When the urgent desire to make something beautiful overrides the desire to tell a particular story — and when you are Zhang Yimou, rebounding from a run-in with the Chinese authorities over your last picture, “One Second” — you might end up with a film like “Cliff Walkers.” A gorgeously snowbound period spy movie insulated beneath layers of contorted plotting just as its cast is swaddled in snow-speckled winter furs and fedoras, the film is a muddle of a plot wrapped around a bland, committee-approved message, but mounted with such magnificence it’s possible not to really mind.The first switcheroo in its three-card-monte construction happens before we’ve even properly seen our heroes’ faces.
Like in a Bond movie prologue, four agents parachute into a snowy forest at night.
Unlike in a Bond prologue, the blue moonlight filtering coldly through the trees is of as much interest to Zhao Xiaoding’s
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