Locust

For all the specific setting of Taiwan’s Taipei in the shadow of the 2019 unrest in Hong Kong, this debut feature from KEFF relies heavily on thriller elements that are familiar from a thousand tales of mixed up kids and gangland corruption, particularly the more heavily genre work of Johnnie To.

The twist this time is that the protagonist, Zhong-Han (Liu Wei-Chen), is mute, though not Deaf - a not-so-subtle contrast to the youngsters in Hong Kong we see in snatches of TV bulletins who are shouting for their rights. The reasons for Zhong-Han’s silence are never fully explained although there’s a late stage nod to oppression in his past. Now, he has been semi-adopted by a man and wife (Yu An-Shun and Wu Yi-Jung) who run a small, old fashioned restaurant.

That’s just his day job, however. By night, he’s a gangland heavy and right-hand man of the sociopathic Kobe (Devin Pan), who is a debt collector for a crime boss (Frank Lin) but who also has a sideline in shaking down rich influencers. This is one of the things that never quite gels, Zhong-Han seems just too sweet a soul for his violence to ever be fully believable as a character trait. This softness is also emphasised by a relationship which develops between him and shop assistant I-Ju (Rimong Ihwar), which KEFF impressively shapes despite their interactions being silent or taking place in phone messages we rarely see..

When a new owner of the restaurant (Liu Han-Chiang) starts to jack up the rent, it’s evident such things as tradition are easily swept aside in the name of development. It’s at this point that the plot beats start to march along to a familiar drum - it would be a surprise, frankly, if it turned out that the local politician Li Jia-bao (Ma Nien-Hsien) wasn’t on some sort of take.

That the two parts of Zhong-Han’s split lives are irreconcilable comes increasingly into focus, as does the widespread collateral damage caused by corruption and the lust for power. KEFF and his cinematographer Nadim Carlsen (;Kalak, Holy Spider) find contrast between the homeliness of the restaurant and the neo-noir edginess of Taipei at night. The plotting takes precedence over characterisation, which saps the film of tension, while its melodramatic developments feel out of keeping with the cooler noir vibe. Like many a debutante, KEFF also proves unable to choose between the many endings he has thought up so throws in three or four for good measure. There’s no doubt this is a filmmaker with ambition and style he just needs to work on putting a bit more under that shiny bonnet.