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Buddha's Lock (1987)
Director: Yim Ho
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This has a fascinating subject, based on fact: the arrest and enslavement of a crashed American airman by a backward tribe of the Yi people in central Sichuan during WWII. Unfortunately, it also has a script (by a Mainland Chinese writer) that has no real idea how to set up or develop characters, and constantly lets ethnographic elements get in the way of the narrative. The result is a strange mixture of excellence and hopeless misjudgements, never quite strong enough to overcome the handicap of a weak performance from the main America actor. At its best, it plays like an early Herzog movie: an assault on the very concept of human dignity in primitive, elemental landscapes.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Director: Yim Ho
Producer: Li Weiyan, Chen Jindi
Cast: John X Heart, Zhang Lutong, Yan Bide, Sun Feihu, Wei Zongwan, Steve Horowitz full cast
Duration: 96 mins
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