With mahjong-themed nicknames like Fortune (Ailei Yu) and Hen (Yang Mi), the group’s members battle to stay on prime of their always escalating scheme. As a result of it’s not only one suitcase, however two, and the second comprises a physique, and it is probably not lifeless but. The bag-snatchers hunch over a hotpot desk and assessment their choices backstage on the opera.
The irregular tempo and unsteady tone of “Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a Hotpot” might sound manic for those who examine one scene to the following. The joys of discovery nonetheless issues greater than any given twist, doled out with sufficient panache to make a two-hour-plus caper fly by. That’s not nothing in a film that’s extra about yarn-spinning than wool-gathering. Every new twist inadvertently units up the following whereas seemingly asserting itself with unrehearsed spontaneity. As a result of it’s not a random suitcase stuffed with loot and the man within the different bag isn’t only a mark. The trick is to let the story prepare dinner at its personal tempo, effervescent and overflowing with such regularity that by the point the film’s over, probably the most spectacular factor isn’t the integrity of the plot, however the seamlessness of its presentation.
The frantic however simple interaction between the 4 precept solid members—plus the physique, Director Fu (Tian Yu)—handily distinguishes “Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a Hotpot” from different latest programmers. Dialogue isn’t elevated to treasured post-Tarantino ranges of dramatic bombast; it is extra like unassuming hyperlinks in a perpetually spun-out chain of exhaustively mentioned occasions. The characters on this film don’t merely discuss, but in addition carry out for and with one another. They’ve secrets and techniques that they should share, they usually additionally occur to work effectively collectively, even once they’re stepping on one another’s toes. “Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a Hotpot” has large escape room vitality, is what I’m attempting to say.
There are some excellent one-liners, like when Seventy Grand (Li Jiu Xiao) sees a pile of loot and gasps: “Poverty restricted my creativeness.” However most of what’s charming about this film is its characters’ use of dialogue as a annoyed negotiating tactic. I’m nonetheless laughing at an change from early within the film when the group briefly considers what to do with Fu’s physique. Seventy Grand means that they “Dismember it!” And after a brief pause, 9 Truffles solemnly agrees. They then focus on how a lot of the physique every individual ought to minimize up and who amongst them will get to make use of the massive cleaver, which leads 9 Truffles to insist, “That is what I can take at most. No arms.”
