I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...
Miguel is a pretty young skateboarder from a middle-class family in Mexico City who is having a torrid love affair with the son of his family’s maid, a fellow skater Johnny. Besides the barriers of class and social status between them, tensions are also heightened by the bisexual Johnny’s ongoing relationship with a young girl, Adri, a dysfunctional love triangle constantly shaken by angry accusations and jealous tantrums. While this theme hovers in the background, the central theme is around how Miguel and Johnny have been making money with a petty criminal scheme which involves illegally donating blood to drug gangsters, sometimes rounding up extra donors when demand is high. He normally uses his circle of friends an that way everyone makes some extra cash. This one time he gets this bog order where he is asked for blood form 50 people. But the deal takes a sinister turn when armed thugs herd the prospective donors into a truck and drive them away. Their fate is never explained and in the group is also Adri. As much as this creates a rift between two boys they kill their contact and run and hide away in a hotel Johnny runs away after stealing all of Miguel's money after a night of passionate sex and Miguel is sent to Texas.
On a positive note, the film doesn't feel stretched and focuses on the core story. Yes, in the beginning we do see a lot of shots of boys skateboarding but I guess the idea is to show the overall environment to be able to justify as to why these boys/men would go about giving their blood to make money. Poverty is real here. But as I mentioned, there was so much potential in the love story of a gay man with a bisexual man who also happens to be lower in social class, so the thriller part feels that it coul have been avoided. OK, and so if you wanted to keep that as a central theme, then the final resolution that the film maker provides is again something that feels not justified. The film's three acts (the romance, the deal and the consequences) could easily be three wholly different films and would probably have been better if they had been. The love triangle is never really explored because the characters actually seem somewhat ambivalent towards it. Then the deal, though horrific, is little more than a dramatic blip in what is otherwise a slow-paced and laboured meandering narrative. The film is trying to be a thriller, but fails to create any kind of tension. It's also trying to give social commentary, but doesn't seem to care about anything enough to make any salient points. And it's trying to be a bromance movie, but it doesn't even try to create chemistry between its characters. Sadly, despite the great leads, the film never reaches the potential that it could have. (5.5/10)
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