When crime pays

Alec Su's latest film, The Devotion of Suspect X, knocked Hollywood behemoth Kong: Skull Island off the top slot in China's box-office charts on its first day. Xu Fan reports.

During the recent Tomb Sweeping Festival holiday break, a profitable time for China's movie market, Alec Su worked nonstop. The actor and singer-turned-director traveled more than 21,700 kilometers from March 22 to April 3, touring 15 cities to promote his second directorial feature, The Devotion of Suspect X.

Su, once a heartthrob on the Chinese screen, says he was "anxious" with his career shift.

But his latest film, based on Japanese author Keigo Higashino's award-winning novel of the same title, knocked Hollywood behemoth Kong: Skull Island off the top slot in China's box-office charts on its first day on March 31, according to live tracker Cbooo.cn.

The 112-minute movie, which is seen by some industry watchers as a bid by Chinese-language movies to enter overseas markets, opened in North America, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom simultaneously on Friday, and will be released in Singapore on April 13.

Meanwhile, negotiations are on in other markets, according to Beijing-based studio Enlight Pictures, one of the key investors.

But for Su, the film means more than just box-office returns.

Su, who made his debut with the Taiwan band Xiao Hu Dui (Little Tigers) in the 1980s, earned nationwide popularity thanks to a series of hit TV dramas penned by Chiung Yao, then an influential romance novelist.

But the 43-year-old star knows times have changed. "I was once a favorite of the showbiz industry. But it is unavoidable that an idol will be overtaken by someone else. Fame is not everlasting," says Su, at a recent Beijing event.

Since taking the producer's job in the 2013 TV series Destiny by Love, Su has shifted his attention to the camera.

He won recognition for the 2015 coming-of-age drama The Left Ear, his directorial debut.

It raked in nearly 500 million yuan ($7.26 million) at the box office, and was nominated for the best new director award at the Taiwan's 52nd Golden Horse Film Festival.

But this success was not enough for Su, who was looking for more challenges.

When domestic media outlets reported in 2016 that Su would direct The Devotion of Suspect X, the news sparked interest online.

As filmmakers in Japan (2008) and South Korea (2012), respectively, had already adapted the Higashino novel - seen as one of his best works - into acclaimed movies, fans were wondering if Su was the right choice to make a Chinese film version of the book.

"I didn't think much about this at the beginning ... But when more comments emerged online, I was scared," he says.

In the movie - unlike most crime thrillers where the audience does not know who the criminal is until the end - the killer is known, and the story is about a cat-and-mouse game between the police and the highly intelligent criminal.

The Chinese translation of the novel was a best-seller on Amazon's China subsidiary in 2016.

"As fans know what will happen, it makes the adaptation more difficult. You need to be faithful to the original story as well as go for innovation," Su says.

Su attempted to maximize localization, revise the emotional aspects, restructure the timeline and focus on details.

The movie, while still centered on a desperate single mother's accidental killing of her abusive ex-husband, makes the plot an intellectual duel between two male protagonists - the woman's next-door neighbor, a mathematics genius who helps her devise a cover-up, and a physics scholar, who assists the police.

Most of the scenes are shot in Harbin, in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, to ensure that the details - from the advertisements on shabby buildings and the snack vendors underneath a bridge to women's street dances - give the film an authentic local feel.

The cast says that Su is pretty demanding. To create a depressing atmosphere, he told the crew to be as quiet as possible at work and suggested that the cast read Buddhist volumes to calm their minds, recalls actor Zhang Luyi, who plays the mathematics genius.

Wang Kai, the actor who plays the physics professor, says: "I initially felt weird that people on the set always spoke in low voices and chatted little. But after I got used to the atmosphere, I got immersed in my character."

Su also hired university professors to write mathematical formulas for the scenes.

"If there is a math buff in the theater, I do not want him to say that the set looks foolish," he says.

Su, who says that Ang Lee - the first Chinese director to win the landmark best foreign language film award at the Oscars in 2000 - is his idol, admits that he wants to emulate him.

"It doesn't mean that I expect to get to his level. But I am trying my best to balance art and commerce."

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn

Clockwise from top: Zhang Luyi (right) and Wang Kai star in Alec Su's The Devotion of Suspect X; Su (left) with the main cast of the film in a promotional event; Zhang Luyi plays the mathematics genius. Photos Provided To China Daily