Dust to Dust [第八个嫌疑人] (2023)

This is a very good character-driven crime drama and has been a surprise box office hit.

The story (though told in flashback) begins chronologically in the mid 1990s in Guangdong when a motely group of men get together to rob a savings bank (based on an actual crime which was the largest robbery in the PRC at the time). The men include Chen Xinwen [Da Peng], a construction entrepreneur who has run out of money to complete an important government project.

They get away with the money but are soon tracked down as the robbery was quite hamfisted. But Chen and his cousin and friend Chen Xinnian [Sunny Sun] escape to a foreign country (Myanmar I assume). Here, in a manner shown in the film, Chen assumes the identify of a man he resembles slightly Mo Zhiqiang. Later he returns to China, married into a small business [Qi Xi excellent as always plays his wife Yang Fang] and has a daughter.

A policeman was killed in rounding up the robbers and detective Wang [La Ka-Tung] continues to hunt for the missing men. Twenty one years later he has retired but one day he sees a familiar face online and goes to Yunnan province to track down a man he believes is Chen.

There is a quite brilliant scene where Wang turns up at Mo’s house claiming to be his old friend from his hometown. Mo/Chen of course has to play along but he gradually realises exactly who Wang is and why he has come. Wang meanwhile thinks he has his man but cannot prove it in the absence of fingerprints or DNA.

The acting all round by the mixed mainland and HK cast is excellent with Da Peng as a particular stand out. He manages to make his character sympathetic without hiding his multiple violent crimes. And the settings look quite credible for mid 90s China. The film unusually switches back and forward between Mandarin and Cantonese.

Although the story of a dedicated cop tracking down a villain is hardly original, the filmmakers manage to give this a new twist by putting the focus on the criminal but not glamourising him in any way. In fact, the weakest parts are the police procedural parts of the early investigation – ‘the Provincial Public Security Bureau in conjunction with the bureaus of … ‘.

The Chinese title is ‘The Eight Suspect which makes more sense in the context of the story. It gets only a disappointing 6.1 on Douban but has been a surprise hit at the box office, replacing Oppenheimer as a weekly number 1. Directed by Jonathan Li and written by Chow Man-Yu. A much better film that the somewhat similar themed Caught in Time.