London Film Festival 2014: Black Coal, Thin Ice

Black Coal Thin Ice

Black Coal, Thin Ice

by Mark Wilshin

Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice is a hard-boiled, neo-noir and industrial murder mystery, as a divorced detective attempts to piece together a human corpse and the whys and the wherefores behind the murder. It starts with an intriguing premise, but as Diao Yinan’s film descends into gangster genre shoot-’em-ups and a winsome romance, Black Coal, Thin Ice starts to wear very thin indeed.

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