Exiles of empire: Criminals as heroes at the end of history in Jiang Wen's Let the Bullets Fly

Abstract

A film inspired by the outlaws of early modern vernacular storytelling in China, in particular, the Ming Dynasty novel Water Margin, Jiang Wen's 2010 film Let the Bullets Fly demands further critical attention as an example of a film that features criminality as a source of regeneration in postcolonial and postsocialist Chinese society. The film reaches a mass audience by beating the Hollywood film Western at its own game while fostering spaces for transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality. Described by critics as the first commercial blockbuster in Chinese cinema, Let the Bullets Fly revives the figure of a criminal hero that ultimately has origins in the early modern tales of Water Margin. Although the criminal heroes of the film do not present a clear moral imperative or viewpoint on history, they present a disruption to modernity that opens the popular imagination to new possibilities of social transformation.