The First Shot (2024)

Cops and Robbers

The First Shot 雪迷宫 is a classic cops and robbers crime thriller featuring China's early efforts to combat drug trafficking in the late 1990s. It seamlessly fuses together proven themes of friendship, loyalty and betrayal, and good vs evil; all the elements that make this genre enduringly popular. It is set in a fictional city Halan in frigidly cold Northeast China and is about a newly established anti-narcotics team's early efforts to combat an influx of drugs into the region. Lacking basic knowledge of synthetic drug manufacturing, Zhang Bei is sent to Huazhou in Southern China to recruit Gu Yiran, an expert chemistry professor to join his team. Due to the initial influx of drugs into Southern China in the earlly 1990s, Gu Yiran's familiarity with the habits and tactics of the traffickers proves as invaluable as his knowledge of chemistry.

This is a well made drama if you can excuse the meagre, cheesy 1990s look and feel that gets a much needed boost by Jacky Cheung's top Cantopop and early Mandopop hits from the day. It is definitely not Zhang Yimou behind the camera but the camera angles are quite innovative and the spectacularly choreographed action scenes kept me on the edge of my seat. The crime plot unfolds at a decent cadence with a few really interesting and unpredictable twists and reveals. The bromances were deftly written with each relationship: Zhang Bei and Gu Yiran; Zhang Bei and Jiang Xiaohai and Jaing Xiaohai and Liang Jiaju; illuminating different facets of both Zhang Bei and Jiang Xiaohai.

The investigative unit's rapport resonates and carries the story from the get go with every member doing their own small but crucial part in this tightly knit team. The rabidly feisty Mad Dog Yao kicking butt in any brawl only to be too easily subdued by Zhang Bei cracked me up no end. While I appreciate the narrative taking the time to flesh out the important roles, this drama falls into the usual trap of these plot driven stories of digressing too far into too many personal stories of peripheral side characters. It comes at the cost of the momentum of the investigative plot and the narrative sags in the middle. While Lin Boyang is lovely, I wasn't invested in her sweet but trite romance which went on for so long it bored me silly. This would have been much tighter and more exciting as a 24 episode drama.

I was initially skeptical about Huang Jingyu in this kind of super masculine hero cop who carries the weight of his team and the world on his shoulders kind of role. He has done it too many times and indeed there is nothing about the way the character is written or portrayed that makes Zhang Bei stand out from this tired archetype. Yet maybe its his personal charisma or how he just looks the part so perfectly that his Zhang Bei just "works" in bringing all the other roles and performances together. As much as I like Wang Qizi, Gu Yiran is the character that at the end I liked and cared about the least. He is at surface easy going and amiable but in reality he is lonely and guarded and he has his own agenda. Unfortunately I found his obstinate and repeated Lone Ranger stunts so selfish and boring that it overwhelmed my sympathy for his personal trauma. Although he isn't at Zhao Xiaoguang's level of comically terrible, he is also too obviously not a native Cantonese speaker to successfully pass himself off as one. The role just didn't come to life onscreen in a convincing way and was overshadowed by vastly superior performances by Zhang Yu and Qin Junjie. The truth is fate is random and Lele could well have been any one of them and it is this character that stole the show and made me incredibly conflicted; sad, manipulated, scared, revolted and resigned. It is the best written and best acted role; one that stands out among other stellar performances.

As an avid and frequent consumer of the suspense thrillers, this drama has an excellent ending twist that shocked me and then gave me that aha! moment as all the details just clicked into place. I haven't been surprised like this in a long time and I enjoyed it thoroughly. That said, there is nothing that new or special about the story itself, the plot should have been tightened and there were just so many hidden identities that when you put it all together it looks quite implausible. I am happy to I rate this a very entertaining and enjoyable 8.0/10.0

Read More

A-mazing thriller sublimated from ordinary greatness

This drama is part of the Youku White Nights Theatre series which, just before airing this one, garnered unexpected big success with “Escape from the Trilateral Slopes” set in the South East Asian Golden Triangle under the thin veil of fictional Bomo country name. If you want to stay with drug dealer rings busting, head over to The First Shot. It is really good. Some actors from Escape from Trilateral Slopes also appear briefly in "Snow maze"  雪迷宫 (the name is a symbol both of the seminal event that shaped two of the main characters, and of the investigation around metamphetamine, the Chinese name of the drug being "Snow Angel" 雪天使, translated as "Lucifer" in The First Shot.)

The drama combines both a classic detection linear plot and group portraits of characters, which could make it appear as scattered, but add to the human value in an interesting and original blend.

The official main cast revolved around Johnny Huang , Wang Ziqi 王子奇 and Zhang Yu 章宇, who was very remarkable there. Johnny Huang demonstrated a very nuanced acting there, no need to condescend to "bear with him": the trust shown by one producer who reputedly waited 4 years to see him in that role, was not misplaced.
QinJunJie 秦俊杰   was a surprise actor. His role as Liang Jiaju 粱嘉驹 came late into the story, but was not just anecdotal or only meant to attract audience by another "celeb name" (that's why he was not included in the original published cast, before over a week after airing started).

The drama did not feature much sentimentality, apart from good but ordinary colleagues friendship, and family ties, but felt very wholesome and engaging in the growth and evolution of the relationships (but don't look for romance, bromance, or BL in this story). Ladies included Lin Boyang 林博洋 (funny and sweet sister of the captain), and Xie Keyin 谢可寅 ("mad dog Yao" fond of fighting at every occasion") alongside a number of other distinctive types linked in the "extended families" including friends and acquaintances in residential complexes, restaurants, or on the alleys in the market place : one of the nodes of the city life in Halan, where cabs were not just a convenience for getting people from one place to another, such as the dodgy dancing halls, roller skating rinks, pharmacy, hotels, etc.

The drama had a lot of twists before final reveal of kingpin, that should not be spoiled too much: there is a choice between 3-5 candidates along the episodes!

Watching the drama was like moving through a maze, with dead ends, pitfalls, and mirrors!


*** (more details below; you can also look up the "chapter 4" / for the drama in the “mini profile” of Johnny Huang, hidden in Discussions part of the drama page)

The maze motif was shared with the round Chinese-style designs posted on the main leads’ and drama Weibo social media. These looked like a game of 9 linked blind boxes opening briefly to reveal some ultra micro short glimpses of the actors and actress, with three chosen snippets of dialogues to read and listen to. They aptly reflected the convoluted nature of the investigation! Among the other nuggets on the drama Weibo was a short selection of Dongbei accent and phrases from the drama: this one was set in “Halan” 岚市 : which might be thought to be a veiled fictional name for Harbin, a city which lies on the historical roads and railroads linking the south of China to the north of the country and beyond. Harbin is also one of the capitals of the “north-east”/Dongbei. That region suffered from pollution inherited from heavy industrialization which left many factories in ruins after a period of economic change and depression in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (Nevertheless, the actual main filming took place in 2023 in Changchun, a city with a long tradition of movie making, which let a Manchukuo building be used as the "Halan Public Security Bureau" where the policemen worked; another part was filmed in Changchun city film studios.)

As a node, “Halan” 岚市 was linked to “Huazhou” 花州 in “Yuedong” which was a thinly veiled reference to Guangzhou/Canton, and the “Yue” 粤 real life culture of the Cantonese part of China. The link was further emphasized by the professed love of the police captain’s sister for Cantopop (Chinese songs from Hongkong and the Cantonese speaking part of China). This love was shown in a few of the most hilarious comedic moments in the drama, which had not a few of those, in the portrayal of the cops life and family matters. One of the protagonists even recorded a version of a famous Jacky Cheung song, incorporated in the drama OST with the voice of Liu Runnan.

The timeline setting was around 1997, date of Hongkong returning to Chinese sovereignty after the 99 years “lease” to the British, who once introduced opium to China through that port of entry, among other ones. 1997 was a year for celebration, but some years earlier, when the story in the drama really starts (with Gu's father's disappearance), was when new drugs became an acute problem touching vulnerable people (workers, students, more well-heeled middle and upper class people looking for thrills in karaoke and dance saloons, in the opening society of the post-Deng Xiaoping era). Methamphetamine had been a new drug identified by authorities in the south of China in 1991 but difficult to get evidence for with the technical methods used by police at the time. Some years passed, before the authorities in Halan decided to set up a Special investigation team to nip the emerging drug deal reaching the North. A budding task force to tackle the problem was set up before China created a formal Narcotics Control Commission in August 1998. That’s how captain Zheng Bei, one year earlier in the drama was asked to recruit four specialists...

The drama is about the ordinary greatness of a team of cops who bond in a shared professional outlook: don’t look for romance, bromance, or BL in that context! It is plain colleagues friendship with no over-gushing sentimentality. The team is partly made up from old childhood friends who vowed to become a “steel guard” against evil. Although plain clothes for most of their missions, they were uniformed in mind. Which does not mean they were not human: they were living in a city where many people knew each other. They had parents, who wished to see them happily married and respected in their jobs : either wholesomely supportive, like Zheng Bei and Zheng Nan’s parents, or unreasonably harsh, like Ding Guozhu‘s parents. One of the members in the force was in love with a girl, although he was too bashful to express it clearly, which caused goofy and endearing moments, including a "facing backs mirrored confession", welcomed by the team which played Cupid to the pair.

More than just a chasing gangs thriller and lesson about the dangers of drugs (it does incorporate it, in the early episodes, when Gu Yiran, the specialist from the south, taught his colleagues about the making of those drugs and how to detect them) the drama is about human people and their choices, the heartbreak of abandonment and disappointments, of tragic partings, and of course the necessary choice of law and order over even close past brotherhood. Each of the actors portrayed a memorable and remarkable individuality :

Zhang Yu 章宇 was remarkable, as the mysterious character with a murky past who had the closest friendship with the captain. His character name as “Jiang Xiaohai” 姜小海 seemed bland enough... The actor, a surprisingly fit 41 years old already seasoned actor, who can seamlessly portray a man half his age, jumping over a rail and in one fell swoop delivering a Jackie Chan like kick, wowed audiences who became warily attached to the deceptively meek "good brother" character, despite suspecting he also had to be a gangster.

Johnny Huang / Huang Jingyu 黃景瑜, as captain “Shi Zheng Bei” 郑北 (Zheng was the generation name shared with his sister), was expected as the leader of uniformed men, but should not be dismissed because of his past as “king of soldiers” and muscle man. In fact, despite the T shirts showing his well developed triceps, and a couple of scenes where he demonstrated his known expertise as martial arts specialist (brown belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu in real life) and the vise-strength of his thighs, he did not rely only on brute force to deliver his performance. His acting was very nuanced, showing human warmth and understanding, wavering between tough choices, heartbroken when he had to give up hope.

Wang Ziqi 王子奇 was playing “Gu Yiran” 顾一燃, the “Southern” addition to the team, with a murky story of his own, causing his character to toe a sometimes unexpected line.

Xie Keyin / Chloe Xie 谢可寅 was “Mad dog Yao” (“Zhang Xueyao” 张雪瑶) always game for a fight, whose interest in Zhang Bei was funnily shown in her periodic challenges to fight the captain and outdo him in MMA. She was “one of the men” with zero sentimentality, but an effective fighter and at times funny addition.

Liu Runnan 刘润南 played as ordinary hero “Zhao Xiaoguang” 赵晓光, fearless and sometimes reckless younger member, with a sideline love interest expressed in goofy attempts at speaking and singing in Cantonese. His mangling of a Jacky Cheung song titled "Li Xianglan" was redeemed by his recording of the song in a not too bad imitation, included in the drama OST.

Zhao Yutong 赵昱童 was playing the less flashy, almost timid “Ding Guozhu” 丁国柱 “forensic expert” in the team, who at times heralded a twist in plot with his findings, and who also had a dream of becoming a hero.

Lin Boyang 林博洋, was “Zheng Nan”, the adorable, fashion conscious sister of Zheng Bei, professing a love of Cantonese language and music, wearing colorful clothes and impeccable make up and hair styles, but staying nonetheless down-to-earth even in raging winds.

The rest of cast also featured several well-known and remarkable actors and actresses in support or guest roles, with memorable and distinct personality traits, from “Jiang Yingzi” 姜迎紫 (played by LianLian 练练) to the monitor/director of the police corps, “Gao Linsheng” 高林声/director Gao (played by Lin Peng 林鹏) urging the team to deliver results in an unreasonably short time frame, under orders from higher ups. Those were shown notably in one of the last episodes with the brief arrival of beady-eyed and irritated military type director Zhao (played by Kong Lin 孔琳). This was the occasion for a funny but mild jab at “authorities”, when Guo happened to have alcohol spilled on his trousers and shoes at a birthday party although not touching otherwise the stuff, but was ruthlessly criticized as “drunkard” by his superior. The drama was otherwise mild in its portrayal of “elders” in the force : Liu Wei 刘威 played the avuncular “Xin Tiegang” 辛铁钢: semi-retired, self-appointed cook and nanny for the team, also with a “heroic streak”.

The story was written for TV by a team of two scriptwriters, and directed by Lü Xing 吕行 who formerly also directed a memorable slice-of-life drama about a suburban police station : 2020 Ordinary Greatness. Zhang Yimou 张艺谋 as executive producer certainly had an influence in the style and cinematography, and in the realistic approach to story and lighting, from his long experience as celebrated director of many famous movies.

From the fighting start to the end, despite uncertainties, the drama pace was like that of the train which stopped at some stations to get new passengers on board or discharge goods and people of different nature, but never stayed too long in one place. A train which travelled over a tunnel that was fateful for one of the protagonists.

Read More