“BBlind Shaftis a new film about the poorest people in China. Echoing the realism found in films such as John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath" and de Sica's "The Bicycle Thief," director Li Yang has crafted a film that feels so real that it's not surprising he started out making documentaries, not state-sponsored melodramas. The film is not an accident but a poetic exploration of the catch-22 existing in today's China. At the film’s core is a grifitng duo killing off people to profit off the insurance. The film takes us through the mechanics of the scam so quickly that it’s breathtaking.

Without any fanfare or any score for that matter, events in the film happen matter of factly, and even when the men indulge in prostitution reminiscent of the scenes in "Y Tu Mama Tambien," it's not shocking so much as an extension of the vulgarity already found in the men and in capitalist China. When they pass by a movie theater, some trashy American action film is showing. When they sing karaoke, the only songs they know are about the wonders of socialism. There is no beauty to the lives of these men.

Enter a young teenager who promises to be their next victim. The duo takes him in and tries to acquaint him with the hard life as surrogate fathers. But therein lies the catch-22. These men don't know any more than the kid does. When they catch him studying a textbook, they chastise him for its uselessness. The kid's’s ideals of sending money home, caring for one's family, finding one's father have little relevance to these men who’vhave lost all sense of value.

"Blind Shaft" refers to the coal mines where the men must labor with only a hard hat and a pick ax. But the title could easily be referring to the characters, one more morally blind than the next. The blind leading the blind is the film's premise, and when the opening title sequence shows the rim of light getting smaller as you descend the mineshaft, it's also a metaphor for the way China's new era is a descent into the unknown.

The end of the film is equally as breathtaking as the beginning, but now the entire cycle of corruption comes into focus. The film subtly suggests that the boy has learned to become like the men he despised not by choice but by the system that created them all.
-Howard Ho