A World Without Thieves

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched A World Without Thieves a 2004 movie starring Andy Lau - same producers as The Banquet. Wow, really good. I have yet to see a movie with Andy Lau that was not a good story.

Andy and his girlfriend are thieves. They just heisted a BMW from an embassy or something, and drove it to Tibet to fence it (why Tibet? no reason except for plot as you’ll see). Along the way, girl gets second thoughts, she’s sick of their life and of Andy. Andy jokes with her. In Tibet she prays, ‘Just because I want to sincerely pray for once in my life.’ Meanwhile Andy is stealing cell phones and anything else his nimble fingers can get hold of. But at the same time, there’s a smart-looking babe who’s doing the same thing. Andy and babe bump shoulders, and he smiles and flirts with her.

Heading back (still in the car, or maybe it’s another one?) Andy and girlfriend get in a real fight. It ends up with her quitting him, and he leaves her stranded by the road in the middle of nowhere. There is no building or stream or tree within miles.

Now down this road comes a group of peasants on their beat-up bicycles. They are from a remote chinese village, and have been working to restore the temples – it’s a skill that is traditional to their village. One of them, a holy fool they call ‘Dumbo’ and who has no other name, wants to cash in his money to go back to the village to take a wife. As they pass the girl, Dumbo stops and gives her a ride to the next small town. They hit it off, and Dumbo gives her a talisman a lama gave him, that is said to quell the demons in one’s heart.

There Dumbo gets his money, a lot – 60,000 yuan. Now his boss tells him to wire the money back to home village, but Dumbo doesn’t want to, because the wire service will take 1% charge, and that’s enough to buy a donkey. ‘Better to give up 600 than lose all 60,000,’ the boss tells him. But Dumbo is stubborn and takes the cash. Dumbo that evening goes out in the fields to say good-bye to the wolves. Every new year’s the other workers have gone home, but Dumbo stayed, with only these wolves for company, and he talks to them.

They see him off at the train station, and Dumbo, still pissed, shouts, ‘Hey! who’s going to take my 60,000? Are any thieves here?’

Of course Andy and his girl are there – Andy has caught up to her and apologized in the station. The sharp looking babe thief is there too, along with her leader, Uncle Li, and his whole team of robbers.

The girl makes it her mission to protect Dumbo from all the ‘wolves’ on the train who would rob him. Andy tags along, mocking her, mocking Dumbo, too. Andy is no saint here.

So that’s act 1: Everybody is now on the train for a few days, Uncle Li’s crew out to steal the money, the girl to defend it, and Andy helping the girl, though he’d love to take the money too. The way Andy sees it, he’s only doing Dumbo a favor, it’s not right to be ignorant, Dumbo would be better off wiser and not so trusting.

Andy crosses swords (well not swords literally, more sleight-of-hand and small flashy moves like pickpockets use) with all the levels of Uncle Li’s crew. He beats them, at every level. The girl does her best to protect Dumbo, but it’s really Andy who is the one saving the money.

He does this mockingly, and finally he lets the sharp-looking babe take the money, then takes it from her. So he can say he didn’t take it from Dumbo. And Andy gets off the train at the next station. There he has a fight with his girl again, and they argue their philosophical positions as to Dumbo. ‘Why are you protecting him? what’s changed? Why? Why?’ Andy demands, and at last the girl answers, ‘I’m pregnant with your baby, and I want to do penance so he will have good karma when he’s born.’

Finally Uncle Li challenges Andy directly: Uncle Li will get the money, or he will leave Andy and Dumbo alone; But if Andy loses, Uncle Li will get Andy to join his gang. Andy does everything he can, but with a trick, one of Uncle Li’s gang fools him, and the money is lost.

Andy has lost. But wait! The packet of money has no money in it – just money for funerals, fake money. Uncle Li has lost! But wait! Andy didn’t switch the money either – so who did?

Turns out there’s an undercover cop on the train who’s been onto Andy and his girl from the beginning. He could have arrested them a long time ago, but he was curious why they were protecting Dumbo. Maybe he is also using Dumbo’s naivete to draw out any other thieves on the train.

The cop rounds up all the gang but Uncle Li and sharp-babe, but he gets them in the end when sharp-babe double-crosses Li. Andy and the girl the cop gets when they go to see Dumbo, who has given blood to another passenger and fainted; They stand over him, wishing that he might never have to wake up and so he could go right on dreaming he lives in a world without thieves. Then the cop comes in, and tells them he’s onto them. He switched the money eariler, and now he puts it back into Dumbo’s bag.

It all seems like it’s over, but … Not quite. As the train travels into town, slowing toward the station, Andy and his girl slip up into the ventilator compartment above the main cabins. And down the car, so does Uncle Li! Even as Andy is climbing onto the roof, the girl sees Uncle Li where he looks down through the opening into the compartment where Dumbo, and the money, are.

Andy pushes the girl up on the roof, ‘Wait for me,’ he says, and he confronts Uncle Li who has the money. The two face off, one final time, as the train slows into the station…

… In the station, Uncle Li’s gang members are rounded up in police cars. A blind begger – we recognize Uncle Li in disguise – tries to get off the platform, but is met by the cop, who sees through the disguise.

5 MONTHS LATER

The girl is pregnant, very much along. She is eating mu-shu ravenously. Someone comes up – it’s the cop. ‘Don’t wait for him, he’s not coming,’ the cop says. ‘Let me finish eating first,’ she answers. He tells her that his wife is also expecting, and also eating everything, just to make sure the baby gets enough nutrition.

A series of flash cuts to the past tells the tale of the final battle:

Andy won, he beat Uncle Li, and his bloody hand drops the bag with the money down beside the sleeping Dumbo. But Uncle Li has a hook on a string, and it catches Andy right on his neck. Li slips out as Andy lies there, bleeding to death, but pounding on the floor of the ventilation compartment, above the compartment where the detective is. The detective charges out, in time to scare Uncle Li off, so the money is secure by the sleeping Dumbo. When the detective finds Andy, dead, he also finds Andy’s cell phone in his hand, an unsent text message on it: ‘Wait for me. The Dumbo affair is resolved.’ The cop hits the ‘send’ button, and I guess that’s how he knows where to find the girl later on. Now he tells her, ‘When the baby is born, tell it the truth. Let it know what kind of a man its father really was.’

An epilogue wraps it all up: The girl is back in Tibet, praying outside a monastery. Women take her baby – I guess she is giving the baby to a holy life? I’m not sure about that.

Movie is shot widescreen, anamorphic. Lots of bright saturated colors. Most of the movie Andy has a long wig on, looking a little like a hippie. The battle of wits is very nicely scripted, with twist and counter-twist, some humor, some sex appeal, some wit, and even some meaning and sincere emotions. Just a great script, the sort of script they ought to option for Hollywood if they could.

The train location is wonderful. This falls into a line of movies set on trains or ocean liners, where a band of strangers can interact, but nobody can get off; nobody else can join them. The train however makes it tough to adapt for Hollywood, since nobody here rides trains (or ocean liners!) anymore.

Only thing I didn’t like about the movie is the stunts. Instead of real stunts shot in boring conventional manner, they chose to cover the stunts in flashy quick cuts of extreme closeups. The scene is basically an impression of what might be happening, or a puzzle or code that we must put together in our minds. It reminds me of how Fred Astaire insisted they photograph his dancing. He demanded that all his dance numbers be shot in long shot, with one take – or as few shots as possible. This was boring cinematically, but it showed off Astaire and his partner’s dance moves. When Hollywood had dancers who couldn’t dance all that well, they would cover the number with long shots, closeups, medium shots, and do lots of cutting – so the dancers had only to manage one good move at a time, then cut to another take of the following move; and going in close conceals how the feet are really doing.

That’s kind of what this film is like in the crucial, almost-magical theft moves, and the move and counter-moves of the thieves as they battle in the train corridors. There are just a bunch of flashy cuts, and it leaves the impression that the actors couldn’t handle the stunts themselves.

One final nice touch: At one point Andy is hanging off the side of the train as it speeds along an overpass. Uncle Li holds Andy’s wrist, and threatens to drop him. ‘Don’t kick your legs so much, die with some dignity,’ Uncle Li says. Andy answers, ‘Listen, I’m not Jackie Chan! I don’t want to die and I’m not going to go with any dignity if I can help it!’

(25 March 2009)

That sounds like a great movie! I’d love to watch it but...hey, I already know the story! Andy Law is a genius!

Yes, that’s the problem with doing this. I don’t always have to reveal the whole story, but sometimes I find something really right – or wrong – with the ending, and I want to talk about that.

Here I found the back-and-forth of the ending a little strange. Build up to the final showdown between Andy and Uncle Li, then, then ... train pulls in? What happened? We see Uncle Li got away, what about Andy?

The concept is good, but it really wasn’t done well for my taste. I think we should have seen the girl get the message: ‘wait for me. Dumbo case is resolved.’

Then we have to know what ‘wait for me’ means – it wasn’t clear in subtitles, but maybe in the dialogue it was that they have a certain place to meet if anything happens, and it should be in five months, or each month on the 14th day, or second Wednesday, or something like that. It seems odd that the cop should show up the same day the girl does, or has he come there every single day for 5 months?

But we absolutely need to have the suspense build up if the director is going to hide ‘what happened’ from us.

Also I wasn’t sure about the final shots, was she giving the baby to a monastery or not? If she’s giving it away, it kind of makes sense, she is tainted – or maybe even going to prison – and doesn’t want the child to be touched by the bad things she has done. But then, why not leave the kid with Dumbo and his wife in the village where everybody is so honest they won’t even steal cow shit from one another? And if she leaves the kid, then how will she ever tell the kid the true story of his father, the way the detective tells her to do? And why does the detective look so different in this last scene? I didn’t mention that to you, but he has shaved his mustache and beard, looks very different, I wasn’t sure it was him, even.