THE VILLAGE OF NO RETURN

This pleasant village in between the mountains and the rice paddies
is also known for cultivating another crop: rancor. The inhabitants
have a knack of badly treating each other in very creative ways:
chaining your wife to the house, exchanging your kids for some pigs,
poisoning each other for trifles or betraying your friends as soon as
they’ve turned their backs. Luckily help is on the way. A mysterious
Taoist monk visits the village with his even more mysterious device. It
looks like a pimped-up coffee grinder, but it’s capable of making you
forget your worst memories. Soon the entire village gets in line for a
benign lobotomy. But there are some side-effects. They also start to
forget who or what they are, so that our monk can tell them anything
he wants. Mind you, he’s not doing this out of the kindness of his
heart. He’s looking for something and the entire village will help him
find it. It’s another question if he’ll be able to keep it, because a band
of bandits is gearing up to raise the place to the ground.
Yu-Hsun Chen, an experienced commercial director and the author
of several slapstick comedies that were shown all over the world
such as Tropical Fish (competition Locarno in 1995), has realized
one of the biggest Taiwanese blockbusters ever. This extraordinary
adventure comedy with a healthy dash of fantasy can count on the
performances of Taiwanese star Qi Shu (The Transporter, The Assassin,
Journey to the West) and Eric Tsang (the Infernal Affairs
trilogy).