Dennis
Weaver only had one psycho-semi to deal with in Duel. There are multiple parties of angry rustics-on-wheels out to
drive Pan Xiao off the road—permanently. Of course, he sort of has it coming.
He’s an attorney. Only the law of the jungle applies on this lonely stretch of
Gobi Desert highway, but at least there is a socially redeeming coda tacked on
to satisfy Chinese censors. Nevertheless, audiences can see most of the dark
beast that is Ning Hao’s long delayed No
Man’s Land (trailer
here) when
it screens during the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival.
The
hot shot big city attorney has come to represent Lao Da, a falcon poacher
accused of murder. Of course, we know he is guilty, because we have seen the
prologue. Nevertheless, Pan Xiao gets him off with a little Billy Flynn razzle
dazzle. This was no mere charity case. Pan Xiao expects to get paid, so when
Lao Da balks at ponying up cash on the barrelhead, the lawyer takes possession
of his client’s shiny new Mustang instead. He really should have just used his
return ticket on the train.
In
fact, the counselor has been played by the poacher, who stashed a cache of
falcons in the car and has a henchman waiting to waylay Pan Xiao. It is a good
plan, but it did not anticipate the long-haul truckers the mouthpiece tangles
with on his way out of town. Posing as a broken down motorist, Lao Da’s
accomplice Lao Er is supposed to ambush the attorney once he has pulled over,
but due to a cracked windshield, he plows over the his would-be assailant. Not
knowing Lao Er’s intentions, Pan Xiao now believes he has a body to dispose of.
However, stopping by a remote price-gauging gas station only makes matters
worse, particularly when their trafficked lap dancer, Li Yuxin looks to Pan
Xiao to be her rescuer.
That
takes us about twenty minutes into the film. From there, things get very
brutish, violent, and complicated. Nearly everyone wants to kill Pan Xiao and
the cops are ready to assume the worst about him, after their embarrassment in
court. Nonetheless, it is hard to see what activated the state censors’
schoolmarm reflexes, except maybe the pervasive nihilistic violence. Could they
really be so concerned about the image of the legal profession or are they
reluctant to admit the lurid truth regarding of falcon poaching?
After
it was liberated from the vault, No Man’s
Land set the Chinese box-office on fire, largely thanks to the presence of
two stars from Lost in Thailand. Xu
Zheng’s characters just do not travel well, but he plumbs hitherto unseen dark
places as Pan Xiao. He is not a standard issue victim, by any stretch, but he
cannot out-fierce steely Tibetan actor Duobujie’s Lao Da. Yu Nan (the only
under-40 cast member of The Expendables 2)
also adds some heat and a human touch as Li.
