A Touch of Sin

2013

2h 9m

Drama

List

94%

Tomatometer

90 Reviews

74%

Audience Score

2,500+ Ratings

Four outcasts on the edges of a rapidly changing China channel their rage into a bloody rampage.

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Critics Consensus

Its screenplay isn't as graceful as the choreography of its action sequences, but A Touch of Sin offers enough stylishly satisfying violence to muscle past its rough spots.

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Andrew Tracy

Sight & Sound

It's that quality of directness, of purpose -- here particularly fierce purpose -- that gives Jia's plays with fiction and nonfiction both their vigour and their political perceptiveness and bite.

May 22, 2014

Full Review

Ryan Gilbey

New Statesman

Beyond the spattered blood and broken bones, Jia's usual levels of compassion and social analysis are maintained.

May 22, 2014

Full Review

Mark Kermode

Observer (UK)

Teases together four disparate stories of people driven to violence by the purgatorial pain of their modern existence.

Rated: 4/5

May 18, 2014

Full Review

Dave Giannini

InSession Film

Although the possibility of violence constantly looms, A Touch of Sin really seems to be about individuals and our choices in the face of not only threat, but the weight of doom from forces larger than ourselves.

Feb 27, 2024

Full Review

Kip Mooney

College Movie Review

For patient, thoughtful viewers, it's one of the most rewarding experiences of the year.

Rated: A-

Aug 31, 2021

Full Review

Dustin Chang

Floating World

The fact that they are based on recent news events adds another layer to this sprawling, ambitious film. In A Touch of Sin, Jia's version of real life veers dangerously toward glossy fiction.

Feb 24, 2021

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isla s

This is a bleak film - a film that may be thought provoking, its relatively long and perhaps a bit drawn out but its not a bad film, just a somewhat sobering film. It isn't constantly full of bloody violence but there is a fair bit of it, so I wouldn't recommend it to the especially squeamish. I thought it was interesting to see a female character as one of the lead characters, after revenge. There is some good camerawork and its a decent enough film but it's not really a film I'd want to watch again and I'm not sure I'd actively recommend it as such, apart from perhaps fans of Chinese/world cinema films that know what its about.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

William L

Dang, when this film uses CGI, you NOTICE it. For a film that is based at the human level and intends to promote slow, intimate character growth to justify an eventual act of violence from each of its four main subjects, you'd think a bit more of the budget would have been earmarked for making those few moments that rely on visual effects a bit more convincing. A Touch of Sin takes on China in a period of social change that it has yet to emerge from, where a penchant for tradition meets an ambitious emergence on the world stage and a trend towards commercialization, with ordinary people caught in the middle. Base human needs are contrasted against the demands of economic forces and entrenched systems of power (there's a reason that Jia Zhangke's films don't get a lot of promotion in China itself; the criticisms of the environment fostered by the state are real and often blunt). The unifying thread of the four stories is an inevitable resort to violence, either against oneself or others - seemingly the only option to actually have some influence in the world, the individual equivalent of dropping the nuke. If the individual stories didn't have such a strong real-world basis, it would be easy to argue that the screenplay reaches for obvious, somewhat exploitative stories, but given the nonfiction source material there is certainly some authentic commentary on modern Chinese social conditions that can be taken from the total product. (3.5/5)

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/20/22

Full Review

connor s

An interesting exploration of economic struggles during China's economic explosion, with each individual story culminating in violence of one type of another. Each narrative arc and cast feels slightly underdeveloped, but it's to be expected in a film composed of what are effectively short stories.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A Touch of Sin a 2013 Chinese drama film directed by Jia Zhangke. While I was generally interested and enjoyed most of the stories here, there were other parts that fell flat for me. And definitely a few scenes which were quite violent. 1001

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

09/26/19

Full Review

Audience Member

Chillingly relatable

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/18/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Not quite what I expected from director Zhangke Jia but perhaps even better because of that. I'd already seen Platform (2000) and The World (2004), which I recall as being character-driven realist dramas set in a China engaging with capitalism and all its problems. That theme continues here but Jia has drawn four violent "true crime" stories from the news and dramatized them with a startling "in your face" quality that seemed absent in the previous quieter features. The stories are interlinked by virtue of overlapping locations (and briefly glimpsed characters) but they don't really come together to create a gestalt. What they do share is the sense that China is now under the sway of a very powerful rich elite who exploit and subjugate those with lower status (particularly women, perhaps). It seems surprising that Jia was able to express these problems openly from Mainland China or perhaps criticism of the effects of capitalism is still in line with government views despite the cultural changes. Briefly, the events on display involve a man angry with his local village elder for selling out their community and taking bribes, a young man who freely uses a handgun for senseless violence (and to steal designer bags), a sauna receptionist who fends off businessmen demanding sex (with a martial arts wuxia styled attack), and another young man who is subjected to a number of low paying and degrading jobs (including in a brothel for rich elites) resulting in his total alienation. Physical violence is present in all the tales, often shockingly and graphically so, but documenting the moral and spiritual violence that is done to the main protagonists may be Jia's real aim. He also has a great eye for Chinese locales, frequently showing his characters as tiny figures dwarfed in the face of giant factories or desolate rural landscapes, powerless as they also are in society.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/04/23

Full Review

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Zhang-Ke Jia

Director

Wu Jiang

Dahai

Baoqiang Wang

Zhou San

Tao Zhao

Xiao Yu

Vivien Li

Actor

Lanshan Luo

Xiao Hui

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Synopsis

Four outcasts on the edges of a rapidly changing China channel their rage into a bloody rampage.

Director: Zhang-Ke Jia
Producer: Zhang-Ke Jia, Masayuki Mori, Zhong-lun Ren
Screenwriter: Zhang-Ke Jia
Production Co: Bitters End, Office Kitano, Bandai Visual Co. Ltd., Shanghai Film Group
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Chinese
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 9, 2015
Box Office (Gross USA): $91.7K
Runtime: 2h 9m

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