I'm a big fan of Asian cinema, and I'm always happy to sit back and watch a Chinese thriller. However, BLACK COAL, THIN ICE takes some sitting through, purely because of its pacing. This is one of the slowest-moving films I've ever seen, and it feels like it goes on forever. The plotting is straightforward detective/police procedural stuff, and feels stretched out to fill the running time.

This is a mood piece throughout, focusing on summoning up a chilly atmosphere rather than worrying about the intricacies of story. It's also a thematic film exploring some social themes in China: alienation, husband/wife relationships, adultery, abuse. The problem I have with it is that it just didn't wow me. Everyone else seems to love it, so perhaps I'm missing something.

The characters are thinly drawn but somehow likable despite this; it helps that the lead actors, Fan Liao and Lun Mei Gwei, are both very good and naturalistic in their roles. Some moments of quirky comedy are the best thing the film has to offer, but for the most part it's just about long, drawn-out and repetitive scenes with the odd jarring moment. Although I like the genre, I didn't enjoy this film, and was really waiting for it to end more than anything else.

I happened to find "Bai ri yan huo" (aka "Black Coal, Thin Ice") in 2019, and I must admit that I didn't even know anything about this 2014 movie prior to coming across it by sheer luck. But it being a Chinese movie, was actually more than sufficient to make me interested in watching it.

So I did. And wow, just wow. This movie was phenomenally slow paced. It was so incredibly slow paced to the point where it was being an ordeal to sit through. Now, I will say that the events in the movie were adequately told on the screen, but it took forever to go from point A to B, and when you have to go from A to Z in that manner, then it is a long road. And that is what killed off the enjoyment of "Black Coal, Thin Ice" for me.

Actually, I gave up on the movie with just 20 minutes left. Wouldn't I want to watch the movie and know how the mystery ended? Sure. But the pacing of the movie makes me not want to go back and revisit it. Director and writer Yi'nan Diao made one hour and fifty minutes seems like a whole week in play time.

The acting in the movie was good. And I do enjoy watching movies where I am not familiar with the cast, so they aren't associated with previously portrayed roles and characters in other movies or series. So the fact that this was all unfamiliar faces to me was good, but not enough to salvage the movie.

I am sure that there is a foundation of an audience for a movie such as "Black Coal, Thin Ice" out there. I just wasn't part of that target audience. Hence my rating for the movie lands on a mere three out of ten stars.

Getting the wonderful chance to be the host for an event held on IMDb's Film Festival board,I decided to take a closer look at the nominated titles. Introduced to Film Noir from Asia via John Woo's Heroic Bloodshed movie The Killer,I was intrigued to find a Neo-Noir from China on the list,which led to me breaking into the ice.

View on the film:

Burning up the black coal,co-writer/director Yi'nan Diao unveils a Neo-Noir landscape of frosty blues and decayed grey,with the people in the outdoor scenes being drained of as much colour as the body parts. Getting in from the cold, Diao sets Zhang's life in stylish chalk Neo-Noir reds and yellows which bluntly hit the pessimism of the case.

Spending 8 years writing the screenplay, Diao gives the Noir mystery a clinical edge,as Zhang becomes entwined in a detached love for Femme Fatale Wu.Cut down from the original 210 minutes cut, Diao sets the Noir in a glacial mold. Whilst giving light to some startling images,the sparse nature of the dialogue and the stilted solving of the mystery leaves to any feeling of intrigue being frozen under thin ice.