Movie 'Breathing Heart' is a simple hospital drama which wastes the combined talents of both the lead actors. Veteran director Huang Yuetai's Beating Heart is a lame hospital drama that destroys the combined talents of actor Wang Qianyuan and especially actress Tan Shuo, and ends up as a glorious advertisement for organ donation. Huang has had an impressive career in commercial films over the past four decades, and now he's back with an interesting drama about life and death that was torpedoed by a weak script.
The whole thing is especially disappointing given the potential of the material: a cash strapped teacher fighting for her daughter’s life, a corrupt hospital head who needs the girl’s heart for his own daughter’s transplant, the different extents to which each parent will go for their children, and the whole ethics of organ donation and trafficking. The simplistic screenplay by Cheng Yanwen hardly comes close to developing its potential, with workaday dialogue, one-dimensional characters and an apparent desire to hit every generic cliche in the book. In its final half-hour the script throws up its hands and becomes a cheesy crime thriller-cum-race against time-cum-weepie, with cross-border action and a showy cameo by Wang Dalu as an organ trafficker.
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