Big Wong and his son Little Wong are a team. They travel all over China showing villagers Hollywood films, with the father operating as a projectionist and the son as a promoter. Both of them are good at their respective roles, with the young boy being an excellent salesman and earning lots of money. Nevertheless, one night during a screening Lei Lin, little Wong’s mother appears out of nowhere demanding spousal support from Mr. Bong Wong only to realize that the projector machine is on fire thus destroyed. When he understands that it is not possible to take a loan Big Won then decides to work as a cleaner in an old Beijing cinema while his child will be going to school there.
One day when Big Wong discovers an old DVD recorder he gets this idea of making bootleg DVDs for Little Wong so that he can sell them on the streets since all this time he has been trying so hard to maintain custody over him. Therefore both father and son have decided to open up their own film pirating business which they have named “The King of Peking”. It operates secretly inside the theater’s basement, where success greets them right away.
But, that’s when Little Wong starts doubting the wrong way he was brought up as incidents in school and cinema make them drift apart. In this case, the little boy makes a decision to go with his mother who is a train snack seller and the father is determined to do whatever it takes so as to get back his son.
Filmmaker Sam Voutas has accomplished a successful movie that boasts an intense adoration for films of these ages as well as nostalgia about times long since dead. These two aspects emerge in the most attractive way imaginable with clips from popular 80s and 90s movies juxtaposed with their respective sounds which create quite an interesting mix. Besides, Voutas follows all the rules of a buddy/road movie whereby he uses father-son characters without necessarily emphasizing on their relationship since they mostly behave like equals. It is also important to note Big Wong is no longer happy when he decides to be a father in an authoritarian role that marks the beginning of their deterioration together.
This unconventional take on the buddy concept is as much about the 90s road trip and cinema of the era, and this works really well, such that it looks retro yet fresh as a movie.
However, apart from these combinations, these two are interesting in their own rights. Big Wong is a typical poor devil who knows he has to “cheat” in order to make ends meet, as his interactions with the system (the loan he asks and the wage he gets in his work) vividly illustrate. It’s painful watching him fail time after time. But it’s also what makes him endearing along with his love for his son which is at least as best-friend-like as it is fatherly. In this regard Zhao Jun’s performance is great throughout the film; one of its best parts being when he fights for custody and dances with film (literally).
Little Wong too becomes an intriguing character because of being relatively more mature between the two though all viewers will relate to how he can sell anything anyway possible.
This is so because Wang Naixun embodies his role perfectly right from the beginning till the end, being really persuasive both in his angry moments and when he feels down. Also, two of them have a great chemistry throughout, which is another admirable feature of this movie.
Seppe Van Grieken’s photography is also brilliant as it captures on film the era and different settings where the story takes place, all emphasizing nostalgia with color moving deliberately in that direction reminding one of movies made during that period. Nevertheless, Voutas’s editing is strange sometimes because some cuts are too fast and abrupt; however it still adds to speed up the production giving it an episodic nature as well.
“King of Peking” will for sure remind many people about “Cinema Paradiso”, and generally speaking this is also a typical emotion channeling film. However, Beijing at that time has been presented accurately and attractively, thus making it self-luminous as one of the best films about films ever created lately.
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