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The Message

KUO-FU CHEN , QUNSHU GAO
China, 2009, 120 minutes, Color

Set in 1942 amid the Japanese invasion of China, this lavish spy thriller keeps us guessing and rethinking what we know until the very end. After the resistance manages a series of assassinations of members of the Japanese-controlled puppet government, the head of the Counterintelligence Office gathers a group of suspects in a remote castle in hopes of uncovering the mole, code-named "Phantom." In the darkly lit confines of this lush prison, cruel Colonel Takeda (Huang Xiaoming) attempts to unmask the spy, pitting each suspect against the other. His devious mental and physical methods start a cat-and-mouse game with the cornered Phantom. Through stylized images, we see the increasingly desperate messages the Phantom tries to relay to the resistance leader, known only as "Magnum." The action plays out like a particularly suspenseful Agatha Christie mystery by way of 24, against the backdrop of actual historic events. —Dave Nuttycombe

In Mandarin with English subtitles

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