Late in the film, “Back to the Wharf,” Li Tang (Zhang Yu), a corrupt real estate developer, scoffs after his friend, Song Hao, rejects a bag filled with dirty money. “Times have changed,” he says behind his new-money shades. “Get off your moral high ground.”
Following in line with the sixth generation of Chinese cinema, during which Chinese auteurs have reckoned with the implications of the country’s head-spinning modernization, this film from Li Xiaofeng turns a crime soap opera into an allegory about the moral costs of rapacious expansion — to middling effect.
Years before the film’s present-day events, Song Hao was a high-achieving high school student, but he had his guaranteed spot in college taken from him after his principal, claiming to “value the collective over the individual,” handed it over to Li Tang in exchange for political favors from Li’s mayor father. In the first of a few clunky narrative turns, this decision leads to Song and his father inadvertently murdering a stranger and Song going on the lam. He returns home to his seaside town 15 years later for his mother’s funeral and is wrapped back up in the ghosts of his past, connecting with his victim’s teenage daughter and becoming embroiled in the shady political dealings between his father and Li.
The film is well-acted, at times boasts striking cinematography, and finds surprisingly tender moments in a subplot about Song’s curious romance with an old classmate. But what is meant to be a political parable, or even just a moody crime saga, is cut short by the dissonance between its self-serious attitude and the rough-edged execution of its melodrama.
Back to the Wharf
Not rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
