'Blind Shaft'
Mine your own business

A LINE OF workers plod wordlessly toward an open coal mine. Three of the miners quickly share a cigarette before filing into the claustrophobic elevator that will take them down into the earth. As this trio descends (only a duo will return), the camera tilts up through the darkness and rests on the mine's opening, watching as the last source of natural light recedes into the distance until it's barely pinprick-size. This begins writer-director Li Yang's corrosive look at power, corruption, and lies in modern-day capitalist China, setting its into-the-abyss tone from the get-go; by the time the film's last shot – a perfect inverse of the aforementioned precredit sequence that paints an even bleaker picture of fate – burns itself onto your retinas, the feeling of a bottom-line obsession begetting a moral rock bottom is hard to shake. It seems the two workers have a pretty good con going: convince a third party desperate for work to pose as a relative, secure him a job in the mining camps, bump him off, and split the insurance payoff booty. Then a particularly green recruit (Wang Baoqiang) wanders into their crosshairs, awakening one of the men's long-dormant consciences and sowing the seeds of an inevitable demise. Blind Shaft's pulpy plot may feel like it's simply raising Cain (James M., that is) amid the pitch black and overexposed brightness, but the filmmaker's background in documentary lends a decidedly neorealistic shade of grit that doubles as one bitter social critique. The use of real locals, barflies, and brothel inmates (who can turn socialist anthems into prefuck fight songs) may lend authenticity, but Yang's world of greed that's blinded everyone from the bosses to the blue-collar workers doesn't need vérité to be recognizable. Just open your eyes and it's already there. See Movie Clock for show times. (David Fear)