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The Bullet Vanishes

The Bullet Vanishes

Action · Mystery · 2012

One rainy night in an arms factory near Shanghai, a young female worker accused of stealing a box of bullets from the ruthless Boss Ding is violently killed in a game of Russian roulette. Half a month later, a series of inexplicable deaths takes place in the factory, where the victims are shot but no bullets are found. Rumors of a deadly curse begin to spread in the factory, terrorizing the workers there. So, eccentric police inspector Song Donglu and his hot-blooded, gunslinging partner Guo Zhui are sent in to investigate the mystery of the phantom bullets...

Movie details

The Bullet Vanishes

2012 Action · Mystery 1h 48m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.5 / 10

2.4K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

92 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

65 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.4 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

One rainy night in an arms factory near Shanghai, a young female worker accused of stealing a box of bullets from the ruthless Boss Ding is violently killed in a game of Russian roulette. Half a month later, a series of inexplicable deaths takes place in the factory, where the victims are shot but no bullets are found. Rumors of a deadly curse begin to spread in the factory, terrorizing the workers there. So, eccentric police inspector Song Donglu and his hot-blooded, gunslinging partner Guo Zhui are sent in to investigate the mystery of the phantom bullets...

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Bullet Vanishes?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Lo Chi-Leung

Written by

Lo Chi-Leung · Yeung Sin-ling

Lau Ching-wan

Lau Ching-wan

Inspector Song Donglu

Nicholas Tse Ting-fung

Nicholas Tse Ting-fung

Captain Guo Zhui

Yang Mi

Yang Mi

Little Skylark

Wu Gang

Wu Gang

Police Chief Jin

Jing Boran

Jing Boran

Xiaowu

Gao Hu

Gao Hu

NPA senior officer

Jiang Yiyan

Jiang Yiyan

Fu Yuan

Court is in session

Put The Bullet Vanishes on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Adrenaline Seeker

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Prestige Tourist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.