OLD STONE – The Blu Review

Review by Roger Carpenter

Lao Shi is a doting family man and a hard worker.  Working as a taxi driver in a large, Chinese urban center, he spends long hours transporting riders in horrific traffic conditions while his wife runs an in-home nursery.  Their dream is to save enough money to expand the nursery into another space as their small apartment is already cramped for them and their two small children.  Shi and his wife both work hard to save for their dreams.  There is constant financial pressure but Shi is an optimist and he doesn’t let it get him down.

One day he is forced to drive a drunken passenger who becomes unruly, grabs Shi’s arm, and causes Shi to hit a motorcyclist.  Shi is very concerned for the victim’s welfare and is so busy calling an ambulance and dealing with the crowd of onlookers he doesn’t realize his fare has slipped into another cab and moved on.  With heavy traffic, a delayed ambulance, an angry crowd, and his own guilt, Shi decides to transport the victim to a nearby hospital himself.  While there he is asked to complete some intake paperwork and thus, according to Chinese law, becomes the financial caretaker of the victim.  He is asked to pay the initial—and quite substantial—fee, which he does, cleaning out most of his family’s savings in the process.

Thinking things will be resolved in a few days, Shi doesn’t tell his wife of the trouble.  The next day he meets with his boss and the insurance company only to find out that because he didn’t follow company policy insurance won’t pay.  Shi has effectively ruined his life to help a stranger.  Over the following days things continue to unravel:  police uninterested in his plight; lawyers uninterested in helping him; the inability to work because his car has been impounded; the mounting hospital bills; the discovery of the drunk, who is actually a rich businessman, and his dismissal of any culpability in the accident.  Growing increasingly frustrated by the bureaucracy and red tape, feeling pressure at the mounting medical bills, and becoming alienated from his family who have left him, Shi decides to take things into his own hands.  Though the victim eventually recovers enough to leave the hospital, Shi must still cover the man’s medical bills.  He’s been told they could be chronic throughout the man’s life.  With no one interested in helping him, Shi decides the only thing to do is to kill the man whom he originally saved.  His plan set in motion, Shi follows the man for a night of drinking, driving, revelations, and ultimately, violence—but with a twist.

First-time feature director Johnny Ma is no stranger to the screen, having directed a handful of acclaimed short films over the past decade or so.  While many critics and reviewers inevitably compare Old Stone with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver—the sense of alienation in a large, urban metropolis, the theme of a corrupt society failing anonymous citizens, the inevitable use of violence when trying to solve these problems—I think Old Stone can also be compared favorably with Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down, another tale of urban alienation and bureaucratic failings which push a man to the brink.

Sure, actor Gang Chen’s portrayal of Lau Shi parallels DeNiro’s portrayal of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.  But DeNiro’s Bickle is unhinged at the outset.  Perhaps caused by his service in the Vietnam War, perhaps not, Bickle is a delusional paranoid who thinks it appropriate to take a first date to a porno theater and becomes her stalker before the phrase was coined.  His character arc develops over a long period of time and his frustrations seem to stem from deep-rooted societal problems.  In contrast, Michael Douglas in Falling Down portrays a character who, while frustrated over the breakup of his marriage and the loss of his job, is pushed to the brink over a single day by several seemingly trivial incidents.  Lau Shi is perhaps more closely related to Douglas’ Bill Foster than to the paranoia of Travis Bickle.  That being said, Shi’s arc may be all the more poignant because it was borne of a truly altruistic behavior as opposed to a mental illness or a series of unrelated yet unfortunate events that befell an already-frustrated man.

Ma, who also wrote the script, has created a film with a decidedly slow burn.  We feel the mounting tension that Shi feels, first at the ridiculousness of being punished by not following the rules when choosing to save a life.  This tension is deftly managed and expertly ratcheted up as Shi first humiliates himself to save his family and, when this doesn’t work, slowly loses everything he loves:  his job; his wife; his money.  People in better situations than Shi offer no salvation as his lawyer is disinterested and the rich businessman who was the source of the problem is summarily dismissive.  And even though one senses a redemptive element in Shi even as he carries out his plan for assassinating the source of all his trouble, there is one final, searing piece of information which Shi discovers that ultimately solidifies his plan.  But can someone who, for all intents and purposes, is just an Everyday Joe, go through with murder?  Ma has one last trick up his sleeve as the final denouement to this powerful film.

Old Stone is a gripping drama about what man can be driven to do to man and a powerful debut from an up-and-coming director with a great future.  The film comes with several special features which include some brief behind-the-scenes footage, the theatrical trailer, as well as two deleted scenes and an alternate ending to the film, which is arguably better than the actual ending of the film.  Finally, Ma’s 2014 short film, A Grand Canal, is also included in the package.  The short film is also a powerfully dramatic account of the tragic events of a boat man trying to save his fleet as seen through the eyes of his small son.

Old Stone was released on Blu-Ray January 30 by Kino Lorber and can be purchased directly through Kino Lorber at kinolorber.com or through Amazon.