''The Message'' (, literally "Sound of the Wind") is a 2009 Chinese

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. ...

set in 1942

Nanking Nanjing or Nanking is the capital of Jiangsu, a province in East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a population of 9,423,400. Situated in the Yan ...

, featuring a cast of top Chinese stars include

Zhou Xun Zhou Xun ( zh, s=周迅, born 18 October 1974) is a Chinese actress and singer. Zhou rose to prominence with the film '' Suzhou River'' (2000), followed by films such as '' Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress'' (2002), '' Perhaps Love'' (2005 ...

, Li Bingbing,

Huang Xiaoming Huang Xiaoming or Mark Huang ( zh, s=黄晓明, p=Huáng Xiǎomíng, born 13 November 1977) is a Chinese actor and singer. Huang rose to prominence for playing Emperor Wu of Han in the television series '' The Prince of Han Dynasty'' (2001), foll ...

, Zhang Hanyu and

Alec Su Alec Su You-peng ( Chinese: 蘇有朋; born 11 September 1973) is a Taiwanese actor and singer. Su became a teen idol in the 1980s as a member of the boyband Little Tigers. After the megahit TV series ''My Fair Princess'' (1998–1999)'','' h ...

. The film was adapted from

Mai Jia Jiang Benhu (; born 1964), better known by his pen name Mai Jia (麦家), is a Chinese novelist. He also served as the president of Zhejiang Writers Association and vice president of the Zhejiang Literature and Art Association. Biography Jiang ...

's 2007 novel, ''The Message'' (), and was co-directed by

Chen Kuo-fu Chen Kuo-fu (born 13 May 1958) is a Taiwanese film director, screenwriter and producer. His film '' The Personals'' was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. Biography Born in 1958 Chen worked as a film ...

and Gao Qunshu. In addition to being a blockbuster, ''The Message'' has also received extensive critical acclaim and was nominated for a total of thirteen awards at the 2009 Golden Horse Film Festival, 2010 Asian Film Awards, 2010 Hong Kong Film Awards, and 2010 Hundred Flowers Awards. It won the best film award at 17th Beijing University Student Film Festival. Li Bingbing won the Best Leading Actress Award at the 46th

Golden Horse Film Awards The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Taipei Golden Horse Awards () are a film festival and associated awards ceremony held annually in Taiwan. The festival and ceremony were founded in 1962 by the Government Information Office of the Republ ...

for her role as the code-breaker chief in this movie.

Plot

April 26, 1940, former

Nationalist Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...

vice president

Wang Jingwei Wang Zhaoming (4 May 188310 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was in ...

made peace with Japan and set up a Japanese-supported regime during World War II, a

puppet government A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government is a State (polity), state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside Power (international relations), power and subject to its ord ...

. Oct 10, during an anniversary ceremony of the government, a Wang government high official was assassinated, the last in a series of such attacks. Taketa (Huang Xiaoming), chief intelligence officer of the Japanese Imperial Army, believed that it was an action of an underground anti-Japan group and that there was a mole, nicknamed "Old Ghost" (aka The Phantom) inside the Wang government's Anti-Communist Command. Determined to catch the mole, Taketa sends out a telegram with false information about an opportunity to assassinate a high-ranking officer. When it is apparent that the underground group knows its contents, he arrests the five personnel who saw the telegram, bringing them to the closely guarded fortress Qiu Castle for interrogation. They are: (1) Anti-Communist squad captain Wu Zhiguo (Zhang Hanyu), (2) Bai Xiaonian (Su Youpeng), an aide to the commander, (3) chief telegraph decoder Li Ningyu (Li Bingbing), (4) mailroom staff Gu Xiaomeng (Zhou Xun), and (5) military intelligence director Jin Shenghuo (Ying Da) Taketa (Huang Xiaoming) and Wang Government's intelligence chief Wang Tianxiang (Wang Zhiwen) need to identify "Old Ghost" in five days. After the suspects are tormented by constant interrogations, they began informing against each other for their own survival. Increasingly horrific physical tortures are used as the interrogators become impatient, while the tormented suspects come close to losing their sanity. A tense game of "cat and mouse" ensues as the Chinese

agent attempts to send out a crucial message while protecting their own identity.

Casting

Main cast

as Gu Xiaomeng * Li Bingbing as Li Ningyu * Zhang Hanyu as Wu Zhiguo *

as Takeda (Wutian) *

as Bai Xiaonian *

Wang Zhiwen Wang Zhiwen (, born June 25, 1966) is a Chinese actor born in Shanghai, China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the lis ...

as Wang Daoxiang *Ying Da as Jin Shenghuo

Supporting cast

*Ai Dai *Liu Jiajia *Liu Weiwei *Shi Zhaoqi *

Wu Gang Wu Gang (), formerly romanized as Wu Kang and also known as Wu Zhi in some sources,Eberhard, Wolfram. ''Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought''pp. 76 ff Routledge & Kegan Paul (London), 2013. Accessed 12 Novem ...

as Liu'ye *Zhu Xu *

Zhang Yibai Zhang Xiaoling, better known by his stage name Zhang Yibai () (born 14 April 1963, in Chongqing, China) is a Chinese film director, screenwriter and producer. Directorial career Zhang began his career in television and music videos before dir ...

* Duan Yihong * Ni Dahong

Reception

The film earned at the Chinese box office.

References

External links

* Official website (English)
TheMessage2009.com
* Official website (Chinese)
Message.hbpictures.com
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Message, The 2009 films 2000s spy thriller films Chinese thriller films Chinese World War II films Second Sino-Japanese War films Films based on Chinese novels Films directed by Chen Kuo-fu Films directed by Gao Qunshu Films with screenplays by Zhang Jialu Films set in Nanjing Films scored by Michiru Ōshima 2000s Chinese films Chinese multilingual films