Wind Blast

On the surface, it’s the story of a bounty hunter trying to capture a killer and bring him to justice before a pair of assassins can put him in the ground. Directed by Qunshu Gao (The Message), it’s both stylish and action packed, and the performances are all strong, particularly that of Yihong Duan as the killer and Francis Ng and Yu Nan as the assassins. What makes Wind Blast more than just another good Chinese action movie is the way Gao frames his story as a modern day western. He sets the story in the kind of barren desert landscape John Ford used to such great effect in his John Wayne westerns, and although there’s a clear understanding of who the good guy is and who is the bad guy, he gives the story a revisionist twist that reinvents the genre in subtle and surprising ways.