Watch A Touch of Sin For Free

Let's be realistic.

Admirable film.

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

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Do not focus on the rate. The film is worth watching even if it could have been much better and some of the details in the scenario are clearly a fail beginning with the lack of coherence of the characters. In clear, it's hard to follow them and to understand them. A Touch of Sin turns out to be a hell of a lot of sins, of violence, of crimes and of desperation. During the film I hesitated between skepticism, bewilders or admiration for this rough and tough portrait of China through different stories that are not necessarily linked together. A touch of sin is about four characters in four different regions in China who are going through hard times, because of globalization, corruption or a closed system. All these things will lead them to crime, suicide and the metaphor of the collapse of the system. It is always better to make a critic out of a movie you have fancied but not all of it is to throw away, and I would recommend to watch that movie for its originality and the ambitious scenario of the director. In short it was a great project and maybe some mistakes could have been avoided, but in the end it's indeed an interesting director to follow in the upcoming years.

after finally watching A Touch Of Sin this evening at ACMI with some friends, it's left me stuck in 2 worlds - missing Jia Zhang-Ke's meditative & lyrical work of the past & liking the new approach to these social wrongs in a more brutal / violent / cynical manner... first thoughts were quite similar to when i watched another master film maker Kim Ki-Duk's "Pieta" which after further digestion, thought & reading became my fave film of 2013 - both films show violence in a heavy way but still portray it in a meditative & profound manner, using symbolic moments to remind the audience about these issues... in hindsight i really like this film and where Jia is going with his approach... considering this is a narrative driven film over his powerful and thought provoking documentaries, all the killings were based on real events the director read in blogs... the film is a vessel to show these separate events as one about alienation, the varying classes in china & corruption / political flaws... here's a good article from Slant which covers a lot of how i feel towards the films - 8/10 http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/a-touch-of-sin

While cinema should have elements of universal appeal, to appreciate "A Touch of Sin" it's useful to have some sense of Chinese society and history. Many of the elements in A Touch of Sin would resonate well with a Chinese audience, but I'm afraid most Westerners wouldn't catch them. The very fact that dialogue in each scenario is conducted in a very distinctive (mutually unintelligible) local dialect is totally missed by the English subtitles (indeed, in China, the film would need standard Mandarin subtitles!)-- but the issue of dialect and local origins in a 'wanderer's society" like China would have a huge impact on the Chinese viewing audience.Other reviewers mention that when violence occurs, bystanders don't seem to have any reaction -- this can be seen as a direct homage to the great Lu Xun (China's foremost modernist writer of the 1920s) who claimed that his very entry into the world of literature was inspired by a photograph of a public execution in China --where gawking bystanders in the background of the photo had no reaction to the violence happening before them. Similarly, the "assassination at the temple" (first story) can be seen as a direct reference to the famous 1935 assassination of the notorious Shanghai warlord Sun Chuanfang as he was praying in a Buddhist temple (an assassination that was seen as totally righteous and virtuous by the Chinese public at the time). And finally -- the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party, and the entire People's Republic of China -- is due to an ideology that the social injustices caused by capitalism must be solved by violence. (Think Dahai's killing spree, but on a mass scale). If you want to know why the film is not shown in China, think no further than this!!We always analyze Western films within their cultural and historical contexts....to not do so with non-Western films does an injustice to the film and the film-maker.

Nobody can deny that like all economic systems, "Capitalism" too is condemned time and again by filmmakers. What is important to note is that "A Touch of Sin" is the first serious attempt by a Chinese director to berate capitalism which is causing irreparable damages to Chinese nation especially to its ordinary population which is unable to figure out how to deal with money and its implications on a person's life. In all frankness, calling "A Touch of Sin" a feature-film would be a travesty of cinema as it is merely a well stitched collection of four different short films about ordinary people in China who have succumbed to pressures. Although it has been highly praised by media all over the world,this new film by Chinese director Jia Zhangke is utterly predictable and does not offer anything new. One wonders on what grounds was it selected for best screenplay prize at Cannes Film Festival 2013 ? When one leaves an independent form of filmmaking for more commercial style of filmmaking, weaknesses in the film are clearly evident. For example-There is an exaggerated scene involving a business man with a wad of currency notes who continually pummels a woman to prove his point that capitalism has not left any scope for human feelings.This scene could have used less violence but Jia Zhangke chose to dramatize it to such an extent that it became almost unbearable to watch.Lastly,this film is replete with numerous scenes of this type where "too much" is done in the name of sophistication at a time when "too little" could also have easily eased things for the film,the director and the viewers.