion­al way.

This is a big budget, hand­somely put togeth­er, action and intrigue epic. I found it hard to keep up with who was who and who was on what side – char­ac­ters would be in street clothes work­ing for the res­ist­ance one minute and in full uni­form at secur­ity headquar­ters the next – but that con­fu­sion and mys­tery mir­rors how the char­ac­ters must have been feeling.

This is such a power­fully evoc­at­ive peri­od in Chinese his­tory, and a story of these “her­oes of the revolu­tion” is cer­tainly one that meets with the approv­al of the CCP régime, but the action is expertly cho­reo­graphed and the snowy pro­duc­tion val­ues are out of sight.

Where to watch Cliff Walkers

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Worldwide: On Blu-ray Disc from Imprint Asia

Aotearoa: Not cur­rently avail­able to stream

Australia: Not cur­rently avail­able to stream

Canada: Streaming on Asian Crush

Ireland: Not cur­rently avail­able to stream

India: Not cur­rently avail­able to stream

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Asian Crush and Freevee

UK: Not cur­rently avail­able to stream