I never considered Henning Mankell a bad writer, but if this movie was adapted from his books, then he's not good enough to be called one of the best novelists from Scandinavian countries, not in the least. It's obvious that Henning Mankell were not familiar with anything about China, because this novel clearly showed that he didn't know jacksh@t about China and the Chinese people, everything he wrote was just by hearsay and imagination. Then even more unfortunately, this TV movie was adapted by an even moronic screenplay writer, and then further messed up by an even worse director.
The whole setting of this movie just looked funny, weird, outdated and contradictory. The era, the time sequences, the localities....what exactly was the time frame? Before 1980? Early 1980? Early 1990? Or early 2000? Because China had changed so rapidly, every decade after 1980 was totally different.But whatever you could come up during and after you have watched, simply felt contrite, stupid and exaggerated. The most ridiculous scenes were those to do with China and the Chinese, not just the Chinese in this movie speaking German. Almost everything in this movie related to China or the Chinese, just looked absurd and wrong. The shitty hotel, the crappy restaurant, the two brother and sister, and in that particular town were just laughable big jokes that just came out of the 19th century. The only thing I felt most a bit lucky during watching was about the novelist, the screenplay writer and the director, who at least didn't make the Chinese people still look like they were in 200 years ago's Chin Dynasty. Henning Mankell and the production team of this movie seemed to just follow Hollywood's stupidity and narrow mindness to ridicule everything about China, a permanent stubborn yet stupid stereotyped belief about China and the Chinese people. Even the bribery and the corruption of the brother looked silly and shallow, not even close.
The movie had wasted lot of production budget and manpower on the mass murder scenes from the very beginning, then spent lot of money to shoot some weird scenes of Mainland China, but since the whole scenario and plot simply looked stupid and shallow, you just couldn't buy the dramatic mess at all.
The whole setting of this movie just looked funny, weird, outdated and contradictory. The era, the time sequences, the localities....what exactly was the time frame? Before 1980? Early 1980? Early 1990? Or early 2000? Because China had changed so rapidly, every decade after 1980 was totally different.But whatever you could come up during and after you have watched, simply felt contrite, stupid and exaggerated. The most ridiculous scenes were those to do with China and the Chinese, not just the Chinese in this movie speaking German. Almost everything in this movie related to China or the Chinese, just looked absurd and wrong. The shitty hotel, the crappy restaurant, the two brother and sister, and in that particular town were just laughable big jokes that just came out of the 19th century. The only thing I felt most a bit lucky during watching was about the novelist, the screenplay writer and the director, who at least didn't make the Chinese people still look like they were in 200 years ago's Chin Dynasty. Henning Mankell and the production team of this movie seemed to just follow Hollywood's stupidity and narrow mindness to ridicule everything about China, a permanent stubborn yet stupid stereotyped belief about China and the Chinese people. Even the bribery and the corruption of the brother looked silly and shallow, not even close.
The movie had wasted lot of production budget and manpower on the mass murder scenes from the very beginning, then spent lot of money to shoot some weird scenes of Mainland China, but since the whole scenario and plot simply looked stupid and shallow, you just couldn't buy the dramatic mess at all.