Old Stone (2016) User Reviews

a bleak but brilliant tale of indignation and revenge

[nijwmzen · 8/10 · 16 August 2018]

Sometimes random events can turn one's life upside down dramatically. A taxi driver accidentally knocks down a man on a bike and reluctantly carries him to the hospital only to learn that his ordeal has just begun. what happens next illustrates the callousness of insurance companies, the kafkaesque bureaucracy at work and the taxi driver begins to lose everything one by one, including his sane mind. what begins as an act of good deed turns into a nightmare for the do-gooder. the film is a gritty illustration of the complexities of human reality that not every good act ends in reward or redemption.

Chinese Taxi Driver.

[js-66130 · 7/10 · 16 April 2017]

Never mind Uber, the taxi drivers in China have much bigger problems on the go: accident victims who won't die. That's right, a corpse is better than a convalescing victim, since the driver is on the hook for all the medical bills.

That's the predicament our good Samaritan driver Lao Shi has fallen into. Very quickly his bank account is depleted, and everything in his world is spiraling out of control. Shi's various good- willed attempts to right the situation crumble in a series of comedic and tragic, bureaucratic, communist red tape. His friends, family and work fall by the wayside, and Shi grows more and more desperate.

Pretty good plot device, and thankfully first time director Johnny Ma presses all the right buttons, painting a magnificent canvas on the screen, culminating with a glorious, thrilling, bright red finale. Robert DeNiro would be proud.

lao shi

[theta30 · 4/10 · 10 February 2017]

A taxi driver makes a car accident and then he pays the bills for the victim. The bills accumulate and he becomes more and more miser. Personally I found the movie too melodramatic, in the tradition of Chinese melodramatic movies. That is, someone is involved in some kind of tragic event, it is traumatized and in despair commits himself tragic events. In this respect, in this not an interesting movie. Once in awhile there are technical and cinematographic pleasantries-such as use of intense music or natural phenomena to keep apace with the intensity. And there is a sustained tension and interesting music score. There are not many extended dialogues between characters. And neither character development. Theme is how much humiliation one can bear-a theme I saw it before.