Overview
Chinese Name：让子弹飞
English Name：Let the Bullets Fly
Other Names: Rang Zi Dan Fei
Director: Jiang Wen 姜文
Screenwriter: Jiang Wen 姜文，Guo Junli 郭俊立，Li Bukong 李不空
Starring: Jiang Wen 姜文，Ge You 葛优，Chow Yun-Fat 周润发
Release Year：2010
Running time : 132 Minutes
Brief Introduction of Let The Bullets Fly
Let the Bullets Fly (simplified Chinese: 让子弹飞) is a 2010 action comedy film written and directed by Jiang Wen, based on a story by Ma Shitu (马识途), a famous Sichuanese writer. The film is set in Sichuan during the 1920s when the bandit Zhang (Jiang Wen) descends upon a town posing as its new governor. The film also stars Chow Yun-fat, Ge You, Carina Lau, Chen Kun and Zhou Yun.
Let the Bullets Fly was originally to be released in September 2010 but was pushed back to December. Made in Mandarin and Sichuanese, the film broke several box office records in China, and has received critical acclaim, when it was released. Let the Bullets Fly grossed 674 million yuan (US$110 million) in Chinese box office and $140 million worldwide.
Plot of Let The Bullets Fly
In the lawless land that is rural China in the 1920s, legendary bandit “Pocky” Zhang (Jiang Wen) and his gang stage a train robbery. They are quite unhappy to discover that instead of silver, the only thing left on the train is the con man, Tang (Ge You,also starring in To Live). Desperate, Tang explains that he’s on his way to Goose Town, where he’s bought himself a governorship. If allowed to live, he will help Zhang assume the governorship in his place… where Zhang can make more money in one month as a corrupt politician than he can in a year’s worth of train robberies. With Tang as his prisoner/counselor, off they go.
But neither realizes that Goose Town is already under the iron rule of the wealthy Master Huang (Chow Yun Fat, The Killer, Hard Boiled), whose charming exterior conceals a ruthless, conniving crime lord. As Zhang begins to see how badly Huang oppresses the citizens of Goose Town, he decides to do something about it, and Huang quickly senses a major threat to his empire.
Thus begins an escalating series of hyper-violent (and hilarious) mind games between the bandit and the crime lord, while the devious Tang tries to play both sides until he can exit the situation…preferably with a profit. The stakes quickly rise to ludicrous proportions in this masterfully vicious, pitch-black action-comedy (China’s highest grossing film of all time), and you’ll be laughing the entire time as double- and triple-crosses, razor-sharp wordplay, and hundreds of thousands of bullets explode across the screen.
Accolades of Let The Bullets Fly
| Award | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 5th Asian Film Awards | Best Film | Nominated |
| Best Director | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Nominated | |
| Best Screenplay | Nominated | |
| Best Costume Design | Won | |
| 5th Asia Pacific Screen Awards | Best Feature Film | Nominated |
| Achievement in Directing | Nominated | |
| 31st Hong Kong Film Awards | Best Costume & Make Up Design | Won |
| 2011 Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards | Best Adapted Screenplay | Won |
| Best Cinematography | Won | |
| 18th Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award | Best Director | Won |
Film Review of Let The Bullets Fly
The second most successful Chinese film of all time in mainland China, Let the Bullets Fly is a broad comedy western transposed to a lawless area of 1920s China dominated by warlords.
The Guardian
Actor-auteur Jiang Wen directs with a macho, devil-may-care bravado that expresses the anarchy and rapacious opportunism of warlord-dominated China in the 1920s.
The Hollywood Reporter
A Robin Hood in a Chinese Weatern.
New York Times