Noir comedy in China
A stolen bag of money brings all sorts of riffraff into the open in a small industrial town in China in Liu Jian’s “Have a Nice Day,” a bleak, at times fascinating but strangely inert Chinese animated film.
In a style that reminds one of Japanese anime, Liu favors clean, spare visuals with muted colors. It’s an effective look, but Liu’s scattershot script doesn’t match his visual ambition.
Xiao Zhang, a driver for a crime lord, steals a bag of money from his boss, Uncle Liu, to pay for his girlfriend’s plastic surgery. Not too bright, Xiao checks into a seedy motel and spends time at an Internet cafe, flashing some of the cash. The motel owner and his girlfriend, involved in a shady side business, take the money when he falls asleep.
When the motel owner is accidentally knocked unconscious, the girlfriend makes off with the bag. And so it goes.
Tracking the cash is a blackclad hit man, hired by Uncle Liu to get the money back.
“Have a Nice Day” is part noir, part black comedy, filled with lowlife characters with get-rich-quick schemes.
Much of the film plays as a commentary on the economic and political problems in China, with lots of sidebars for philosophical discussion — there are references to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and “The Godfather.” The problem, though, is the thin, meandering story line and the slow pace.
Its drawing card is its animation — industrial landscapes, bloody carcasses in a butcher shop, messy hotel rooms and a strange music video that satirizes China’s material consumption.
When Uncle Liu is torturing an old friend who is having an affair with his wife, he says, “You told me that this world is a world of madmen and fools. Madmen stop at nothing, snatching fame and money, and the fools are happy with what they have. Are you a madman or a fool?”
Every character in Liu’s film is both madman and fool, it seems.