Saving Mr. Wu

Saving Mr. Wu (2015) is a Chinese crime thriller from director Ding Sheng, ready to watch online on iFILM. A Hong Kong movie star is grabbed off a Beijing street by a gang dressed as police officers. The clock to his execution reads twenty hours.

The script grew out of a real abduction that hit the capital a few years before filming. Andy Lau plays the captive, chained in a basement, counting minutes and reading the man who holds the key. Liu Ye plays the detective who takes the case personally. The film runs on two pulses at once: a task force combing the city for scraps of evidence, and a hostage bargaining for his life against a ringleader whose calm is scarier than any shout. Ding keeps an almost documentary tempo, hour by hour, with the romance stripped out.

It picked up several Golden Rooster and Huabiao honors, including acting prizes. One sharp detail: the actual actor who survived the kidnapping turns up in the cast as one of the characters. Anyone who likes hard, glossless Asian genre work will lock in fast. Stream Saving Mr. Wu (2015) online on iFILM.