Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Joseph Sylvers Zhang Ke Jai has(at least to me) grown substantially since "The World", able to leave some of the melodrama behind and let his characters and the landscapes speak for themselves. "24 City" is a beautiful film, both relevant and moving in the ways "Up In The Air" wishes it were.A factory in Chengdu, China that has been in operation for generations is being closed down to make room for a upscale high rise apartment building called "24 City" ironically named after a poem about harmony. We follow a series of interviews with former factory workers about their lives in and around the factory.Some of the interviews could have been shortened or illustrated visually instead of having us just watching talking heads speaking over silence, but that is my personal preference.It could be argued, by not re-creating their lives Jai gives his subjects a sense of dignity, and creates an intimacy between them and the viewer that would be otherwise lost. For the most part I would agree, though in honesty, I did get anxious more than a few times during some of these discussions. Jai's subjects at first seemed to be almost rambling inconsequentially, but as the film goes on, their statements become enmeshed in each other and the film as a whole, and intricately articulate how the factory for generations was their entire world, romantically, socially, philosophically, and culturally.Some of the workers had their first fights there, their first loves, some moved their whole families on the promise of work, while others left their families behind, and suddenly this community which has sustained them all this time has disappeared, moved by forces beyond their control. Part of the film is documentary, but some of the interviews are "fictional" and feature actors.I had trouble telling the difference between those who were actors and who were actual workers, but the mixture between the authentic and the dramatic only serves to highlight the contrast between the promise of worker's solidarity and justice and the realities of changing economic priorities. Jai's "The World" offered us the best metaphor for the globalized melancholic that I've yet to see, that of an amusement park masquerading as the greatest architectural achievements of humanity, while those who toil in it are increasingly alienated from any sense of "authentic" culture, themselves, and each other. That film itself, however was not as compelling as it's ideas.In many ways "24 City" and so I am told Jai's similar, "Still Life" continue this series on the changing face of China, and the "real" people caught up in this global gentrification. What made me look at "24 City" as something other than just a clever polemic was a baffling scene of a girl skating to a soft, bubbly, trance like electronic song. The girl skates in circles, and the music plays and we just observe her, and the song continues, as the camera floats off looking across the city and the mammoth building rising up into the skyline. I don't know what if any purpose this scene had to the rest of the film, but it was lovely. Equally startling were the huge crowds of workers, by the hundreds in the film's first scenes, that are as overwhelming as the CG throngs of countless soldiers and orcs from "The Lord Of The Rings" epic battle-scapes. In those moments Zhang makes his cinematic eye, rival and better his(at least for me)binding interest in social realism.Realism especially of the socially progressive variety is not my cup of tea (to put a borderline pathological aversion mildly), but "24 City" made, if not a believer, than a fascinated viewer out of me. If globalization has to be "hot button" of contemporary art, if there must be sad-sack post-modernist which stylistically bite the hands that feed them, if the classical Marxist themes of alienation, class, and gentrification must persist on into the next decade, we could all do worse than to see them filtered through Zhang's warm humanism (another term I would usually avoid).It's not a thrill a minute, and there is no George Clooney smirking to enjoy, but "24 City" is rewarding, intimate, and oddly sensual, which few politicized movies, and even fewer documentaries, seem capable of doing these days. This is the first Jai I enjoyed, and makes me interested to visit the rest of the oeuvre.

ronchow I finally watched this film from beginning to end, after seeing pieces of it from various TV channels.First of all, I want to remind viewers that the loss of employment due to the closure of a factory or business, and the resulting hardship for the affected, is a global problem and not unique to China. Economic vicissitudes are simply a fact life, and no country can be an exception to this rule. So any suggestion that Director Jia intended to hide the magnitude of the impact to the laid off employees of the closed down factory is a mute point.As with his other works, this film requires the utmost in patience. Long takes of interviewees, played by the actual characters themselves or substituted by professional actors, convey the fineness in human emotion of the affected characters.The film is about lives of very ordinary Chinese people in an evolving economy. Some young, some middle-aged, and some old. It explores human emotion - mostly the good side of it. It was about love neglected over time, or over mundane day-to-day obligations. The beautiful factory worker role played by Joan Chen is an interesting one - she was the prettiest of the bunch and yet a failure in finding love. Great acting from Ms. Chen for this short role.In short, I enjoyed the film as I did with 'Still Life'. So when you are in the mood for some serious cinema or have the interest for a glimpse into life in contemporary China, get this DVD and let Jia Zhang Ke tell you the stories of these ex-factory workers. Your patience will be rewarded.

jasoneckelman This review is primarily in response to Barry Freed's, whose take on the film is so wildly different from mine it makes me wonder if we saw the same movie.I LOVED this movie. I think the quasi-documentary style is wholly winning and adds a lot to the story. As far as defending Jia's decision not to do a "traditional" documentary, I guess I just have to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he had wanted to do a "traditional" documentary, then he would have done so. I feel that Jia is an accomplished enough artist that I can assume he has an instinctive sense of what will best serve a particular story. Clearly, in this instance, he decided on a fact/fiction "blend", and to my mind, he made the right call.While watching this, I couldn't help but think of Werner Herzog and his theory of "ecstatic truth" ("I know that by making a clear distinction between "fact" and "truth" in my films, I'm able to penetrate into a deeper stratum of truth that most films never attain. This deep inner truth inherent in cinema can be discovered only by not being bureaucratically, politically, and mathematically correct." - W. Herzog). While I'm not (necessarily) making a comparison between Zhang-ke and Herzog, I feel that they are very much after the same thing. Whether an essential truth can be best conveyed using actors or non-actors, using a documentary or drama approach, etc. are questions that both directors obviously struggle with, and I feel that they have come to similar conclusions. They (to my mind) have opted to fuse the two approaches, in an attempt to remove intellectual and emotional barriers between the people on-screen and the people in the audience. And more often than not, that approach works, and works in a very powerful way.Finally, I thought the performances, without exception, were utterly devastating and mind-blowing. I don't know what Jia does to his actors to get performances of that caliber, but whatever it is, he needs to keep it up. I think this is an excellent companion-piece to "Still Life", and a beautiful addition to his body of work. Masterful.

Harry T. Yung Does a structure of concrete and steel have life? You bet, if interwoven with the stories of people from three generations and a variety of backgrounds and aspirations. This is exactly what Director JIA Zhangke accomplished with this project. The transformation of "Factory 420" (an aviation engine factory built in 1958) into a modern-day upscale apartment complex "24 City" is documented in 8 or 9 interviews (depending on which film festival program you are read – Cannes 08, TIFF 08 or HKIFF 09). Through these stories that are sobering, often touching and sometimes humorous, the concrete and steel structure "Factory 420" acquires a life of its own, from birth to demise and rebirth as "24 City". This structure in turn serves as a motif for witnessing the vicissitudes and development of the city Chengdu.Despite the fact that there is no dramatisation of these stories, which are told, literally, by the interview objects right in front of a stationary camera all the time, they are mesmerising. The interviewees are as varied as can be: an old factory worker, and even older party (Communist) official, a factory executive in the next generation, an idealistic young man, three women – two from each of the first and second generation workers and the youngest born in 1982, daughter of the factory worker but on her way of becoming a yuppie herself. There are some others, shorter segments which perhaps gives rise to the varying views of how many interviews there are.The poignancy in the older generation is moving, particularly in the cases where it is the real worker. The factory executive's account of his adolescent adventures, including a "puppy love" courtship, provides some comic relief. While the men interviewed are the real people themselves, the three women are professional actors. Joan Chen plays a middle age spinster who has missed her chance when she was the "factory flower". Her portrayal of this woman who at the same time values her freedom and laments her loneliness is superb. At one point, she even plays the "Julia Robert's joke" in "Ocean's twelve" – this worker tells how she is nicknamed "Little flower" because she looked like the actress Joan Chen in a movie playing a character with that name. Director Jia's favourite actor ZHAO Tao (who has appeared in just about every film he has made) plays a 27-year-old woman coming to sudden realization of her love for her mother, an emotion that has hitherto been buried deep down.The film closes with Director Jia's signature super-slow penning camera, a panoramic view of Chengdu from the vintage point of an observation tower.