User reviews

After some moments of silence, the master of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers, Jia Zhangke returns with his newest feature "A Touch of Sin" (2013) which might just be his darkest work to date. It's an intriguing film of sheer brilliance told through the complexity of several, loosely connected stories about people in agony. While some fans of the director may be disappointed by the lack of clairvoyant lyric beauty, characteristic for example for "Still Life" (2006), others may find the narrative ambiguity and incoherence rather enriching.

The film begins with an enigmatic scene at a deserted rural highway where a truck carrying tomatoes has fallen over. A cold sense of brutality breathes in the air. Soon the first characters are introduced and we learn that, in the same way as in "Still Life", "A Touch of Sin" is structured from different stories with different human fates. In brief, it tells the story of four random acts of violence in today's society.

Although the stories lack obvious connection, they all share a few essential elements. First of all, they all escalate to an outburst of violence. Second, all of them are tales of social rootlessness and existential alienation. The latter remark is congruous with the fact that in all of Zhangke's films the general aspect meets the particular in a poignant fashion of chill and solitude. Individuals live in their personal prisons while the modernization of the society brings nothing but empty freedom. In other words, they live in spaces that are both private and public where they feel utterly detached. No one belongs anywhere in the Zhangke universe.

Due to the complexity of several stories, the film also includes more than one central milieu. However, this seemingly arbitrary set of different settings of hotels and a coal miners' town do tell us about veritably similar subjects. All the spaces are haunted by the same problems. Such conflict of ambiguity and coherence should not frighten the spectator. Since instead of a straight-forward narrative with clear character delineation, Zhangke offers us a fascinatingly cynical cross-section of the contemporary Chinese society which is, on the one hand, characterized by economic boom to whose technological wonderland an individual may vanish, and, on the other, the tormenting but also comforting legacy of Mao.

Modern Chinese way of life appears to Zhangke as something diverse -- as something that is in a constant state of change. Like in his previous features, Zhangke once again focuses on the transforming reality, the current flow, and its consequences on the individuals. Although this was already done to an extent in "Still Life" through the complexity of two overlapping stories, it also cast hope in humanity, whereas "A Touch of Sin" is far more pessimistic.

Once again Zhangke's aesthetics of cinema is characterized by the elements of silence and emptiness in the images of loneliness and alienation. It is as though everything had died. Only violence is portrayed passionately, all the rest is understated. The violence in "A Touch of Sin" is raw and brutal, but essentially stripped. Above all, violence appears as a melancholic undertone of some kind which reveals the realities of the society.

Even if the opaque and complex narrative of "A Touch of Sin" left the viewer speechless and unable to describe what he or she had just seen, there is always something profound to admire in Zhangke's cinema. In his films there is always that certain mood which is quite difficult to be put in words. In brief, it is a mood of emptiness, but also of utter richness.

after finally watching A Touch Of Sin this evening at ACMI with some friends, it's left me stuck in 2 worlds - missing Jia Zhang-Ke's meditative & lyrical work of the past & liking the new approach to these social wrongs in a more brutal / violent / cynical manner...

first thoughts were quite similar to when i watched another master film maker Kim Ki-Duk's "Pieta" which after further digestion, thought & reading became my fave film of 2013 - both films show violence in a heavy way but still portray it in a meditative & profound manner, using symbolic moments to remind the audience about these issues...

in hindsight i really like this film and where Jia is going with his approach... considering this is a narrative driven film over his powerful and thought provoking documentaries, all the killings were based on real events the director read in blogs... the film is a vessel to show these separate events as one about alienation, the varying classes in china & corruption / political flaws...

here's a good article from Slant which covers a lot of how i feel towards the films - 8/10

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/a-touch-of-sin

Beautiful movie about living at the bottom of the economic class may lead to random violent acts of aggression - as your only way of releasing the anger inside - , it was close but didn't quite make it ..

Story could have been told more visually , with less but useful dialogue , as the cinematography and beauty within the scenes are amazing . But like most art-houses the story doesn't fully add up . -----------------------------------------------------

Part 1: A man living in a village getting drained by the coal mine industry reaches his ultimate limit - and takes out everyone involved in the corporate scandal 8/10

Part 2: A motorcyclist with an excitement to gun violence ; sibling in an aging family, he "robs" people as his way of making a living 5/10

Part 3: A woman is having an affair with a married man but calls it quits for fear it'll ruin her image . Being false accused for being a slut , she makes a drastic decision. 6.5/10

Part 4: A kid gets blamed for injuring a coworker and has to pay his debt through checks for the next 100 days . He calls quits instead and decides to fall in love with a sex worker during his free time . When his life reaches a dead end he decides to end it there . 7.5/10

Overall 7/10 6/10 Script 9/10 Level of Violence 11/10 Violence Shock Value (Realism of Violence) 100/10 Beauty of the Cinematography

As always with portmanteau films, I found the quality of these four tales (or tellings) varies quite a lot, as does one's sympathy or empathy for the characters. As such, as others have commented, I thought that the rest of the film did not match up to the first quarter. However, the other three parts were not *bad*, and for me added to the overall tone of societal bleakness. I've made brief visits to China but would in no way say that qualifies me to judge how "realistic" a picture this is, despite the factual bases of the component stories. However, as we increasingly observe and debate the effect of China's actions on the wider global stage, this film perhaps provides helpful context, if this is the domestic backdrop...

Do not focus on the rate. The film is worth watching even if it could have been much better and some of the details in the scenario are clearly a fail beginning with the lack of coherence of the characters. In clear, it's hard to follow them and to understand them. A Touch of Sin turns out to be a hell of a lot of sins, of violence, of crimes and of desperation. During the film I hesitated between skepticism, bewilders or admiration for this rough and tough portrait of China through different stories that are not necessarily linked together. A touch of sin is about four characters in four different regions in China who are going through hard times, because of globalization, corruption or a closed system. All these things will lead them to crime, suicide and the metaphor of the collapse of the system. It is always better to make a critic out of a movie you have fancied but not all of it is to throw away, and I would recommend to watch that movie for its originality and the ambitious scenario of the director. In short it was a great project and maybe some mistakes could have been avoided, but in the end it's indeed an interesting director to follow in the upcoming years.

A lone gunman, fighting for justice in a world full of corruption, intent upon killing the main culprit and not backing down until he has done so. It sounds like something out of a John Ford western, but in fact it's the first of four stories in 'A Touch Of Sin'. This Chinese movie borrows quite a few themes from the classic westerns. Male dominance, for example, and a society lacking morality, but above all: violence as the ultimate solution.

For a Chinese film maker, this is a brave movie. It paints a very bleak picture of Chinese society, by tackling issues like corruption, crime, prostitution and the exploitation of workers in enormous factories. These are very sensitive issues in modern day China, but still this movie got the green light from the authorities and wasn't banned from Chinese cinemas.

But not every brave movie is a good one. The problem with 'A Touch Of Sin' is that it consists of four independent stories which differ a good deal in quality. The first one, with the lone gunman, is the best because it is a clear, focused story. Others are sometimes difficult to understand because they are too expansive and too long.

The common feature in each of the four stories is the violence. Director Zhangke Jia shows it in a very graphic way, reminiscent of crime movies from Hong Kong or Japan. The bullet holes and blood splattering seem a bit out of place in a film appealing to an art-house audience, but at the same time it gives this movie a nice nihilistic touch.

This film exposes the difficulties of a few characters in various Chinese provinces - people of average circumstances just trying to get by. Their stories are based on true events.

This film is suitably shocking in many ways in exposing not only the difficulties of the characters in focus but also the extreme reactions some of them have in dealing with their circumstances. The most creepy aspect is the absence of any authorities or help given to those who need it. This was intended by director Jia Zhang-Ke to expose modern life in China.

While there are powerful scenes in this movie, it seemed confusing at times and not fully coherent and a bit long at over two hours. But credit can be given to the boldness of exposing so much in a totalitarian regime. - dbamateurcritic

The director has so much to express, which makes the film loose. He wants to show the whole picture of modern China by referencing lots of news in the stories. But it weakens the story itself. The fourth fragment is most representative. It seems not so reasonable.

A few actors are great, like Wu and Tao, while others do not their roles. Baoqiang is not ferocious enough as a professional robber. Some guest actors are unnecessary, even ruin this movie, such as Sanming.

Anyway, we should show respects to both Zhangke and this movie. He really wants to express his anxiety about this sick society. He reminds us this situation is unstable and unsustainable. We are on the edge of a crash.

One additional star for the topic that few has tried to film.

In about ten or twenty years, these 120 minutes of social depicting will be one of the very rare and precious visual stories for people to understand and entertain what is going on in the first ten years of the 21st century China. It offers a prospective with some interesting details that makes sense to the westerners or maybe its fellow countrymen in the future. But it doesn't really add up for the people living in China nowadays, or at least, the details are not enough.

Stories are too short that they can barely touch the real psychology that the Chinese laborers are having today. I'm not sure whether it is something that the director fails to do or he is not allowed to do. For example, there are lots of complexities existing between a complaining Shanxi miner and a mad murderer. Throughout the first story, the only real attempt Dahai, who has learned the laws and has close relatives living in the city, has made to disclose the corruption is a mail letter without a specific address. This is far away from the countless efforts that a Chinese miner would make before he explode himself with the illegal riches. To me, the efforts, the struggles, and the final desperate in Dahai's mind are the most interesting parts of the story. However, nothing really happens in the movie. The result is that, Dahai seems more like a legendary cowboy coming from a classic American western movie than a struggling Chinese worker who has relatives to care about.

It touches the social issues we are all witnessing in China today, it is entertaining and somewhat heroic, but it fails to restore the story into reality, let alone into a provoking level.

From one of China's leading film-makers, Jia Zhang Ke, comes a tale of four strangers pushed to breaking point in the bleakest moments of their lives. As their tales loosely connect, we are taken on a visually gripping narrative of violence, murder, crime, and hardship - showing a harsh critique of contemporary China that proves to be both brutal and brave at the same time!

This is the only film I have seen from director Jia, but he's certainly perked my interest. His portrayal of suffering amid the capitalism and prosperity of corrupt officials and gangsters offers a harsh look at humanity, featuring the superb Wu Jiang from Let The Bullets Fly, Dragon (Wu Xia), 1911, and more - along with Wang Bao Qiang, star of Detective Chinatown, Kung Fu Jungle, and Monk Comes Down A Mountain. Both are joined by a great supporting cast, with all giving very real performances in their journeys and stories.

Obviously a play on words against King Hu's classic film, A Touch Of Zen, that also had Buddhism as a key-theme, Jia uses these four stories based on real events to deliver a message of just how many people have been stripped of their morals, or have lost themselves due to greed or working hard for pennies...

With a lengthy running time of 130 minutes, you don't even see the time pass as you are drawn into each tale, with every frame showing something of interest - or something not of interest such as the whipping of a horse until it falls, or the cutting of a duck's throat as a man prepares the evenings dinner. But that is A Touch Of Sin - a harsh, real look at struggling humans who have had all hope removed, and the things they must do to get by.

Overall: Shocking for many reasons, yet gripping at the same time, A Touch Of Sin is a fantastic film that won't lift your spirits, but will let you think hard about the world we live in today!

I saw this film at the Ghent (Belgium) film festival 2013, where it was selected as part of the official Competition. Technically there was nothing wrong with it: shot beautifully, and acted splendidly. However, I could derive no underlying theme other than the under-achievers who were the respective main characters in the four loosely connected stories. Was there otherwise something in common, apart from the fact that all four stories ended in unmitigated violence?? The only shooting that was justified, occurred in the beginning of the story where one motor cyclist was threatened by three men armed with axes, but it was just an isolated incident without a preceding story to explain. All other shooters whose history we followed later on, may have considered themselves above the law, justified in killing around for a just cause. But I did not get their ulterior motives, at least not as being strong enough to arrive at what they did.

The festival website mentioned "underclass rage" as binding theme, but that is not sufficient for me. The stories in itself are well told and technically flawless, but one keeps wondering all the time what's the point in this bloodshed. It may be considered social commentary, but it lacks constructive ideas or novel insights. On the positive side, we from outside China get a fresh view on life in China as it is nowadays, giving us the chance to see that it does not look much different when looking from the outside. The landscapes and the cities could have been European or American, if we disregard the obvious fact that all the people there look Chinese. But I don't think a guided tour was the ultimate purpose of the film makers.

Speaking of Chinese looks: It was a nice touch that we were allowed to recognize the respective main characters throughout "their" story, this usually being rather difficult for us Europeans, having great problems telling Chinese (and Japanese, for that matter) apart; "they all look alike" is a common statement. In this movie we always had a particular distinguishing mark to assist us in following the main character. I'm not sure it was a deliberate setup by the film makers, to facilitate international distribution, but anyway it helped very much.

All in all, this film falls short in delivering the obviously intended message that some people cannot stand being ignored or neglected for too long a time, and thus are bound to eventually "explode" in some way. Another thing that also did not work out, was involving me in the main characters, who seemed to me coming from a different planet and acting illogically. On the other hand, we got a nice view on contemporary China, far away from the touristic sightseeing routes, a seldom chance that we otherwise don't get easily. Very well acted and shot as well. All things considered, I scored a 3 (average) for the audience award when leaving the theater. This film ranked 39th for the audience award, score 3.73 out of 5. And the international jury awarded it for "its musical choice and the combination of traditional and contemporary music".

ADDENDUM as of December 2013: I saw this movie twice by accident, while it was programmed as part of the Tiger Friends Preview Event prior to the 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Which movie would be screened during this event, was kept secret until the last minute. When it became clear what was about to happen, I did not run away however. It happened to me before that a repeated viewing worked very well to grasp things missed the first time. But alas, in this case it merely amplified my former conclusions. The only change in appreciation was that I liked the first story better than previously. On the other hand, knowing beforehand what was going to happen, the other three stories exposed more inconsistencies than I was aware of the first time. Anyway, the whole experience was not boring, and it still offers a nice view on contemporary China, but that is all there is.

The first minute of this film is better than entire acclaimed English-speaking movies of the year I'm watching it; 2020. But the film is ultimately disappointing.

Every movie director can take nice pictures, but this is a film of not only stunning visuals but stunning visuals time and again imbued with meaning in relation to society and environment.

The film is actually several separate short stories. Short stories can be perfect ideas uncorrupted by the extrapolation necessary for full-length films. But these short films reveal the weakness in lack of depth usually associated with the short film form: the limited time in which, with depth, to tell a tale.

Each of the main characters are victims of their situation, exploited by others in positions of authority in a society built this way. The users are not seen as such by the general mass of the people, who the director shows as dumb animals, most clearly in a scene with a mistreated animal in relation to the scene that it follows.

Though the short films are fleshed-out snapshots, they are snapshots all the same, wasting the promise of meaning imbued in single images. But the great failing is the lack of resolution to each story. A fatuous comeuppance is stuck on almost all as the director takes the easy way out.

These dim-witted "resolutions" are as if these days to end a film this way is more than acceptable, it is acclaimed. It is too easy to simply give up and do a Tarantino. The stories haven't quite lived up to their potential and then are given up on.

Still, despite its flaws, what is good about the film shows a great filmmaker at work.

This is a Chinese film written and directed by Jia Zhangke. There are four stories about four characters in modern China. They each face the corrupted modern world with violence. Jia based each story on a real event ripped from the headlines.

The most compelling one has to be Dahai. It's the performance of Wu Jiang. There is a real power in his presence. I would prefer the whole movie staying with him. It's not as simple as rooting for him. Quite frankly, it's hard to root for the guy after he shoots a kid. It reminds me of Michael Douglas in Falling Down. I had a hard time staying with the other stories. I kept waiting to reconnect with the Dahai story. I appreciate the idea of an anthology film. It's often the case that one stands out among the crowd. I always pine for more from one over the others.

I think people wrote reviews here don't actually know these 4 stories are all true stories and really happened in The modern Chinese society. The first character, Dahai, is a real serial killer,whose name is Wenhai Hu, killing 14 villiagers in Shanxi province in 2002. Second character, Xiaoyu, is a waitress in Hubei province and stabbed 3 local government officials. Her real name is Yujiao Deng, and she was acquitted of a charge after this scandal was brought up to the internet. Third character, whose real name is Kehua Zhou, was another serial robber killing strangers and taking their bags. He was shot down by the police near his hometown. The last character is a reflection of the suicided employees of Foxconn, the biggest manufacturer of IPhone. It was reported that from 2010 to 2012, there were several employees of Foxconn jumped off the roof due to the heavy workload and military-like management. Another interesting secene is the sexual club, Goden Age, which was among one of those luxury brothels in Dongguan, China. Dongguan was well-known for its sexual industry untill the new government led by Jingping Xi took serious measures against this industry.

Another day, another film that's quite hard to talk about. Maybe I've just been picking challenging ones to watch recently, or maybe I'm just zonked lately. Maybe both.

Either way, A Touch of Sin was a film I liked a decent amount, and I loved some parts of it. As a whole, I can't say I entirely loved it, but I think I mostly appreciated what it was going for, and found the execution to work a good deal more than it didn't.

It starts off feeling genuinely unpredictable and surprising. The first half-hour plays out sort of like a better version of Falling Down (which is a movie I still kind of like). But that story is one of four, and three others follow in its wake, with each revolving around a different character trying to get by in modern-day China.

More so than being a direct exploration of violence, I feel this is more a look at the downtrodden in society, and the way that perhaps violence intersects with such lives, once they reach a certain level of desperation (that could be entirely preventable if we changed the way the world worked and how most people got treated).

As such, I find the premises for A Touch of Sin emphasizing violence/crime to be a bit misleading, and I wish I could've approached this as more of a slice-of-life drama/anthology film. I think it's particularly ridiculous that this is labeled as an action movie on IMDb and Letterboxd (violent acts and people dying do not equal "action" by any means).

Some of that's not the fault of the film, of course, but it could've been a reason I spent much of the film trying to get a grip on it. Other parts were effortlessly gripping, and though I wasn't properly prepped to entirely get into it, I liked what I could dig from it. It's certainly impressively made (bar two very noticeable shots where shadows/reflections of crew/cameras are visible), and the acting is strong, too. Its relevance to today and its novel structure more than makes this worth checking out, and I may return to it one day more ready to fully absorb what it's going for.

(It's also interesting how this came out the same year as The Wolf of Wall Street, and has a final scene/shot that's rather comparable).

A Touch of Sin by Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke tells 4 independent stories that culminate in some act of violence in modern China. It feels that the movie's intention is to portrait the reality of a generation that feels confused and out of place on a new reality that clashes modern capitalism with former communism. We understand that, however its hard to accept this is successfully achieved on the movie. Those elements are introduced yes, but... they feel like an excuse for what will predictably come next. The movie is greatly directed: that is its main strength and its worth watching for that, but the structure of 4 independent stories doesn't allow an emotional connection with the viewer, and the violence ends up being predictable and sometimes silly. This would have worked well as 4 separated short movies independently. That would have been powerful. Unfortunately, the theme that connects them is not sufficient to justify the movie as a whole, which is odd since this was the winner for best screenplay on Cannes. This asked for more depth and a more cohesive plot. At the end, the social meaning isn't but a cloud hanging over 4 good short stories that are technically wonderful but fail to go beyond its intentions of being a relevant portrait of China's modern society. Visit thefadingcam blog on blogspot for this and other reviews! Also like us on facebook to follow all our reviews!

Jia Zhangke's Hyperlink-politicalized film, 5 separate allegorical stories indicated the great pageantry of Chinese society The pace of the film is getting didactic within the gradually more moderate commitment of violence in each tableau like atrocious slathering to final self-condemnation.

What the stories about are not necessarily Jia's point, it's the post-modernity behind the frame, a corrupted, abused, patriarchal, capitalism society, were drawn on every characters face. Hal Hartley made a romantic version in 1995.

The long take of slapping the girl's face on the couch is demagogic, but the fight film-alike killing scene is weird in this film.

Since I viewed 'The World' and 'Still Life' from director Jia ZK a few years back, I have become a fan of this 6th generation film director from China. In this film he explored the ugly side of China, amid its prosperity (at least for some), GDP growth and blatant capitalism. It is about the contrast between the average person trying to make a decent living, and the corrupt officials and bandits that got rich quick. The film contains 4 stories, loosely linked together. Corruption, prostitution, social injustice, stressful lives of migrant workers in the World's Factories in the southern part of the country are all the issues explored and exposed here. Gosh, I am glad this film was allowed to be made by the Chinese government. I bet Jia's international fame has something to do with it.

All in all, I enjoyed the film greatly. I once worked and lived in China for a number of years so the stories relate to me quite easily. For now, I hope Jia can continue to do his work, with the freedom and liberty that he has so far enjoyed. I look forward to more of his work.