Manhunt (2017 film)

Manhunt
Theatrical release poster
Chinese 追捕
Directed by John Woo
Produced by
Screenplay by
  • Gordon Chan
  • Chan Hing Kai
  • James Yuen
  • Itaru Era
  • Ho Miu Ki
  • Maria Wong
  • Sophie Yeh[1]
Based on Kimi yo Funnu no Kawa o Watare
by Juko Nishimura
Starring
Music by Taro Iwashiro[1]
Cinematography Takuro Ishizaki
Edited by Lee Ka Wah[1]
Production
company
  • Media Asia
  • China Film
  • Media Asia Audio Video Distribution
  • Shenzhen Murmur Culture Communications[2]
Release date
  • 8 September 2017 (2017-09-08) (Venice)
  • 23 November 2017 (2017-11-23) (Hong Kong[3])
  • 24 November 2017 (2017-11-24) (China)
Running time
 106 minutes[4]
Country
  • China
  • Hong Kong[4]
Language
  • Japanese
  • English
  • Mandarin[1]
Budget US$50 million[5]

Manhunt is a police thriller film directed by John Woo and starring Zhang Hanyu and Masaharu Fukuyama.[2][5] The Chinese-Hong Kong production is an adaptation of the Japanese novel Kimi yo Funnu no Kawa o Watare by Juko Nishimura. Woo decided to develop an adaptation to commemorate Japanese actor Ken Takakura, who starred in the 1976 adaptation of the book.

The film was shot in Osaka and was described by Woo as a return to his older style of films, specifically mentioning The Killer. The film finished filming in November and was in post-production in January 2017. The film premiered at the 74th Venice International Film Festival and released in China on 24 November 2017. The film was released worldwide on Netflix on 4 May 2018.[6]

Plot

Du Qiu is a Chinese lawyer who has defeated many legal suits filed against his employer Tenjin Pharmaceuticals but is now being moved to America by his management. He attends a party where the president of the company, Yoshihiro Sakai, appoints his son Hiroshi as head of development of new pharmaceuticals. At the party Du Qiu meets a half-Chinese woman, Mayumi, but loses track of her. Sakai tells a mysterious woman to seduce Du Qiu to remain in Japan. She dances with him at the party then sneaks to his house before he arrives later.

Du Qiu wakes up to find the unknown woman dead in his bed. Du Qiu calls the police and insists that he is innocent. While he is being taken away, corrupt policeman Mamoru Ito creates an opportunity for him to escape by shooting another officer. Du Qiu loses the police by running down a subway tunnel in front of a moving subway car and escaping out an exit at a station that is still under construction. Yamura and his new partner Rika follow Yamura's intuition to the same spot, where they find Du Qiu disguised as a worker. Yamura reaches for his gun but Du Qiu puts a nail gun to Rika's head. Yamura surrenders his gun and trades himself for Rika. Du Qiu and Yamura drive away but crash into a dove cage, sending the white birds flying everywhere as they fight. Du Qiu escapes and hides in a shanty town where people are recruited to take part in drug tests by Tenjin. He is aided by the elderly Mr. Sakaguchi and other residents in evading the police during a search there.

The assassin Rain is hired to kill Du Qiu but she recognizes him as a man who had previously helped her when she was threatened by a gang so she intentionally misses the shot with her sniper rifle, much to her sister and partner Dawn's annoyance. Yamura pursues Du Qiu in a high-speed jet ski chase and when Du Qiu's jet ski stops running he climbs over Yamura onto a bridge to escape. Mayumi meets him there and they run away together.

Mayumi explains that her deceased fiancé shot himself on the day of their planned wedding after losing a legal battle to Tenji due to Du Qiu's legal skills. She shows him the park where the wedding took place as Rain and Dawn arrive on motorcycles shooting at Du Qiu. Yamura arrives and drives into Dawn, then pursues Du Qiu and Mayumi in a high-speed car chase until Du Qiu crashes, flipping the car. Yamura helps Du Qiu pull Mayumi from the wreck then handcuffs himself to Du Qiu and they run from the sisters into the woods, where Mayumi tells Yamura that she was with Du Qiu at the time of the murder. They flee to Mayumi's farm, where they defend themselves in a gunfight against the pursuing sisters, accompanied by a gang of armed motorcyclists. During the battle they damage Mayumi's wedding dress, still covered in her fiancé's blood from that day. They are chased outside, where they witness Dawn injecting drugs in order to be able to keep fighting despite her injuries. She collapses then dies in Rain's arms after saying that the drugs were too strong. Rika drives them to the hospital, where Yamura tells her to remove the handcuffs and lets Du Qiu escape.

Mamoru Ito is revealed as the one who staged the murder to make Du Qiu look guilty to cover up for the real murderer, Yoshihiro Sakai's son Hiroshi. He demands money from Yoshihiro Sakai but is shot by Rain. Rika has an analysis run on drugs dropped by Ito and finds that they are a strong stimulant. Mayumi calls Rika and gives her the secret formula for the drug that her fiancé was killed for but is then captured by Rain.

Mr. Sakaguchi helps Du Qiu get aboard a truck taking test subjects to Tenjin's laboratories where torturous tests are conducted on them. Mr. Sakaguchi is given a drug that makes him a relentless killer. He kills several of the other prisoners before begging Du Qiu to kill him and then impaling himself on a sharp stick. Yoshihiro Sakai reassures a foreign investor that his new drug allows the mind of the subject to be controlled in order to create a more controllable killing machine. He recognizes Du Qiu and has him strapped into a machine to test his resistance to pain. Yamura arrives and offers to tell the formula to the Sakais in exchange for Du Qiu. Rain, upset about Tenjin's treatment of her sister, releases Mayumi. Yoshihiro gives Du Qiu the new drug and forces him to fight Yamura but Yamura convinces him to resist the drug and they join together to fight the guards. Yoshihiro orders Rain to kill them but she shoots the guards instead. Hiroshi injects himself with the new drug to prove its effects and continues fighting even after being shot several times by Yamura and Du Qiu. He begins to strangle Mayumi but is shot by Yamura. As he is dying he confesses that Du Qiu just showed up at the wrong time after Hiroshi had murdered the woman. He lunges at Yamura, who shoots him several more times until he is dead. Yoshihiro shoots Rain and Du Qiu but is then shot dead by them and Yamura. Du Qiu tells Rain to stay strong but as she dies she insists that old movies always end this way. Yoshihiro says that he is going to be with his son and shoots himself in the head. At that moment Rika arrives with the police to rescue the survivors and Yamura gives her a sample of the drug that he grabbed from the laboratory. The final scene shows Yamura at a train station bidding Du Qiu farewell, "for a better tomorrow."

Cast

Production

Development

After the death of Japanese actor Ken Takakura, Woo searched for material to commemorate him.[7] During this search, he was contacted by Peter Lam, the head of Media Asia, who asked if he would like to do remake of the Japanese film Manhunt.[7] Woo's Manhunt is an adaptation of the Japanese novel Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare by Juko Nishimura which had previously been adapted into a Japanese film starring Takakura.[8] Woo decided to make a new adaptation of the film, stating that "Ken Takakura is one of my favorite actors in the world. He was my idol, and he has influenced a lot of my films. [Hong Kong actor] Chow Yun-Fat's image in A Better Tomorrow was inspired by Takakura's image and style. I wanted to make a movie dedicated to Ken Takakura."[7] The original film was described by Variety as a "massive hit" when it was released in China in 1978, where it was the first foreign film to be shown in post-Cultural Revolution China.[8]

Pre-production

Manhunt's producers include Gordon Chan and Chan Hing-kai while the film is being backed by the Hong Kong production company Media Asia on a budget ranging between 30 and 40 million.[9][8] Manhunt marked the end of Woo's previous production company Lion Rock Films following the box-office disappointment of The Crossing which led to Woo and Terence Chang disbanding Lion Rock Productions.[10]

Woo stated that he had "got tired of making big-budget movies. I think about going back to the old times, when it wasn't so much about money but about working with a wonderful, smaller crew to make a real movie."[7] Woo expanded on this later stating that there was great pressure in enjoying the creative process when "being controlled by the numbers during the entire process" or deciding "decide how to shoot a scene because of the budget, not inspiration."[11]

The production team includes Japanese art director Yohei Taneda and cinematographer Takuro Ishizaka.[9] The film features a large Japanese cast including Yasuaki Kurata, Jun Kunimura, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Nanami Sakuraba, Naoto Takenaka and Tao Okamoto.[9] In addition, Chinese actress Qi Wei and Korean actress Ha Ji-won were cast in key roles in the film.[9]

Filming

Production started on Manhunt in June 2016 in Osaka.[9] At the beginning of the production, the cast and crew and local government officials held a traditional Japanese kagami biraki ceremony.[9] Woo stated that Manhunt would go back to his older style of filmmaking, referring to his film The Killer specifically.[7]

Manhunt was projected to finished filming in October 2016 and then later reported to be finished filming by the end of November.[9][12] The China Internet Information Center stated that the film had begun post-production in January 2017.[13]

Release

Manhunt was scheduled to have its world premiere at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.[14] The film was shown out of competition.[14] It had press and industry screenings 6 September 2017 and a public screening on 8 September 2017.[15][4] Both Woo and actress Ha Ji-won were scheduled to attended the festival in Venice.[16]

The film received its North American premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival as part of their special presentation program.[17][1][18] Manhunt had its first press screening in Toronto on 7 September 2017 and was scheduled for a public screening 14 September 2017.[18]

The film was initially set for release in China on 16 February 2018.[19][13][9] The China Internet Information Center described that waiting this long for a release is "unusual for a Chinese film".[13] The film was released in China on 24 November 2017.[19]

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 65% based on 25 reviews, and an average rating of 6.1/10.[20] On Metacritic, the film was given an average score of 69 out of 100, based on four critics.[21]

Screen Daily declared the film "a breezy, handsomely mounted fun that shows that Woo has lost neither his mojo nor his sense of poetry." and "Manhunt is a John Woo movie like he used to make ‘em, before his US period including Face/Off and Mission Impossible 2, and recent Asian historical diptychs Red Cliff and The Crossing."[2] Variety described Manhunt as "underwhelming and undercooked" and that the audience who come to Woo for the action scenes would be satisfied while "those of us for whom the director's best work, like the brilliant Hard Boiled or the transcendently ludicrous Face/Off, is marked out not just by superior gun-fu but by the disarming sincerity with which he always sold the silliness, Manhunt is a disappointment."[22] The Hollywood Reporter referred to the film as a "string of sophisticated and thrilling set pieces." and that "Production values are lavish and some of the metallic sets designed by Yohei Taneda have the complexity of an Escher puzzle. Takuro Ishizaka’s lighting gives even the silly final scenes a visually exciting veneer."[23] The review also commented on the story referring to it as "logic-free" and concluded that the film "isn’t going to go down in history as [Woo's] best film"[23] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film four stars out of five, stating that praised the films action sequences as a highlight while stating that the story is a "little absurd" but that the film "offers something that is never in sufficiently plentiful supply: fun."[24]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Manhunt". Toronto International Film Festival. Retrieved 28 August 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 Romney, Jonathan (6 September 2017). "'Manhunt': Venice Review". Screen Daily. Screen International. Archived from the original on 7 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  3. ↑ "吳宇森《追捕》11月上映 團隊赴威尼斯 出席世界首映". Ming Pao. 5 September 2017. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 "John Woo - Zhuibu (Manhunt)". 74 Biennale. Venice International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 21 August 2017. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  5. 1 2 Shackleton, Liz (13 March 2017). "The 24 hottest projects at this year's Hong Kong Filmart". Screen Daily. Screen International. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  6. ↑ TV News Desk (14 March 2018). "Netflix Announces Five Features & One Short Premiering At SFFILM 2018". Broadway World. Wisdom Digital Media. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Coonan, Clifford (13 May 2015). "Cannes: John Woo on Returning to His Roots With 'Manhunt' Reboot (Q&A)". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. Archived from the original on 16 May 2015. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 Lau, Shirley (17 March 2016). "FilMart: Zhang Hanyu, Masaharu Fukuyama Join John Woo's 'Manhunt'". Variety. Penske Business Media. Archived from the original on 14 February 2017. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Shackleton, Liz (20 June 2016). "John Woo's 'Manhunt' starts shooting in Osaka". Screen Daily. Screen International. Archived from the original on 9 July 2016. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  10. ↑ Shackleton, Liz (30 June 2017). "Terence Chang talks China market challenges and new ventures". Screen Daily. Screen International. Archived from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
  11. ↑ Frater, Patrick (11 September 2017). "Toronto: John Woo on Why 'Manhunt' Is a Return to His Roots". Variety. Penske Business Media. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
  12. ↑ Shackleton, Liz (5 November 2016). "AFM: Media Asia launches 'Love Off The Cuff' sales". Screen Daily. Screen International. Archived from the original on 22 January 2017. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
  13. 1 2 3 Rui, Zhang (16 January 2017). "John Woo remakes 'Manhunt' for career reboot". China.org.cn. China Internet Information Center. Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
  14. 1 2 Anderson, Ariston (7 August 2017). "Venice Film Festival Adds John Woo's 'Manhunt' to Lineup". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
  15. ↑ "74 Mostra Internatzionale D'Arte Cinematografica La Biennale Di Venezia - Programme" (PDF). 74 Biennale (in Italian). Venice International Film Festival. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  16. ↑ Doo, Rumy (24 August 2017). "Ha Ji-won to attend Venice Film Fest for John Woo's 'Manhunt'". The Korea Herald. Herald Corporation. Archived from the original on 28 August 2017. Retrieved 28 August 2017.
  17. ↑ Wong, Jessica (15 August 2017). "TIFF 2017: Aaron Sorkin, Brie Larson, Louis C.K. films added". CBC News. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 16 August 2017.
  18. 1 2 Fulvi, Giovanna. "Manhunt - John Woo". TIFFR. Toronto International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 28 August 2017. Retrieved 28 August 2017.
  19. 1 2 "追捕 - Manhunt". Gewara (in Chinese). Maoyan. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  20. ↑ "Manhunt (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  21. ↑ "Manhunt Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 19 September 2017.
  22. ↑ Kiang, Jessica (7 September 2017). "Venice Film Review: 'Manhunt'". Variety. Penske Business Media. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  23. 1 2 Young, Deborah (13 September 2017). "'Manhunt': Film Review | TIFF 2017". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  24. ↑ Bradshaw, Peter (15 September 2017). "Manhunt review – John Woo rolls back the years with big pharma bullet-barrage". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 18 September 2017.
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