So I was surprised to find it screening in a big name movie theatre near me in Canada. Didn’t really know much about it, was just surprised to find a Chinese language movie in a non-Chinese theatre in Canada and was pretty curious so I went in and watched it. (I wanted to watch a movie anyway, decided to watch that instead of what I originally had in mind.)

I really liked it, highly recommended. I’m by no means a movie expert, but here’s my review of it.

It tells three intertwining stories all relating to organized cybercrime. A programmer who accepts a fake job offer and gets kidnapped to work for an internet fraud operation; a down on her luck model who accepts a job at an online casino, run by the same cybercrime ring, and is similarly held captive and forced to continue well after she wants out; and a victim of said online casino and other rigged illegal gambling operations who bankrupts himself and his family. It’s based on real cases and major busts that have happened in Southeast Asia, and the director interviewed over 10,000 people affected by organized cybercrime, and modeled the story closely to their real experiences. His goal was to use this movie to educate people about how cybercrime rings work, how they manage to evade authorities, how and why they employ human trafficking (which is not something one immediately thinks of when considering internet scams and illegal casinos), and how and why people fall victim to them.

Overall, I think it was an extremely powerful film and one that is sorely needed in this day and age where cybercrime and cyber fraud is rampant and tons of people fall victim to it every day. From a literary perspective, I really liked the three intertwining stories that all converge at the end, it’s something that has been tried a lot in various types of media and is pretty hard to do well, but when it is done well it’s a really cool experience. All of the protagonists were easy to sympathize with and had realistic motivations and actions (which makes sense considering this is based on true stories). The brainwashing of the victims and how their wills are broken by their captors is also very powerful and something that has been documented to happen in real life. In terms of cinematography and dialogue, I personally liked it being a Chinese person who is fluent in Mandarin, but there are some cultural and general “trends in film making” differences between Chinese and Western cinema, similar to Bollywood and Western movies, so I suspect it might feel kind of weird to people who are only used to Western movies, particularly English-language ones, something to keep in mind while watching but I don’t think it takes away from the film itself at all.

The English subs also left something to be desired IMO. Since I understand both Mandarin and English I did a bit of comparing, and it seems to be similar to how Japanese anime is dubbed, where it is more of a formal translation of what is being said, and is missing most of of the emotion, expressions, and cultural context, IMO an English dub would have been better for the local market (I’m gonna get murdered by the subbed anime crowd for saying that), though I personally would have still preferred the original Mandarin version since it’s my first language.

All in all I highly recommend it. Though, CW for violence, human trafficking, suicide, and implied sexual abuse if you do decide to watch it.