TV REVIEW: 'Nowhere Man' intrigues but ultimately stumbles and loses its place
Edison Wang (middle left) as Xiao Sha and Joseph Chang (middle right) as Quan in Nowhere Man, available on Netflix.
Imagine my excitement when I learned Netflix had produced a show by a Taiwanese crew that takes place in Taiwan. They’re difficult to find because they’re pretty rare, and also because Netflix’s algorithms only push content similar to what you’ve been watching, rarely taking the risk to suggest something foreign or different. It’s that sort of spontaneous discovery that hinders my experience with most streaming services, and it tends to produce an echo chamber that, at its worst, only reinforces just one dimension of film and TV. And, so, Nowhere Man (罪夢者) arrived with little fanfare in North America, released in late 2019 as a limited eight-episode series featuring an ensemble cast about a kidnapping gone wrong and the decade-long fallout.
Quan (Joseph Chang 張孝全), Xiao Sha (Edison Wang Po-chieh 王柏杰) and Gui (Jeremiah Zhang 章立衡) have grown up together as members of a local gang. When a kidnapping and ransom plot goes wrong, Quan, Xiao Sha and Gui’s autistic brother, Fu Xing (Chou Min-fu 周洺甫), end up in prison. Despite multiple appeals and accusations of an unfair trial, Gui is tormented by his guilt but hatches a plan with Bai Lan (Mavis Fan 范曉萱), the mistress of the gang’s boss, and fellow gang member Lin Ji (Greg Hsu 許光漢) to break them out of prison and clear their names through their own investigation of the botched kidnapping. Quan is the focus of the story and serves as the main POV character, who not only looks after Fu Xing in prison but also tries to maintain a relationship his wife, Jing-fang (Alyssa Chia 賈靜雯) and their son, Tian-you.
Somewhere in this show, which could be much shorter as a two-part movie, is a deeply emotional story about love, betrayal and the kinds of sacrifices we make for each other in times of great adversity. That in itself is not ground-breaking, but to showcase it from a Taiwanese lens is quite rare. The main problem is that Nowhere Man wants to be everywhere all at once. Loosely translated, the title literally means “guilty/crime dreamer,” and so the English title is already misleading (something that ails most Asian films released for American audiences), especially when Quan’s family and friends clearly give him a space to occupy in their lives.
Mavis Fan as Bai Lan
Director and writer JD Chen (陳映蓉) squeezes the maximum out of her cast, who all put in very strong performances, but it has a lot of trouble tying everything together and the result is a disparate mess. Even though I have pretty good command of Taiwanese Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien, watching the series feels like a chore. The multiple timelines make it difficult to follow, and each episode feels different; at times, it’s a family drama moving at a snail’s pace, and during others it’s an action epic or a sadistic crime thriller. Chen’s vision is expansive, but its weak storytelling and confusing editing muddies the final product.
The ending, which really tries to outdo itself in its complexity, required a plot-twist heavy exposition that would make your head spin. The fates of a few key characters remain unknown and the viewer is left with their own complicated thoughts and feelings about where the roads end. It is frustratingly inconsistent, and this is most evident in the length of its episodes, which range from 33 to 67 minutes, a testament to how its pacing really suffers. Some episodes are stretched out for far too long, while others feel far too short.
It was also shocking to read the plot synopsis afterwards that Quan was supposed to have some sort of clairvoyant ability; this talent never manifested itself clearly throughout the events of the show, and because it jumps around different times, it’s difficult to say what is or isn’t a vision. The cinematography is excellent, but there are few visual cues to showcase Quan’s power, if any. He is haunted by people from the past and nightmares feel like reality, but to be clairvoyant means something entirely different. It is possible to disregard this aspect of Quan’s character and still understand most of the film’s events, which is an indication of how crucial it is to the plot. This advertised clairvoyance seems like a gimmicky grab for attention, a form of insecurity rooted in the belief that the emotional material isn’t quite good enough on its own.
What Nowhere Man gets right is its authenticity to time and place. (The port city of Keelung is unmistakable). Very few international releases capture the texture of Taiwan, especially during a period when remnants of the concrete industrial age mesh with its lush greenery and ocean, and I’ve been disappointed far too many times when a film showcasing Taiwan ends up missing all the important details, from historical events to aspects of day-to-day life, especially with spoken languages. Mandarin is clearly spoken with a Taiwanese accent, and Taiwanese Hokkien plays a big role in the dialogue.
Xiao Sha confronts Quan
Every time a character walks to those ubiquitous industrial fridges and pulls outs a can of Hey Song Sarsaparilla, it sends shockwaves of nostalgia. Men wearing white tank tops and helping out with their mother’s food stand is another familiar image, and so are the bonds that the characters craft with one another in a country and a community that is often ignored. Even the theme song from Ardor Huang, sung in Taiwanese Hokkien, whose Chinese stage name (流氓阿德) literally translates to “hobo,” brings about a strong sense of nostalgia and internal pain that sounds familiar to the solemn Taiwanese folk songs that were popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
It is an ambitious but ultimately unsatisfying entry in Netflix’s Asian library. I hope to see more about Taiwan, but it needs to be much more focused than a sprawling, multi-decade romantic/crime thriller/drama. The Taiwanese films I loved were all much smaller in scope and tackled mostly day-to-day things that would seem appropriate and specific to Taiwan itself – adventures about young boys becoming men during their years of mandatory military service, the divisions between the rich and the poor, those who speak Taiwanese Hokkien and those who came after the Chinese Civil War, and the sacrifices people have to make to find happiness or better lives. It feels like Netflix and JD Chen tried to make a huge splash, but instead Nowhere Man only manages to make uneven ripples.
Nowhere Man gets two stars out of four.
