Have a Nice Day [Hao jile] [Dashijie] **** (2017, voices of Changlong Zhu, Kai Cao, Jian Liu) – Movie Review

I have good news! Writer director Jian Liu’s dark and brutal noir animation film 2017 Have a Nice Day [Hao jile] is brilliantly smart and stylish. In his simple but complicated story set in a grungy, run-down industrial town in southern China, a bag with a million yuan draws various low lives into a gory conflict.

Its success is not about the mundane nature of its typical gangster story of violent, greedy low lives, but just about how darned visually exciting it is as a comic book come to life on screen. Have a Nice Day is bit of an international art film that deserves a UK as well as Chinese-speaking audience. So it is very disappointing that the English sub-titles are partly illegible at the Odeon Haymarket again, belying its status as a Luxe cinema in London’s West End!

Have a Nice Day is satisfying but it has a noticeably short running time of 77 minutes, leaving you begging for more or hungry for a sequel. There is also a very exciting soundtrack performed by The Shanghai Restoration Project featuring Hooshere Bezdikian.

Jian Liu points out: ‘Have a Nice Day is an animation film, but it’s penetrated through and through with the philosophy of realism.’ Jian Liu voices Fang Yuanjun and Li Er, is the co-producer (with Cheng Yang), as well as writer, animation director, background artist, film editor and key animator.

Jian Liu was dissatisfied with the Chinese title Hao jile (Excellent) the movie premiered with and was prouder of the English title he gave it, Have a Nice Day, because it refers to how the events of the movie occur within 24 hours. So he changed the Chinese title to Dashijie (Big World) before the movie’s first public screenings in any Chinese-speaking region.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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