Hello, you're watching AvenueX and today let's talk about the
recently finished airing chinese crime drama.
Chen Feng Shi San Zai, 13 Years of Dust
This is a 24 episode drama that has just finished airing on the web platform iqiyi
Directed by Liu Haibo, who was also the director of (The Rise of Phoenixes), (My Treasure),(Trident)
written by Lou Xiaopeng, based on his own novel, published back in 2020 called An Ye Zhi Guang
The drama is produced by Iqiyi, led by Chen Jianbin, Chen Xiao,
then many other quite well known actors, such as Chuai Ni, Liu Mintao, Wang Xiao, Tan Kai
one very unusual aspect and quite costly thing for this drama is that
it was shot at two separate time crossing a 9 month time span.
Because as the title suggests, one part of the story concentrates at one particular time back in 1997.
Then the other part was 13 years later in 2010.
So they decided to shoot these two parts of the story at two different seasons.
One whole month's production time in winter
and one whole month's production time in summer,
that's actually a not easy to manage schedule usually costs more money,
but it shows that this drama really wants to tell the story and give it proper respect.
Therefore they picked the harder and more expensive way of doing it.
Since this drama has already finished, i've watched all 24 episodes,
i'll give it a two gold mine rating.
I wouldn't say this is my favorite type of crime drama case breaking drama,
but I still appreciate a lot of things it has done.
This drama is a two timeline intertwined with each other with editing type of drama.
In the 1997 timeline, you will come across Chen Jianbin playing the team leader
of a police station who works in a very rough style with very strong character.
And Chen Xiao's role is a newbie who just graduated from police academy
and you will follow him pretty much starting from his first day
getting his post in this police station and very naturally becomes the student under Chen Jianbin
first day he got into this police station, he encounters a massive case that's gonna run 13 years,
which is a serial killing case.
You will also get introduced to the 2010's timeline.
Now Chen Xiao's world has become a new team leader
of the crime investigation department of the police station
and has in many ways inherited his teacher's behaviors and methods of breaking cases,
whereas the much old order policeman Chen Jianbin plays has moved on to administrative position,
taking care of police library. To their misery.
The case that they didn't manage to break 13 years ago comes back
either the previous culprit they didn't manage to catch has come back to business or there is a new copycat,
the student and the teacher team up again trying to break this case.
Now let's get into the specifics the good and bad in my opinion
so that you can decide whether you should pend your time watching this 24 episodes drama
on the positive end, the first point very quickly mentioning it,
it's shot in Chongqing and it's one of those dramas that utilize the landscape,
the geography better than other dramas.
They really located the story into the physical space.
And the space becomes also a kind of character.
And there's one interesting design sequence of shot that integrates
the character's life into the cityscape change and stuff
a little bit like the opening, quite epic shot of My Love from the Star,
from Korean drama. If you've watched that drama you know which shot i'm talking about,
you're gonna get it in the middle part or late middle part in the drama,
a similar shot that's very well designed and they really don't have to do it
and the story will just go and flow as well,
but they bothered to design and spend money on it.
And I so highly appreciate that.
The second positive thing about this drama is the casting.
Everybody is really well picked for the role and they all do a very good job.
I think this is averaged out the best crime drama.
I've seen so far this year from chinese drama land
regarding both the genre, the storytelling quality,
but also the casting and performance.
And it's a very balanced and even drama,
although it is mainly Chen Jianbin and Chen Xiao's story,
you wouldn't feel anybody else outside of them are redundant.
As for the two leads, Chen Jianbin proves when he's doing suitable roles, he is just such a great actor,
although these days he doesn't do that much acting anymore,
he mostly works behind the scene and he did take part in a really
"I do not recommend you to watch drama" that looks pretty embarrassing
shouldn't be existing that drama,
but apart from that significant failure,
his other stuff are all very good and this drama proves again,
this is a teacher level actor
Chen Xiao,I admit I got into this drama because I just wanna look at his pretty face.
I really appreciate the fact that he plays a normal person in this drama.
There's no special ability that he has that Is that much better than everybody else
and In his acting he also brings that to life,
which is on one hand you can tell this is a very good looking guy,
but on the other hand, you definitely see him as an ordinary person, not the superhero.
There's very little beautifying. I don't think he is wearing any makeup even
and he even insisted that for people to tell easily 97 and 2010 timeline,
he had his hairline shaved back when he is in the closer to now 2010 timeline.
In reality he doesn't really look any different hairline lines wise compared to when he was younger,
but he insisted that, so, very good attitude, very proper actor thing he does.
And one thing I really appreciate among these two lead actors is
they really have a great working chemistry and on the script level
It definitely also milks quite heavily on this mirroring effect between the teacher and student.
13 years earlier, they're like this.13 years later, it almost is a reverse,
because now they are working in very different capacity.
You see a lot of lines and a lot of actions, behaviors mirror.
and these two actors bring that to life,
then for the other supporting roles, Tan Kai, A sad tragic person,
my favorite "bad guy" this year
I honestly prefer him to Zhang Songwen's role because in Knockout,
I think they really put too much emphasis on the bad guy that it's a little bit over the top.
Whereas in this drama, the bad guy actually has a much more palatable personality,
and I highly appreciate character arc
Wang Xiao is as good as he always is
he can play anything and he can convince you with his acting of any role he picks and does
Chuai Ni, she's got a really good role recently, also in an iqiyi drama Echo,
but she's a much more supporting role in that drama compared to this one
because she plays the wife of Chen Xiao's.
Quite a lot of screen tim, she does such good and natural and relaxed performances
and you so believe the love, the romantic but also the troubled marriage she has with chen xiao's role
Very convincing, Liu Mintao, I believe most people know her from Nirvana in Fire days.
and In recent years she hasn't had the best roles and often is criticized about her tendency to over act.
In this drama, she doesn't do that.
She is the wife of Chen Jianbin's role and really good acting
and they really look like 老夫老妻（lao fu lao qi)，old husband,old wife
who's been together for this decades.
Then you have more supporting roles who have less screen time,
but every one of them is good.
The third positive thing about this drama and the most important thing is
this is overall quite solid script and it didn't go for the extremely exciting page turner,
lots of twist, high intelligence, crazy heightened moments, crime drama style.
This story picks the much less exciting, but much more grinding
and probably more realistic approach to breaking a big case.
I mean eventually obviously the story will give you resolution,
but it's very hard earned. Unlike Sherlock, basically,
it is the boring way of getting things done,
particularly back in the 1997 timeline when DNA wasn't even available at the time in China.
And there's no digitizing of things, when they try to find from a library's record.
There's no computer record. They can't just excel and search
They have to physically going and go through unbelievable number of records
manually to find a clue
the drama is filled with that type of details.
And I know it sounds like it would be boring,
but it's not, it does a really good balance of showing you all the boring detail
the not going anywhere with that much effort process of breaking a case
with very observant and well written details of the characters,
of their relationship with other people, their work life and personal life.
and so this is a little bit anti hero kind of drama by which I mean
there isn't a definitive much better than everyone else lead
who comes in as if his destined and god sent to solve the problems,
it is led by very ordinary, very fallible.
Had he not done that many wrong things and make so many wrong decisions
Maybe all the tragedies in the story would not even happen
on the leading characters, in this drama,
but you will still appreciate them a lot, so the knot on the surface,
very satisfying exciting element of this crime drama is actually its strength.
Then the last thing I would say on the positive end is we derive conclusion
by comparison, that's human nature.
We compare prices on internet and decide which model we buy
pretty much also based on that human process in the brain
to look at this crime drama, you compare it to other crime drama you've seen recently.
I mean to the misfortune of that drama on Youku that just finished and I ranted about
that drama also is about serial killing, also is set in 1990s
and I can't help comparing, if you have also unfortunately watched Ta Shi Shui (who is he) and got really disappointed.
This drama can ease a lot of that pain if you go and watch it
in comparison, everything is better.
Acting, script writing, the case itself, everything,
even camera language and visual style.
Even the office atmosphere between the main roles and supporting policemen,
you're gonna come across in this story,
even those plots that are focused on the lesser important roles in the same office.
And all the difficulties they've gone through.
Even their story is better,written, better acted, flows more naturally,
and doesn't get weird at all, like Ta Shi Shui got
And if you haven't watched Ta Shi Shui
DON'T! Watch this one.
I've said a lot of good things about this drama.
So what are not so good about this drama?
It's not perfect, Otherwise i'll give it a three gold mine
The first point is also related to the good point on the positive end.
that is this is not a very exciting case breaking drama.
Every tiny step gets very detailed explained.
And therefore, the whole 24 episodes are used to break one case.
And it's probably also one of the reasons why it didn't get much traction while it's on air
doesn't have those hash tag moment.
Dramatic moment that's easy to promote and marketing.
It's the nature of the drama. Like I said, I think they intentionally decided to do a story in this style.
They don't wanna always just do that type of drama and I highly respect that,
but it's all so in the way a shortcoming and it will definitely naturally deter quite a big audience group.
The second thing is as a serial killer catching drama,
it is not the best, the way they try to find this person
and the way this person does all these things with his style and why
I mean it's not bad, but it's very typical.
You've seen that many times.
There really isn't one unusual, you kind of don't expect fresh element.
And in a way in the story, you almost see Chen Xiao's role being the
person who says that to the audiences,
because he's the young person who's read a lot of western records
and real cases and watched a lot of documentaries and know serial killers in the west
and then profiling, psychology that type of stuff that really at the beginning of the story
did not exist in police work in china, kind of
and he would actually continuously remind his teacher Chen Jianbin's role
that this is going on and then this may be due to that reason
this may be due to that reason, and his teacher would dismiss him.
He would just say uh those things are the westerners inventions and it only applies to their culture
doesn't work with ours. And you'll see that in 2010's timeline, his opinion changes.
But it also says quite a lot about the fact that this story didn't jump out of that
previous established tradition of serial killer cases and how it gets broken.
And you even have one camouflage bad guy,
which the story misdirect you to in a way suspect it's him,
but then it really isn't. There are multiple people,
but there's one particular one that is just so used as a tool
that when you eventually find out who is the bad guy and why it happened,
then this camouflage person becomes almost like a joke.
And he has quite a lot of screen time throughout this whole story.
And then you realize that his only function is to miss direct and he's such a loser.
It's a little bit anticlimax I'd say.
If they could go back to re-touch the script,
they can make this role slightly more interesting.
Than right now it got a little bit funny towards the end.
I will not spoil it for you,
but if you've watched it, you know who i'm talking about,
so that's about it, everything I can think of that I wanna talk about
regarding drama 13 Years of Dust, Chen Feng Shi San Zai
I don't regret even a minute i've spent watching this drama,
but I feel a little bit disappointed by the fact that it didn't really get much noticed.
We are at the end of april 2023 first third of this year.
And I think if you have to pick one drama out of all the chinese dramas that has come out this year,
that is particularly in this genre, pick this one,
don't pick the other ones. This yeah is the best one.
Thank you for watching AvenueX, i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.