Missing Gun

A thoughtful film
The Missing Gun (Xun Quang) is a surprising film. At first it appears to be a comedy, but soon reveals itself to be much more.

Ma Shan (Jiang Wen) is a detective in the People's Republic of China who wakes up one day to find that his gun was stolen at his sister's wedding the night before. This is a very serious matter that threatens to end Ma's career - or worse - and bring shame upon his department. The movie follows Ma's efforts to find out who stole the gun, which is subsequently used in a murder. It also presents an accurate picture of life in China.

I couldn't help admire Ma's abilities as a very sharp detective, but it is his devotion to duty that left me thinking about this film long after it finished. There is a wonderful scene where Ma is chasing a criminal and, after arresting him, explains where his power to catch him comes from. But the film touched me most as a meditation on personal integrity, and what it means to honor that integrity.

Not at all what you might expect...
The Missing Gun aka Xun Qiang is one of those films that creeps in under the radar and surprises you. Arriving on DVD with no reputation and packaged as an action movie, it's really a rather good drama with more in common with The Bicycle Thieves than your average Hong Kong action movie (although thankfully the hero leaves his kid at home on his quest). In fact, it's not even that, but a Chinese drama about a small-town cop (the wonderfully hangdog Wen Jiang) who wakes after a drunken wedding reception to find his gun missing and no-one able to remember the previous night's events any better than he can. The poor small town China setting is intriguing, a mixture of mostly old with flashes of the new China - supermarkets, imported cars and Italian suits. Of course, this being a Chinese film, the latter are frowned upon as the fruits of corruption, but it's not an overt propaganda piece, more a character driven drama executed with an interesting but strangely appropriate visual style...

Not a bad movie, but not too noteworthy either
I wanted to like this movie, but I had some issues with it. The pacing was slower than I would have liked, and it seemed like too many people had a motive to take the gun except for the person who actually did take it. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense and unanswered questions. For instance the cop said that he was carrying his gun while at the wedding because there was an escaped convict, but then he got so drunk that he couldn't remember what had happened the next day. I also didn't believe that people would be put in jail one day and let loose the next without anything happening to clear their name. I don't want to ruin the ending for anyone, but it left a couple of questions unanswered. It wasn't a bad movie, it just wasn't that exciting either.

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