PantaOz
Blood Brothers, the 81-minute iQIYI quickie that dropped on 5 October , is exactly the kind of urban-migrant morality play the algorithm orders when it smells a holiday weekend and a social-media hashtag. Liu Lang, our wronged-gaokao hero, is sketched with the same thick Sharpie the film uses for everything else: one minute hes tearing up an exam permit in the worlds least convincing slow-motion, the next hes on a south-bound bus that looks suspiciously like a green-screen stock shot. The script, credited to three writers who apparently met for one coffee, ticks every box on the provincial-film-board checklistscam montage (check), found-family banter (check), crackdown-on-evil voice-over (double check)yet never musters a single image you co...