Two dumb robbers, a disabled but tough woman, a stubborn security guard — these are the main characters of A Cool Fish, a story about nobodies (the film’s Chinese title, 无名之辈, roughly translates to “the nameless”).
With Hollywood big-budget productions Venom, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Johnny English Strikes Again, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald all currently in Chinese theaters, A Cool Fish — a small-budget production lacking A-list stars — shocked industry watchers by hitting the #1 spot of the nationwide box office over the weekend. It’s also earned a rating of 9.2/10 on Maoyan, a film statistics platform, and 8.3/10 on IMDb-like review site Douban.
When A Cool Fish hit theaters on November 16, it’s safe to say that no one was expecting it to earn $10 million USD at the box office in the space of just over a week. Yet after nine days of word-of-mouth promotion across Chinese social media, people have started to compare the film to this year’s other big box office dark horse, Dying to Survive, as both films share a penchant for dark humor and realistic storylines.
As for its cinematographic style, A Cool Fish might remind cinema-goers of Ning Hao’s Crazy Stone, which featured a refreshing style of fast-paced, multi-line-narratives in 2006. Read the full story on RADII.
Ren Suxi
– This story originally appeared on radiichina.com.
