I'm actually surprised, looking at the Chinese box office, that this looks like it's kind of a moderate success in its native country; just looking at the description, it looks like it might be the sort of thing that might be a big hit because folks are "encouraged" to watch it. But maybe not; like Unidentified a couple weeks ago, it might be more like a movie set against this background than one pushing it. The last two huge hits in China appear to be a couple May Day releases, drama Dear You and thriller Vanishing Point, which didn't play Boston even though it apparently did get an American release.
Anyway, it's genuinely weird that China Lion decided to open the movie about cops spying on their neighbors Fourth of July weekend.
Zhua Te Wu (aka I Know What you Are)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2026 in AMC Causeway Street #7 (first-run, laser DCP)
I Know What You Are feels like the kind of movie you make after your authoritarian government that pits its citizens against each other falls or reforms, and maybe China has, at least compared to the period depicted, but not enough: The censorship/propaganda ministries still have enough influence on the film industry there that the filmmakers can only really poke around the themes that might make this movie really interesting.
It starts in 1949, just after "Liberation", as the Republic of China forces retreat to Taiwan, with spymaster Yan Diankun (Yu Hewei) installing agent 5182, schoolteacher Feng Jingbo (Hu Ge), in an apartment and instructions to listen to a shortwave radio, although he soon attracts the attention of policeman Xiao Dali (Lei Jiayin) as another spy escapes. Xiao installs his family in the same apartment complex as Feng - wife Liu Yaqin (Chuai Ni) teaches at the same school - but Feng seems to anticipate his moves, marrying former brother maid Da Meizi (Zhang Yao), and as their families grow closer over the next 40 years, Feng loses contact with his handlers and integrates himself into the community, even as Xiao's continued obsession makes him look paranoid.
Sort of by necessity, Feng never seems to be a terribly committed spy, even from the beginning; though his recruiter mentions "three principles" as a justification for the Nationalist cause, but there's never much sign that Feng believes in them and why, which means that the latter half of the movie can't do much to raise the question of whether he has become a true believer in the People's Republic or if he's just learned how to quote Mao and the new Constitution as camouflage. There's potential drama and tragedy in the idea that Feng has reformed but Xiao (and the state) cannot let the pursuit go, or that Feng is committed to his cause but ultimately abandoned, but if he's going to be anything but a pure villain in a Chinese film, his actual work for the Nationalists is going to have to be abstract and minimal.
This doesn't stop writer Shi Jianquan (working from a Zhang Ce novel) and director Feng Xiaogang from getting something from the scenarios; there are some nifty bits as Jingbo is actually trying to perform his mission and Dali attempts to catch him early on - not exactly complex spycraft, but the seemingly low stakes add a spark of comic absurdity - and the time-jumping, generational nature of the narrative makes the latter acts especially poignant, as Dali's grown son Xinwei (Lin Xioafan) and Jingbo's daughter Kangmei (Yang Shuyi) are practically already family aside from being in love and their fathers' opposition is the only thing keeping them apart.
It's clumsy getting from one state to another, though. Meizi's evolution as a character feels like the filmmakers need her to suddenly be much more perceptive and mature at a certain point (or much less so toward the start), and while that can come from marriage and motherhood, it's clearly a character that needed to fill two different roles at different times and minimal effort was put into reconciling them. Because of the time jumps, a lot necessarily happens off-screen, but some of them feel pivotal enough and close enough to what is shown that the film would really benefit from showing them, while others are oddly ambiguous - near the end, Xinwei and Kangmei suddenly go from the heart of the film to maybe or maybe not being married offscreen despite their fathers' forbidding their relationship, and the final flash-forward feels like it could be talking about either them or their kids being a couple!
The performances wind up being roughly as good as the script will allow - with so much jumping forward in time and trying to keep the situation static, Lei Jiayin often kinds up looking kind of inept even as the film ultimately wants to portray him as loyal and doggedly determined, while Hu Ge seems to play Feng's attempts to present fealty to the PRC as clumsy and superficial (indeed, he's kind of at his best trapped in a loveless marriage early on, and I feel like there's a good movie to be made about this pairing of an intellectual and a worker just not working despite how they claim to aspire to a classless society). The supporting cast has more room to move Chuai Ni is sneaky-great as Dali's wife, often presenting as kind of oblivious to his investigation of Jingbo but a big-hearted force of nature in handling the families, and while Zhang Yao never quite marries Meizi's ignorance at the start to her fierce pragmatism later, her dramatic moments outweigh her early comedy. Lin Xiaofan and especially Yang Shuyi give the audience a lot to hold onto as likable, seemingly normal people hurt by their parents' pasts.
Feng Xiaogang's early films, especially, had a keen satiric edge beneath their absurdity, and the film is at its best when he has a chance to bring that out. When he's going hard at making state security look like neighborhood busybodies, pointing out all the mismatches that Mao's ideology has disastrously engineered or how shutting down the brothels forced many women out of a comfortable life, showing how much more vibrant the town became when a little free enterprise was allowed, and the final irony about how this thing that ruined two families' lives was basically forgotten by those who set it in motion, that's when you can see a potentially great movie, especially as the neighborhood evolves as time passes while retaining its basic character.
But, for whatever reason, he doesn't make that movie; he makes one where the characters' actual beliefs are never important even though it's supposedly driving a conflict that lasts decades and the harm done can never be acknowledged except as necessary for the greater good, and how can you walk out with a lump in your throat unless you're already sold on the whole thing?
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