
User Score
7 votes
An escort team was on a perilous journey to transport some gold taels. When they fell into the ambush set up by a gang of thieves and their gold shipment was robbed, a formidable student of the escort agency set off to the bandits’ hideout to retrieve the goods…
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
ZH

Yuan Cheng Lieh
Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.