Black Coal, Thin Ice
[rating=3]
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.
