Critic Reviews

With this masterful, flawless film, Xiaoshuai emerges in the front ranks of China's now numerous, world-renowned filmmakers.

An absorbing slice of the New China and a fascinating duel between two magnificently stubborn antagonists.

Even without its bleak and affecting story, Beijing Bicycle would work beautifully as a travelogue alone.

At once somber and mysterious, comical and sad. It shows just how lonely a crowded city can be.

Beijing Bicycle is a good film that owes a huge debt to a better film. And that, of course, is Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief."

The movie is filled with sweetly funny moments, but its exposure of class, income and cultural differences makes it an uneasy charmer right up to its violent denouement.

Wang's young actors are impressively natural, and his documentary-style camerawork captures the rhythms and cacophony of the big city, all its crazy-quilt comings and goings.

At times, the film meanders from its course and loses dramatic focus. But it's vividly acted and creatively directed.

Shot in the mean streets of a great and compelling city, here's a fascinating vision of societal upheaval that would likely awe De Sica himself.

Though beautiful at times, it doesn't reach the level of poetry of either de Sica's "Thief" or Lou's "River."