风中的火焰 or Flames in the Wind is a slow paced, Northeastern suspense thriller in a similar vein as 2023's hit The Long Season. It is set in a a desolate mining town in Ningxia where time moves slowly and the future looks bleak. After graduating from high school in 1994, three childhood friends are chomping at the bit to escape from their dead-end town. Both Liu Bai and his girl Mei Wei are university bound, if they can somehow find the funds to make it work. The less academically inclined Lei Fugui means to work his way up in the world. One night, they find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time and become entangled in a secret that changes their lives and sends them down divergent paths.

Ten years later, as the town is being relocated, fate draws the three friends back to the town they had tried so hard to leave behind. A burnt corpse is dumped outside the police station. It reminds veteran cop Chu Zhi Qiang of a cold case that shook the town a decade ago. He must convince Zhang Tao, his new captain to relook at the case with new eyes. Their investigation reopens old questions about what exactly happened that one night so long ago. Nobody really knows the full story; everyone's account is some combination of their own version of the truth and speculation. But a half truth is a whole lie and thus narrative skilfully builds a compelling case against each of the suspects based on their half-lies.

While the narrative builds tension masterfully, this is one of those suspense thrillers where there is no criminal mastermind or genius crime busting cop; it is just about bad luck, worse decisions and human tragedy. What makes it superb is the acting; it is so authentic and raw that I deeply empathised with the characters' struggles, motivations and imperfections. Jiang Qiming never disappoints and his portrayal of Liu Bai as an enigmatic, still waters run deep kind of character anchors the narrative. Underneath the surface lurks so many complex emotions; guilt, anger, duplicity, desperation, love-hate, regret; all conveyed with nuance and micro-expressions. I was surprised by Yang Caiyu's Mei Wei. I thought she was just a pretty face playing a pretty face and I disliked Mei Wei's selfishness and sense of self preservation from the get go. But as she reveals her vulnerabilities, I felt terribly sorry for this coal miner's daughter who was born in the wrong town and her thirst for a better life. I also could see why the equally mercenary Fugui preferred a much simpler woman to such a complicated one.

Where this drama stumbles is in the pacing, the overall plot logic and the ending. The storytelling is well paced and riveting until the final 4-6 episodes, where the final denouement is delayed to linger too long on Zhang Tao's boring marital and personal issues. Plot logic is an issue from the start as this drama is helmed by a Taiwanese director that is clearly unfamiliar with China's legal framework. Some of the issues Chinese netizens highlight is that in that kind of town, a security guard is effectively deputised as a policeman when it comes to enforcing the law on premises. The legal framework is also depicted as a very harsh one that doesn't take into account mitigating circumstances including self-defense and hands out inequitable sentences that don't distinguish between murder and manslaughter. After the fillers, the ending felt anti-climatic, incredibly sad and unnecessarily cruel. On some level it doesn't matter because this is really a character story that delivers in spades. On some other level, it left me feeling somewhat dissatisfied because there was no justice or closure, just a legal process. I do highly recommend it for the acting but I cannot rate this better than 8/10 because the plot is unworthy of this cast.



P.S. Leslie Cheung's iconic 1990s Cantopop hit The Wind Blows On 风继续吹 perfectly captures the ethos of this story.