Watch Blind Shaft For Free

How sad is this?

Beautiful, moving film.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

So you think "In Cold Blood" was chilling? Or how about "The Honeymoon Killers"? "Strangers on a Train"? "The Onion Field"? or "Rope"? Most people think "Silence of the Lambs" is the ultimate serial-killer film; and it is very good, I must say. But these are all Disney tales compared to this Chinese film."Blind Shaft", directed and written by Li Yang is the best serial-killer film ever made. Sez who? Sez me; I have seen them all; and this is it. Most serial-killer films deal with a clever cop and a crazed killer, who eventually trips himself up. That is not the case here. As in the film "Rope" by Hitchcock, there are two antagonists; partners in the unspeakable. But in "Rope" we are only talking about one victim. Multiply that by several planned killings, and you have the intensity of "Blind Shaft" . Two working-class miners who concoct an ingenious scheme to make lots of money by killing completely innocent victims. It is absolutely fascinating to watch. Killing to them is like taking a shower or eating lunch; just part of the day. A rare treat if you are lucky enough to see the film.

Although many disasters go unreported by mine operators afraid of prosecution, annual deaths in China's coalmines are thought to exceed 10,000. Only last week, 166 miners were killed in a fire in the Chenjiashan Coal Mine in China's Shaanxi Province, a disaster that came shortly after an earlier explosion in Central China in which 148 miners were killed. Local media reports suggest negligence and greed as the causes of the deadly fire at the Chenjiashan mine, specifically by management's pursuit of a year-end bonus for extra-production while failing to take the time to properly ventilate a shaft. Blind Shaft, the savagely humorous first feature by Li Yang, dramatizes conditions in China's mines, making a direct attack on China's headlong dash to capitalism where greed seems more important than human life. Banned in China, the film combines gritty realism with uncompromising social commentary.Adapted from a novel by Liu Qingbang, itinerant coalminers Song Jinming (Li Yixiang) and Tang Zhaoyang (Wang Shuangbao) devise a scheme to extort money from corrupt mine owners by convincing a fellow worker to pose as their relative. When they kill him and fake an industrial accident, they collect the compensation owed to a relative from the more than willing owner, eager to prevent an investigation into his mine's deteriorating condition. Tang is older and more cynical. Song still has plans to live a good life that includes schooling for his teenage son and both dutifully send part of their blood money home to their family, justifying their criminal behavior by saying "China has a shortage of everything except people".Short of money, Tang recruits a naïve sixteen-year old boy, Yuan Fengming (Wang Baoqiang), whom he spots queuing for work in a city square but their carefully laid out plans begin to show cracks. The boy reminds Song of his own son and he develops protective feelings for him. Yuan, whose father may have been killed by the same scam artists, is anxious to find any kind of work to earn enough money to enroll in school and attaches himself to Song who pretends that he is his uncle. The boy, though a runaway out on his own, does not have any street smarts and his innocence is a sharp contrast to the wily scam operators. In his spare time, he reads History textbooks because they are "interesting" and spends his wages (after wiring some home) to buy the two conspirators a chicken, completely unsuspecting what their intentions are.When the two find work in a nearby mine, Tang is eager to get on with the business, but Song keeps putting things off. The two plan to murder the boy but first want to make his last days a bit pleasurable, introducing him to wine, women and song. In a revealing scene at a bar, Song offers to sing a song called "Long live socialism", but he is reminded that the words have now been changed to "The reactionaries were never overcome. They came back with their US dollars, liberating China". Suspense increases until the film turns in an unexpected but deeply rewarding direction. Blind Shaft won the Silver Bear at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival and has received almost unanimous critical praise in the West. It is one of the best films I've seen this year.

Song and Tang are two conmen who make their money through murder and deception. They live among the unemployed drifters of China, latch onto lonely young men, convince them to pretend to be one of their relatives and then the three get a job together in a mine. After a few days, Song and Tang kill their companion and make it look like a cave in - extorting the bosses for compensation in return for silence. They have been doing this for a while to good profit and plan to continue when they pick up the sixteen year old Yuan, creating a moral crisis for Song.I was not sure what this film was about when I sat to watch it but the fact that it had been made as an underground film (literally) without the permission of the Government and that was enough reason for me to give it a bit of my time. As one would expect from such a film, the plot is a mix of narrative and comment. The comment is delivered in the form of us seeing the working conditions and the poverty `enjoyed' by the citizens who are outside of what we would consider the `proper' economic system. In this regard the film is interesting if not totally gripping. The narrative is just as gripping but it is less satisfying as it seems to be secondary to the other aspects of the film. The characters do just enough to carry the story along, in fact they win over the audience well enough for us to care about all the main players - essential in a film that is driven more by them than by action.To that end, the cast (a mix of professionals and non-professionals) deliver the goods pretty well. Yuan's innocence and dedication to the characters is key to the film and Wang carries this off well. The elder Wang is also good but has a simpler character to deliver - however it is to his credit that his `bad' guy never lost my interest. Li is the best thing in the film even if he goes through an fairly recognisable crisis of confidence. Yang Li's documentary background shows through with the realistic direction and the great use of locations - all the more impressive as many of them must have been difficult to shoot in.However, the lack of events means that the narrative is a little less than satisfying when it comes to the end. We more or less know where it is going and the film uses the ending as much as a closure to the narrative as it is a further comment of the people's place within the system. Despite this it is still worth seeing even if it may not match the hype that the awards and reviews on this page would have you believe. Overall a good film that is worthy with good direction and acting even if the commentary of society and narrative don't sit as well together as one would hope.

This powerful film just took top honors at the Tribeca Film Festival, winning in the category of best narrative feature. All the competitors were first-time feature directors, so don't expect Bertollucci here, but this is a view of working-class Chinese characters that will grip you from start to finish. Thankfully, the programmers at this festival are daring enough to support this film in spite of the Chinese government's ban on it. Let's hope it findsdistribution soon.Why do we love movie gangsters? What is it about the good-badman thatdraws us in to Cagney at his selfish best, or a zillion noir protagonists? All of that is here, and more in the writing, and the low-key acting never threatens to spoil the bleak mood, either. This is DETOUR, PATHS OF GLORY, SWEETSIXTEEN (Ken Loach's latest) territory. The scene where the two miners singkaraoke, wasted with two sex workers in a cheap brothel is enough to make agovernment blacklist and everyone's else's must-see list at the same time.These men have spent their lives being exploited by crooked mine owners andare fighting back in a crude and _extremely_ callous way, and the reserve with which the scene plays out conveys so much more than even the best socialistrealism of Sayles' MATEWAN ever did. (A great film in its' own right, don't get me wrong. But the situations for coal miners depicted in BLIND SHAFT are allthe more sobering since it is contemporary.) Don't sweat the ending of a tale like this. First-time directors should always get a pass on wrapping a film up. If they get the characters across convincingly (and here they do) then what comes in the last reel hardly matters. Gangsters back in the day knew enough to leave a theater before the moral was delivered. The real message is in the body of a film, where the mirror is held up to real life.