LETHAL HOSTAGE

SINGLE MANDARIN

Title: LETHAL HOSTAGE
Genre(s): crime, drama
Release: 2012
Movie stars: dahong ni, honglei sun, luodan wang & kun yang

Synopsis:
China, the present day. In southern Yunnan province, on the border with Burma, a young woman (May Wang) visits her widowed father (Ni Dahong) but fails to persuade him to bless her marriage to her husband (Song Honglei). In Beijing, a National Narcotics Control Commission detective (Zhang Mo) from Yunnan is on the trail of a drugs carrier (Yang Kun), but the latter escapes and reaches Mengxiu in southern Yunnan for another pick-up. Chapter 1: The Dog (狗). While transferring the drugs into scroll knobs, the carrier is disturbed in his dingy flat by a young woman next door (Gao Ye) whose dog won't stop barking at him. He is forced to take measures after her elder brother, the narcotics detective, drops her back home that evening. Chapter 2: The Past (往事). In a rundown mall in Mengxiu, a drugs deal is about to take place in a restaurant. At a clinic opposite, a dentist (Ni Dahong) is asked to do some emergency treatment on an old man, who is accompanied by a sidekick (Song Honglei). The drugs deal goes wrong, and in the chaos the sidekick kidnaps the dentist's young daughter and escapes back to Burma. Later, the dentist tries to rescue her but fails and is sent to prison back in China. Ten years later, after being released, he's visited by his daughter (May Wang), now married to the sidekick. Chapter 3: The Daughter (女兒). The daughter has grown up in Burma, where she is a kindergarten teacher and is married to the sidekick, now a successful druglord of his own. Wanting to settle down with his wife, he decides to retire after one last job, a decision which imperils both their lives. Chapter 4: The Past (往事). The narcotics detective goes back to his sister's flat after dropping her off earlier that evening; he finds it empty but suspects she may not be far away. Meanwhile, the sidekick-turned-druglord, now back in China, arranges a meeting with the drugs carrier for one final piece of business.