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Paul Fonoroff

Crazy Racer 
Huang Bo, Jiu Kong, Jack Kao, Yung Cheung 
Director: Ning Hao      
Ning Hao is no flash in the pan director. Three years after Crazy Stone established the Beijing Film Academy graduate as one of the most inventive writer-directors to burst upon the 21st-century Chinese movie scene, he's done it again with this  extremely dark farce.  
Not as laugh-out-loud funny as Crazy Stone, it contains a cast of characters who are scoundrels with few redeeming qualities. Crazy Racer takes its black  humour seriously, with no concessions to audience-pandering niceties. 
Luckily,  there are enough moviegoers on Ning's wavelength that the auteur can get away with eschewing  sentimentality, romance and patriotism and still rake in  100 million yuan at the box office, as Crazy Racer did during its recent Lunar  New Year  release. 
The narrative's off-kilter  centre of gravity is down-on-his-luck cyclist Geng Hao (screwball comedian Huang Bo).   The ragtag delivery man inadvertently gets involved with drug running, murder-for-hire, a frozen corpse, cremation ashes gone awry and other predicaments, although he is hardly aware of anything  beyond  his self-centred universe. That world is largely limited to a beautifully preserved old  neighbourhood of Xiamen where there are few reminders of the modern, urban China.  
At the same time, Crazy Racer is rooted in contemporary realities as it pokes fun at criminals, cops and  commercialism.  Any philosophical ruminations, though, take a back seat to the fast-paced antics as the picture races to a crazy finish that ties up its loose ends with appropriate untidiness.  



Crazy Racer 