Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Black Coal, Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 23, 2015

Chances are if you were to quiz a coterie of international cinema fans about what came to mind at the mention of the phrase “Chinese genre film”, you’d get an at least varied array of responses that might include everything from Shaw Brothers entries like The Five Deadly Venoms to Jackie Chan’s goofball antics in Drunken Master to more contemporary historical epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Red Cliff: Part I & Part II to actioners like Infernal Affairs. But despite the obvious variety that greets lovers of Chinese film, my hunch is very few fans would have film noir spring to consciousness. That seeming deficit might soon be altered as Black Coal, Thin Ice gains greater renown, an opportunity that seems (as yet anyway) curiously unrealized even after the film took home the Golden Bear at the 64th Berlin Film Festival held in 2014. (Black Coal, Thin Ice also won the Silver Bear for Best Actor Liao Fan.) While the combination of China and noir might be “exotic” enough to hook some fans, Black Coal, Thin Ice exhibits what might be called an almost Scandinavian ambience that those who got a chill or two out of The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy - Extended Edition might recognize. The film traffics in some pretty disturbing content, including dismemberment for the dead and abuse for the living, and its emotional toll becomes a rather heavy slog as things progress. Beginning with a startling “what is that?” sequence that charts the strange journey of something that ends up drifting through a sea of coal at a refinery, Black Coal, Thin Ice delivers a consistently fascinating parade of images that may help to distract both from some of the discomfiting subject matter as well as certain narrative stumbles in the storytelling itself.

The odd “item” turns out to be just the latest of several body parts that have been discovered at various coal related sites over a rather confoundingly large area (several different provinces), and ultimately the victim is identified as a worker at a coal plant. The detective assigned to the case, a guy named Zhang (Liao Fan), has already been seen in what seems like an odd introduction, first romancing and then having a problematically violent interchange with a woman who it seems is Zhang’s recently divorced wife. While that initially comes off as almost a cinematic non sequitur, later in the film when Zhang becomes obsessed with Wu Zhizhen (Gwei Lun Mei), the wife of the dismembered victim, his clumsy interactions with females becomes a central plot element.

When a coal delivery driver seems to be the only link between the various sites and their attendant body parts, Zhang and his partner Wang (Yu Ailei) track down the guy, along with his brother (who is assumed to be an accomplice). A harrowing sequence where one simple action spills unexpectedly into insane carnage ensues, leaving several people (including some policemen) dead, and Zhang a shattered remnant of his already roiling, alcoholic self.

All of this horror takes place in 1999, and the film then segues forward five or so years to find Zhang reduced to working as a security guard while continuing to nurse his tendency to drink. A chance meeting with Wang reveals that some new dismembered victims have shown up, and that the widow Wu seems to have some connection to not just her late husband, but several other men who have met their fate in the interim. Is she a “black widow” of sorts, or (even worse) a serial killer? The cops can’t seem to ferret out what’s going on, but Zhang simply takes the bull (and/or dirty clothing) by the horns and shows up at the dry cleaning establishment where Wu works, ostensibly to drop off laundry but in reality as an unofficial investigator.

The fact that writer-director Diao Yinan is only putatively setting up a traditional noir infused mystery is made clear when the first big “reveal” about Wu comes barely an hour into the proceedings (to be fair, there’s yet another ostensible twist that comes a bit later in the film). While there’s a “whodunit” (or at least “did she do it?”) element to the film, what really resonates here is the bizarre, halting relationship that develops between Wu, a rather prissy “femme fatale”, and Zhang, more of a traditional model of a noir doomed hero (though even this trope is played with in an artful way).

Parts of Black Coal, Thin Ice’s convoluted plot play at least a little like the French thriller Tell No One, and like that film, there’s a somewhat tamped down emotional ambience that ironically only helps to build tension. The actual mystery at play in Black Coal, Thin Ice turns out to be less arresting (no pun intended) than the overall atmosphere, which is often wintry and isolated feeling. Diao is long on style here, much more so than in the substance department, investing the film with a really distinctive visual flair, but sometimes failing to adequately connect the dots between character, motive and plot machinations. A tendency toward overt “artiness” (as in an enigmatic final sequence) may reap rewards like a Golden Bear, but some audience members may be wishing for a more satisfying conundrum at the heart of the story.

Black Coal, Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Black Coal, Thin Ice is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is a curiously soft looking presentation for such a recent film, though some of that gauziness can be attributed to the wintry setting, where mist and frost intercede, acting as almost a scrim at times through which the imagery is seen. Diao has a tendency to shoot in low light environments, and quite a bit of this transfer suffers from murk and inchoate shadow detail. A lot of the film has been graded to a kind of sickly yellow-green hue (as can be seen in several screencaptures accompanying this review), something which further debilitates detail and fine detail. There's also fairly recurrent noise throughout this presentation, at times clumping to a predictable yellow sheen, but at other times assuming more of a purple-red ambience. In brightly lit environments, the palette pops well enough and detail improves markedly.

Black Coal, Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Black Coal, Thin Ice's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is quite subtle and nuanced at time, but bursts forth with alacrity in at least one notable sequence where shots are fired. Other moments are infused with an almost subliminal sense of sound design, with slightly muffled effects giving a subconscious stifling feeling without drawing that much attention to themselves. Dialogue is cleanly presented and well prioritized, and Zi Wen's minimalistic score also sounds fine.

Black Coal, Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:39)

Note: In a break from the authoring of previous Well Go USA releases, this disc has been authored to not autoplay through the previews of other Well Go USA releases after the trailer plays. The disc returns to the main menu after the trailer plays.

Black Coal, Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Black Coal, Thin Ice is incredibly strong on mood, though its central mystery ends up being a bit less compelling than might be optimal. Performances are first rate, but the film's real calling card is its emphasis on sometimes outré, almost hallucinatory, imagery and a palpable sense of doom. Video quality is a bit lackluster here, but audio is fine. Taken as a whole, Black Coal, Thin Ice comes Recommended.