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Review: Burning Ice (無證之罪) (2017)
This show was pretty good! I'll talk more below the cut. Spoilers.
Story
The main story is as follows (in chronological order). 7-8 years ago, Luo Wen and Yan Liang were working on a case. The victim was an abusive husband. The true culprit was the stepson, but the mother covered for the son and took the blame. Yan Liang, knowing the full truth, accepted the mother's blame and reported her as the culprit, but Luo Wen was unwilling to let it go, and the stepson was convicted. The mother and stepson were the former wife and son of Li Fengtian. Li Fengtian kidnapped and killed Luo Wen's wife and daughter in retaliation.
Four years ago, Luo Wen discovered he was ill. He needed the police to speed up its investigation process so he started committing murders and leaving Li Fengtian's prints at the crime scene in order to get the police to investigate the mystery man.
Lin Qi was the leader of the case. Yan Liang was lended to the investigation because of his smarts.
Luo Wen's murders tended to be of people whom he thought knew "Snowman," the mystery kidnapper he was looking for. Luo Wen was on his way to murder somebody when Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru ended up killing that person first. Luo Wen ended up helping Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru cover up their evidence because the victim was his target anyway. The mobs caught up with Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru in different ways. In an attempt to stop being killed, Guo Yu offered to collaborate with Li Fengtian and Guo Yu did this to both get rid of Luo Wen and Zhu Huiru's older brother Zhu Fulai, who didn't like him dating his sister. Luo Wen eventually died because of Guo Yu's actions, and at this point, the police still hadn't caught Li Fengtian.
One year later, Yan Liang was out of the police, but was still investigation. Zhu Huiru and Guo Yu starting seeing cracks in their relationship. Through some traps and webs that Yan Liang spun, he forced Li Fengtian into nearly committing another crime, and that gave Lin Qi the opportunity to arrest Li Fengtian. Zhu Huiru accepted her fate of being arrested for murder. Guo Yu tried to escape, but was caught. Yan Liang didn't die, and Lin Qi let him on to her task force.
The format of this show was more similar to the miniseries format that we see in Western shows. The whole 12 episodes covered one mystery, with no fillers. I thought that the main strength of this show was that it stuck to events relating to the main case. The story wasted very little time in establishing who the characters were. What was important was how they related to the mystery, and their true characters would be revealed anyway as they experienced the events in the story.
While his show was pretty good, it was not without flaws. I hadn't read the book that it was originally based on, but I think that some of the flaws were likely carried over from the book. This is because some of the minor issues I had related to how characters were written.
As a side note, I'm incredibly pleased that this show didn't force a romantic relationship between Yan Liang and Lin Qi. Yan Liang had been in two marriages and it didn't seem that he was even fully out of his second one (due to the custody dispute). I really felt that Yan Liang and Lin Qi respected each other's work proficiency and nothing else, but that was enough for them to trust each other as friends and comrades, and there didn't need to be anything else to them.
Production
The winter in Northeastern China aesthetic was also experienced in Day & Night and I must admit that I'm starting to be a fan of it. That being said, due to the setting, the colour palette of this show was pretty gray. That's fine though. The lighting overall was fine, even for scenes that were taking place at night. At least I could still tell what was going on.
There were some interesting angles used in order to show characters doing different things at the same time. I saw this most often at Zhu Fulai's clay pot restaurant. There were scenes of Zhu Fulai and Zhu Huiru doing their own thing in different rooms, which showed the separation between the characters that arose due to the crimes in the show.
Characters
Yan Liang
I'd say that Yan Liang was the main character of the show. He was working with police dispatch at the beginning of the show. I don't remember if it was for "reasons," or if it was directly due to him misreporting the case from 8 years ago.
I felt that this character was written in an exaggerated manner when it came to some of his recklessness. I did think of his character a bit as Patrick Jane in the Mentalist, but the difference was that Patrick Jane was not actually a police officer and just a consultant, whereas Yan Liang was still a cop despite not being a detective. That being said, there was still a distinction in his attitude before and after the time skip (when he left the police force).
Director Zhao said that Yan Liang only ever heeded the words of Luo Wen, so that was why Yan Liang was so invested in this case after he'd guessed that Luo Wen was behind the murders. Luo Wen was perhaps the only person who ever matched him in brainpower, and he respected that mightily. And after Luo Wen died, even though he'd committed all the murders that he'd done, Yan Liang was focused on avenging Luo Wen and his family and nothing else.
Yan Liang was a prickly kind of guy and had a tough time showing his love. We saw that he had the "tough love" kind of parenting style when it came to Dongzi. It took Lin Qi to settle down the two of them. Dongzi was so excited when Yan Liang approved of him attending the police academy, but those good feelings were short lived because Dongzi was killed soon after by Li Fengtian. Yan Liang definitely blamed this on himself, as Dongzi had no reason to be following Li Fengtian except he'd seen the photo on Yan Liang's phone.
In the end, after all of his revenge had been sought, it seemed Yan Liang's only goal in life was to continue solving mysteries. For some reason, Director Zhao couldn't promise that. But we see that Lin Qi was willing to take him on. I don't think there's going to be a sequel though.
Despite Yan Liang being a little too reckless at times, I still thought he was a good character that made the audience want to cheer for him.
Lin Qi
The only thing we learned about Lin Qi's background was that she was not from Northeastern China. Honestly, we didn't need to know even that much because the important thing about her was that she was the leader on the Snowman serial murder case.
I will say her character was slightly flimsy at times due to her dialogue being fitted for the situation. For example, there'd be a scene in which she'd be chewing out Yan Liang for doing something very unprofessionally, and then in the next scene, she'd be praising his smart thinking. I mean, those could both be true, but seeing those scenes one after the other didn't help in establishing Lin Qi's character that well.
What we know of Lin Qi is that she's a by-the-books kind of police officer, which is the exact counterweight we need to Yan Liang who doesn't do things by the books, ever. She came to respect Yan Liang's smarts, but she still would not sacrifice her police integrity and disregard protocol in order to catch Li Fengtian because it wasn't the right way to do things. I totally see her point of view because I too am the lawful neutral kind of person.
What was cool in the end was that Yan Liang respected Lin Qi's plan for action, so he decided to set up Li Fengtian and force him into committing crime so that Lin Qi could be ready to catch him in her net immediately. Lin Qi was really uneasy about shooting through Yan Liang to get to Li Fengtian, but she did it anyway because Yan Liang insisted on it. And in the end, they got the criminal(s) and she invited Yan Liang into her squad.
Lin Qi's character was more of a plot device to balance against Yan Liang, but I still appreciated that she wasn't too stereotypical of a character. She wasn't a stereotype and was a leader in her way. We also see her continuing to learn and grow after coming into contact with someone as unconventional as Yan Liang.
Guo Yu
Oh man, this guy. So I'd seen Dai Xu previously in the Rise of Phoenixes where he played a villain. And he acted the villain pretty well in my opinion. I was pretty impressed when I saw him playing a naive youngster character at the beginning, who slowly panicked his way into being a mastermind. When we saw the douche Guo Yu in the end I was like "ah, yes, this is why they cast Dai Xu." Dai Xu is a young-looking actor who can play villains convincingly and I think that is a huge plus for how this character came across.
Guo Yu started off the show as a normal guy. Unfortunately, he wasn't that savvy and got himself involved with the wrong people. First of all, going to Huang Mao for protection after Zhu Huiru was being threatened by Li Hua? Probably not the smartest thing to do. In any case, a lot of what he did for the first half of the show was to protect Zhu Huiru. He hired Huang Mao to protect Zhu Huiru and he hit Huang Mao over the head to protect her.
As he was leaving the scene of the crime after killing Huang Mao, he took the folder. Why he did that, I still can't figure out. But many people do random things when they're panicking. The turning point was when Guo Yu saw that the entire folder was of bank cards. He got greedy and withdrew a ton of money instead of destroying the file (or turning it over to Luo Wen who would've destroyed it).
The next major event for Guo Yu was when he was finally hunted down by Li Fengtian. In order to save his own skin, he had to reveal Luo Wen's name. I'm not going to blame him for that. Again, he was panicking and he needed to save himself. But again, his greed got the better of him. He didn't want to leave without his money, and he agreed to collaborate with Li Fengtian. Li Fengtian had reason to get rid of Luo Wen, who wanted to kill him. Guo Yu also had reason to get rid of Luo Wen, since Luo Wen (and Zhu Huiru) were the only witnesses to his crime. And of course, after Guo Yu got rid of Zhu Fulai, he could finally be with Zhu Huiru.
Getting rid of Zhu Huiru was the final straw for Guo Yu and he finally turned to the dark side. One year later, we saw that he became the bigshot boss of his own law firm. I have qualms with this because there is no reason he did that much in one year. He hadn't even gotten his license a year before, and now he's the boss? I would've accepted this if it was a longer timeskip. Also, when he stepped out of his car wearing the large coat as a cape and sunglasses? Ultimate douche look, wow XD
Anyway, we see cracks in his relationship with Zhu Huiru. He used to act like a completely upright lawyer but he'd resorted to the same scare tactics as his previous slimy boss. Of course, that didn't sit right with Zhu Huiru, who'd been subject to the same scare tactics. Zhu Huiru wanted to start earning money for herself and Guo Yu wouldn't allow that.
Zhu Huiru started gathering intel and set up a plan that would force Guo Yu to either go to the police to save her or to save himself. He chose the latter. From that point until the end of the show, it became hard for me to trust Guo Yu anytime he was trying to appeal to Zhu Huiru's feelings. Even when he'd stabbed himself to get away from the warehouse, I was wary that Guo Yu was actually sorry for what he'd done. And we saw that in the end, he was unable to evade consequences for his crimes.
I do think that Guo Yu originally did what he did to protect Zhu Huiru, including getting involved with the wrong people and killing Huang Mao. After his life started going the way he wanted, however, he became insanely afraid that he'd lose it all. He had his own stay-at-home girlfriend, his own company, etc. His greed made him lose sight of what he used to think was most important to him, which was his love for Zhu Huiru and his respect for justice and the truth.
Zhu Huiru
At first, I thought she was a bit of a damsel character, but I think it was just because Guo Yu was being protective overcompensating a bit by trying to take control of the situation. Zhu Huiru was a little naive at the beginning. It was naive to think that Huang Mao was actually serious about sending people to protect the restaurant. But it was her nature to see the best in people. She was pretty much Luo Wen's defense squad leader after realizing how much pain he was in.
Up until her brother's death, Zhu Huiru continued to go by the script that Luo Wen had outlined for her and Guo Yu. She believed in him (more so after she learned about his personal struggles). And after her brother's apparent suicide, she had no one to turn to whom she could trust other than Guo Yu. Guo Yu had gotten rid of 2/3 of Zhu Huiru's trusted friends in that incident.
After the time skip, Zhu Huiru started getting restless, but she was also starting to see how status and money were changing Guo Yu. He was a totally different man, no longer a friend of the law and only after the money. He was also pretty controlling of her actions, not wanting her to ever be out of his sight. He also didn't really care about her feelings. Of course the first anniversary of her brother's death would be a huge freaking deal for her and despite him denying that he forgot, we all know that Guo Yu forgot.
Things changed for Zhu Huiru when she had a chat with Yan Liang, who suggested the idea that her brother didn't actually die from suicide. After all, he was so far removed from the case, and he'd also had completely different plans earlier in the day. But she was blinded by Guo Yu's sacrifices for her in the prior year and only then did she realize that maybe she trusted the wrong person.
I thought it was pretty cool that Zhu Huiru put together a scheme to trick Guo Yu into showing his true colours. After that confrontation, both Zhu Huiru and I as an audience member stopped believing anything that Guo Yu said. It was pretty heartbreaking when Guo Yu was forced to pour the molten on Zhu Huiru. I mean, yeah, technically he was forced to do it, but everything up until that didn't really help the case that he apparently still loved her.
We don't know what happened between Zhu Huiru and Guo Yu in the vehicle, after Guo Yu had stabbed himself. Apparently he thought that that was what Zhu Huiru wanted as revenge for killing her brother. I doubt that she wanted that at all. She had only ever wanted them to face justice together. I think that Zhu Huiru probably let Guo Yu go because she didn't want anything to do with him again. She was willing to come clean to the police, and she'd give evidence that Guo Yu was guilty and she probably had trust that the police would catch him, which they did.
At the very end, Zhu Huiru went to jail, but she was on good terms with Lin Qi and Yan Liang. She was pleased that she could finally sleep. She was wracked with guilt up until then, and knowing the extent of Guo Yu's crimes also probably haunted her too. I like Zhu Huiru as a character. She'd done some things out of panic, but over time she came to terms with the fact that she had to atone for her crimes, and to believe in the justice system.
Luo Wen
Luo Wen was the serial killer Snowman, but he was actually using the real Snowman's fingerprints and information. I'd say that Luo Wen was a bit of an eccentric. He didn't really have the same thought process as the average person. While this may seem obvious, I'd actually put him on a different wavelength than Yan Liang. Though Yan Liang was pretty smart and also intent on achieving justice, he said that he didn't want to become Luo Wen, to become the kind of person who'd kill to achieve justice. (Technically, that did happen in the end, but Li Fengtian was actively threatening his life, so that changed the situation a bit.)
Finding out the truth was Luo Wen's only goal in life. 8 years ago, he opposed Yan Liang's decision to name the mother as the culprit. The reason was that apparently the stepson had a bright future ahead of him, and the victim was an abusive monster anyway. (I have qualms with this point of view, but that's a conversation for another time) For Luo Wen, this was unacceptable. The truth was the truth, and nothing should alter that.
In recent years, Luo Wen's entire life was devoted to finding out the truth behind his wife and daughter's disappearance. He'd go so far as to kill people in order to get other people to help him. Before he died, he had one opportunity to meet the mystery man, but unfortunately was unable to do any harm. Luo Wen knew this was going to happen anyway, as he'd left the hospital injured. He passed the baton over to Yan Liang to have Li Fengtian brought to justice.
Laosong and Xiaoli
They were Lin Qi's main subordinates. It's interesting that we didn't even get names for them, but they still fulfilled their purpose. Laosong was the older guy and Xiaoli was the younger guy, and they were both there to do Lin Qi and Yan Liang's bidding.
Jin Biao
He was Yan Liang's thug correspondent. He first helped Yan Liang and Lin Qi in providign some intel on what was going in the world of mobsters. When Yan Liang was out of the police force, Jin Biao was basically his right hand man, and probably the guy who recruited others to work for Yan Liang.
Liu Xiaodong
He was Yan Liang's stepson, from his second ex-wife's previous marriage. This ex-wife had become a citizen of another country and didn't seem to have any plans of coming back to collect her son, which was honestly so shitty for him.
Dongzi and Yan Liang had a really rocky relationship because he was terrible with talking to children, and he wasn't Dongzi's real father, which created some tension. Yan Liang was busy with the case, and so Dongzi spent a ton of time at the police office. Dongzi ended up helping the police a few times, and gained some encouragement from Lin Qi. Lin Qi provided the positive feedback when Yan Liang couldn't.
As a side note, it's pretty wild that Dongzi randomly had a photographic memory. Like, how could Yan Liang and his ex-wife not realize that they had a kid with a talent? Just goes on to show how much the ex-wife didn't care :(
Dongzi decided that he wanted to enter the police academy. It probably felt good to be praised for the work he did for Lin Qi. Immediately after Yan Liang agreed to help him get into the academy, he caught sight of Li Fengtian and tried to follow him, not knowing he was a really dangerous guy, and lost his life.
After his death, we see Dongzi being referred to as Yan Liang's family. It kind of hurts that he was only able to admit this after Dongzi was dead. But we see how hard Dongzi's death hit Yan Liang. Not only did he want to avenge Luo Wen, a mentor figure, but also Dongzi, a kid that he was responsible for. Despite their arguments, they definitely grew closer and it was such a pity that Dongzi lost his life while trying to be helpful.
Director Zhao Tiemin
He was Lin Qi's superior, and Yan Liang's former supervisor. He'd recruited Yan Liang onto the Snowman investigation squad, with the promise that he'd be allowed to return as a police detective if the case was solved. I don't know why he took back his words afterwards :/ Maybe it was because he never had the authority to do so from the beginning, but he needed some way to get Yan Liang on this very difficult case.
Lawyer Jin Hui
What an incredibly slimy guy. Right from the beginning, he was not a good lawyer nor a good boss. He only worked on the cases that raked in a lot of money, such as working for Li Hua. The decor around his office showed what a money hungry guy he was, including superstitious idols and such.
He also had a bunch of gambling debt, and that usually got him in trouble with Zhang Bing. Things started getting desperate for him when Laohue lost his bank book, so he REALLY needed the debt collected from Laojin, and Li Fengtian was sent to collect the debt. Li Fengtian was relentless, which was pretty freaky.
Laojin sort of had an affair with Li Hua when she was a client of his, but she wouldn't lend any money to him after he asked. Shao Hai informed his boss that Guo Yu was acting shady surrounding the death of Huang Mao, and Laojin actually used that information to threaten his own employee, using a voice changer and all. That was such a slimy thing to do.
Anyway, after seeing that he was probably going to continue struggling to get money, Li Fengtian just killed him.
Shao Hai
This guy had such rotten luck. He did all the things I'd probably do if I was in his shoes. Guo Yu was acting weird so of course he asked him what's up. One, to see if Guo Yu needed any help, and two, to see if he needed to protect himself. Then Shao Hai went to their boss to say that Guo Yu was acting shady. In normal cases, your boss should be a trustworthy person. It just so happened that Laojin was the shadiest person on the planet. After a second "breakin" happened in Guo Yu and Shao Hai's shared apartment, of course he'd get suspicious.
I think Guo Yu manipulated the situation to get Shao Hai to sleep on the couch so that he'd be the first person that Li Fengtian saw, and honestly, that's such rotten luck. Even Li Fengtian admitted he'd wrongfully killed the wrong person. Just a nightmare from beginning to end for Shao Hai.
Sun Hongyun
He was the Snowman's fourth murder. He was married to Li Hua, but technically had Zhu Huiru on the side. Zhu Huiru just accepted the "relationship" because she needed the money for her brother's surgery and later their restaurant, and also because Sun Hongyun would aggressively reject a break up.
Zhu Huiru had actually planned to try to break up again but Sun Hongyun was murdered before that came to happen.
Li Hua
She was Sun Hongyun's wife, and hated Zhu Huiru for being "the third woman." She first gave Zhu Huiru a hard time, which prompted her and Guo Yu to hire Huang Mao for protection.
Later on, Li Hua backed off from Zhu Huiru. She didn't actually care about getting the restaurant. She just wanted to give Zhu Huiru a hard time. When she heard that Zhu Huiru was probably going to get arrested for murder, she backed off too because then the situation would resolve itself.
Post time skip, Li Hua hired Guo Yu for her cases. Guo Yu handled the cases successfully for her, just as Laojin had. Guo Yu insisted that their relationship was nothing more than professional, but to people on the outside, it would appear that Guo Yu was no different than his former boss, intimidating people into submission rather than using the law in more reasonable ways.
Zhu Fulai
He was Zhu Huiru's older brother. I don't understand why he hated Guo Yu so much. Apparently, he hated Guo Yu even when they were high school students which ???? While he was outwardly polite to Guo Yu, he continued to urge Zhu Huiru not to be close to him for whatever reason.
Seeing that all of this stuff surrounding murders was really affecting their lifestyle, Zhu Fulai told his sister that they should return home and start anew. While this wasn't ideal for Zhu Huiru, she loved her brother more than anyone agreed. Zhu Huiru went to see Luo Wen and to my surprise (and hers), he told Zhu Huiru to heed her brother's words and to maintain a distance with Guo Yu. Luo Wen said that maybe her brother was more complex than she thought. I don't really see in what way "he was more complex." If anything, I think Guo Yu's increasingly dodgy behaviour would've been more reason to stay away from Guo Yu.
Zhu Fulai was manipulated into committing suicide. He wanted to protect his sister from going to jail. The issue was that he was never on the police's radar, and his committing of the murder didn't make sense at all. There was literally nothing to tie him to the murder other than this extremely random confession. In any case, he was dead, and Zhu Huiru had no one to turn to but Guo Yu.
Even though Zhu Fulai had his flaws, he and Zhu Huiru loved each other very much. After all, the sibling bond is always special in its own way. I think Zhu Huiru acknowledge that her brother wasn't the best man in the world, but she valued him and respected his authority more than anything, even her love for Guo Yu. So of course she was incredibly hurt when she realized that Guo Yu had killed Zhu Fulai indirectly.
Laohuo/Huoge
He was the main loan shark boss. He was the supervisor of Zhang Bing and of course was furious when Zhang Bing had lost the bank cards. He'd hired Li Fengtian to collect the rest of the debts since it seemed Zhang Bing wasn't reliable at that time. Unfortunately, Laohuo tried to rip off Li Fengtian and that didn't go so well for him.
Zhang Bing
He was a loan shark, and the boss of Huang Mao. He did the dumb deed of forgetting the folder of bank cards and asking Huang Mao to hold on to it. It was probably a mistake not to take it back from him right away, even just for safekeeping reasons, whether or not Huang Mao was going to get whacked.
He eventually tracked down the folder to Guo Yu, who was unwilling to give up the folder. In the end, Zhang Bing was killed by Luo Wen. Luo Wen had been killing people who might've been related to Snowman, but he'd also done it to distract the police from interrogating Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru. This murder was also done in broad daylight, which was super ballsy.
Huang Mao/Xu Tianding
Another slimeball. He probably didn't really have any intention of actually helping Zhu Huiru, and wanted to get intimate with her from day one. He claimed that he'd set up a meeting with Li Hua to discuss a settlement, but he hadn't, and had planned on getting Zhu Huiru drunk and raping her.
He was Luo Wen's target anyway, but Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru ended up killing him to defend Zhu Huiru.
Lao'er
Zhang Bing's right hand man. Also a doofus.
Li Fengtian
The Snowman. Li Fengtian was portrayed as this guy who didn't really give a shit about anything. He never seemed to have anything to lose and no one could "make" him do anything. I just couldn't figure out what it was in life that kept him going. What was his drive to stay alive. He stayed anonymous, didn't have a fixed address. But what was the point? Was it to stay alive until his son came out of jail?
He was hired by Laohuo as more of a mercenary/contractor than an actual employee. We see that Li Fengtian didn't really respect Laohuo's authority at all. He first worked with Guo Yu because Guo Yu knew that Luo Wen wanted to kill him. There was no chance of Luo Wen killing Li Fengtian to begin with because he was very sick anyway. Guo Yu and Li Fengtian were involved post timeskip because Guo Yu brought up the possibility of killing Yan Liang to get him off their trail. And then Zhu Huiru set up the sting that made Guo Yu threaten Li Fengtian with calling the police. Li Fengtian just needed to get rid of Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru and he'd be back to his regular life, so he did that, but Yan Liang was there this time, and forced him in a position to be shot dead by Lin Qi.
He was an okay villain, but I didn't particularly find him impressive. He was a little intimidating, I suppose, because of how much he didn't care.
Themes
Evidence
A lot of the evidence of crimes in this show were erased by Luo Wen. The point was that he'd erase all evidence that pointed to him and he'd only leave evidence pointing to Snowman so that the police could investigate who Snowman was.
A lot of the evidence in this show is actually testimony, even post time skip. Zhu Huiru had evidence of Guo Yu's crimes, but it was all via confession. She did have that video of Li Fengtian killing Shao Hai though, so I guess that's one. But other than that, nothing. Li Fengtian had used acid to burn off his fingerprints so nothing could match him to those crimes.
Justice
Luo Wen didn't care about how justice was achieved. He felt that killing unrelated people was okay if it meant catching Snowman. He thought that those he murdered were related to Snowman, but they weren't directly related to the kidnapping of his wife and daughter and so it was still unfair to kill them due to guilt by association.
Yan Liang didn't want to see himself become a second Luo Wen. He wanted to catch Li Fengtian alive and have him face the courts. Lin Qi was also worried about Yan Liang killing Li Fengtian. In the end, Yan Liang actually forced Li Fengtian to attack him in order to force him in a situation that warranted arrest. I think killing Li Fengtian was not Yan Liang's first choice, but it was better than not catching Li Fengtian at all. Plus, Li Fengtian was literally holding him at gunpoint.
Overall
Overall, I'd recommend this show. There aren't many Cdramas that have this mini-series format that are focused on a very specific story, so Burning Ice is a good change of pace. Many dramas that are based on books are actually based on webnovels that have several story arcs, which is not quite the same as books such as this that have one overarching plot and that's it.
The acting is good, and the dialogue is okay. But I think the strength of this show is how it sticks to the relevant events and has no fillers or fanservice to distract or bait the audience into thinking it's something more flashy or positive.
Story
The main story is as follows (in chronological order). 7-8 years ago, Luo Wen and Yan Liang were working on a case. The victim was an abusive husband. The true culprit was the stepson, but the mother covered for the son and took the blame. Yan Liang, knowing the full truth, accepted the mother's blame and reported her as the culprit, but Luo Wen was unwilling to let it go, and the stepson was convicted. The mother and stepson were the former wife and son of Li Fengtian. Li Fengtian kidnapped and killed Luo Wen's wife and daughter in retaliation.
Four years ago, Luo Wen discovered he was ill. He needed the police to speed up its investigation process so he started committing murders and leaving Li Fengtian's prints at the crime scene in order to get the police to investigate the mystery man.
Lin Qi was the leader of the case. Yan Liang was lended to the investigation because of his smarts.
Luo Wen's murders tended to be of people whom he thought knew "Snowman," the mystery kidnapper he was looking for. Luo Wen was on his way to murder somebody when Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru ended up killing that person first. Luo Wen ended up helping Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru cover up their evidence because the victim was his target anyway. The mobs caught up with Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru in different ways. In an attempt to stop being killed, Guo Yu offered to collaborate with Li Fengtian and Guo Yu did this to both get rid of Luo Wen and Zhu Huiru's older brother Zhu Fulai, who didn't like him dating his sister. Luo Wen eventually died because of Guo Yu's actions, and at this point, the police still hadn't caught Li Fengtian.
One year later, Yan Liang was out of the police, but was still investigation. Zhu Huiru and Guo Yu starting seeing cracks in their relationship. Through some traps and webs that Yan Liang spun, he forced Li Fengtian into nearly committing another crime, and that gave Lin Qi the opportunity to arrest Li Fengtian. Zhu Huiru accepted her fate of being arrested for murder. Guo Yu tried to escape, but was caught. Yan Liang didn't die, and Lin Qi let him on to her task force.
The format of this show was more similar to the miniseries format that we see in Western shows. The whole 12 episodes covered one mystery, with no fillers. I thought that the main strength of this show was that it stuck to events relating to the main case. The story wasted very little time in establishing who the characters were. What was important was how they related to the mystery, and their true characters would be revealed anyway as they experienced the events in the story.
While his show was pretty good, it was not without flaws. I hadn't read the book that it was originally based on, but I think that some of the flaws were likely carried over from the book. This is because some of the minor issues I had related to how characters were written.
As a side note, I'm incredibly pleased that this show didn't force a romantic relationship between Yan Liang and Lin Qi. Yan Liang had been in two marriages and it didn't seem that he was even fully out of his second one (due to the custody dispute). I really felt that Yan Liang and Lin Qi respected each other's work proficiency and nothing else, but that was enough for them to trust each other as friends and comrades, and there didn't need to be anything else to them.
Production
The winter in Northeastern China aesthetic was also experienced in Day & Night and I must admit that I'm starting to be a fan of it. That being said, due to the setting, the colour palette of this show was pretty gray. That's fine though. The lighting overall was fine, even for scenes that were taking place at night. At least I could still tell what was going on.
There were some interesting angles used in order to show characters doing different things at the same time. I saw this most often at Zhu Fulai's clay pot restaurant. There were scenes of Zhu Fulai and Zhu Huiru doing their own thing in different rooms, which showed the separation between the characters that arose due to the crimes in the show.
Characters
Yan Liang
I'd say that Yan Liang was the main character of the show. He was working with police dispatch at the beginning of the show. I don't remember if it was for "reasons," or if it was directly due to him misreporting the case from 8 years ago.
I felt that this character was written in an exaggerated manner when it came to some of his recklessness. I did think of his character a bit as Patrick Jane in the Mentalist, but the difference was that Patrick Jane was not actually a police officer and just a consultant, whereas Yan Liang was still a cop despite not being a detective. That being said, there was still a distinction in his attitude before and after the time skip (when he left the police force).
Director Zhao said that Yan Liang only ever heeded the words of Luo Wen, so that was why Yan Liang was so invested in this case after he'd guessed that Luo Wen was behind the murders. Luo Wen was perhaps the only person who ever matched him in brainpower, and he respected that mightily. And after Luo Wen died, even though he'd committed all the murders that he'd done, Yan Liang was focused on avenging Luo Wen and his family and nothing else.
Yan Liang was a prickly kind of guy and had a tough time showing his love. We saw that he had the "tough love" kind of parenting style when it came to Dongzi. It took Lin Qi to settle down the two of them. Dongzi was so excited when Yan Liang approved of him attending the police academy, but those good feelings were short lived because Dongzi was killed soon after by Li Fengtian. Yan Liang definitely blamed this on himself, as Dongzi had no reason to be following Li Fengtian except he'd seen the photo on Yan Liang's phone.
In the end, after all of his revenge had been sought, it seemed Yan Liang's only goal in life was to continue solving mysteries. For some reason, Director Zhao couldn't promise that. But we see that Lin Qi was willing to take him on. I don't think there's going to be a sequel though.
Despite Yan Liang being a little too reckless at times, I still thought he was a good character that made the audience want to cheer for him.
Lin Qi
The only thing we learned about Lin Qi's background was that she was not from Northeastern China. Honestly, we didn't need to know even that much because the important thing about her was that she was the leader on the Snowman serial murder case.
I will say her character was slightly flimsy at times due to her dialogue being fitted for the situation. For example, there'd be a scene in which she'd be chewing out Yan Liang for doing something very unprofessionally, and then in the next scene, she'd be praising his smart thinking. I mean, those could both be true, but seeing those scenes one after the other didn't help in establishing Lin Qi's character that well.
What we know of Lin Qi is that she's a by-the-books kind of police officer, which is the exact counterweight we need to Yan Liang who doesn't do things by the books, ever. She came to respect Yan Liang's smarts, but she still would not sacrifice her police integrity and disregard protocol in order to catch Li Fengtian because it wasn't the right way to do things. I totally see her point of view because I too am the lawful neutral kind of person.
What was cool in the end was that Yan Liang respected Lin Qi's plan for action, so he decided to set up Li Fengtian and force him into committing crime so that Lin Qi could be ready to catch him in her net immediately. Lin Qi was really uneasy about shooting through Yan Liang to get to Li Fengtian, but she did it anyway because Yan Liang insisted on it. And in the end, they got the criminal(s) and she invited Yan Liang into her squad.
Lin Qi's character was more of a plot device to balance against Yan Liang, but I still appreciated that she wasn't too stereotypical of a character. She wasn't a stereotype and was a leader in her way. We also see her continuing to learn and grow after coming into contact with someone as unconventional as Yan Liang.
Guo Yu
Oh man, this guy. So I'd seen Dai Xu previously in the Rise of Phoenixes where he played a villain. And he acted the villain pretty well in my opinion. I was pretty impressed when I saw him playing a naive youngster character at the beginning, who slowly panicked his way into being a mastermind. When we saw the douche Guo Yu in the end I was like "ah, yes, this is why they cast Dai Xu." Dai Xu is a young-looking actor who can play villains convincingly and I think that is a huge plus for how this character came across.
Guo Yu started off the show as a normal guy. Unfortunately, he wasn't that savvy and got himself involved with the wrong people. First of all, going to Huang Mao for protection after Zhu Huiru was being threatened by Li Hua? Probably not the smartest thing to do. In any case, a lot of what he did for the first half of the show was to protect Zhu Huiru. He hired Huang Mao to protect Zhu Huiru and he hit Huang Mao over the head to protect her.
As he was leaving the scene of the crime after killing Huang Mao, he took the folder. Why he did that, I still can't figure out. But many people do random things when they're panicking. The turning point was when Guo Yu saw that the entire folder was of bank cards. He got greedy and withdrew a ton of money instead of destroying the file (or turning it over to Luo Wen who would've destroyed it).
The next major event for Guo Yu was when he was finally hunted down by Li Fengtian. In order to save his own skin, he had to reveal Luo Wen's name. I'm not going to blame him for that. Again, he was panicking and he needed to save himself. But again, his greed got the better of him. He didn't want to leave without his money, and he agreed to collaborate with Li Fengtian. Li Fengtian had reason to get rid of Luo Wen, who wanted to kill him. Guo Yu also had reason to get rid of Luo Wen, since Luo Wen (and Zhu Huiru) were the only witnesses to his crime. And of course, after Guo Yu got rid of Zhu Fulai, he could finally be with Zhu Huiru.
Getting rid of Zhu Huiru was the final straw for Guo Yu and he finally turned to the dark side. One year later, we saw that he became the bigshot boss of his own law firm. I have qualms with this because there is no reason he did that much in one year. He hadn't even gotten his license a year before, and now he's the boss? I would've accepted this if it was a longer timeskip. Also, when he stepped out of his car wearing the large coat as a cape and sunglasses? Ultimate douche look, wow XD
Anyway, we see cracks in his relationship with Zhu Huiru. He used to act like a completely upright lawyer but he'd resorted to the same scare tactics as his previous slimy boss. Of course, that didn't sit right with Zhu Huiru, who'd been subject to the same scare tactics. Zhu Huiru wanted to start earning money for herself and Guo Yu wouldn't allow that.
Zhu Huiru started gathering intel and set up a plan that would force Guo Yu to either go to the police to save her or to save himself. He chose the latter. From that point until the end of the show, it became hard for me to trust Guo Yu anytime he was trying to appeal to Zhu Huiru's feelings. Even when he'd stabbed himself to get away from the warehouse, I was wary that Guo Yu was actually sorry for what he'd done. And we saw that in the end, he was unable to evade consequences for his crimes.
I do think that Guo Yu originally did what he did to protect Zhu Huiru, including getting involved with the wrong people and killing Huang Mao. After his life started going the way he wanted, however, he became insanely afraid that he'd lose it all. He had his own stay-at-home girlfriend, his own company, etc. His greed made him lose sight of what he used to think was most important to him, which was his love for Zhu Huiru and his respect for justice and the truth.
Zhu Huiru
At first, I thought she was a bit of a damsel character, but I think it was just because Guo Yu was being protective overcompensating a bit by trying to take control of the situation. Zhu Huiru was a little naive at the beginning. It was naive to think that Huang Mao was actually serious about sending people to protect the restaurant. But it was her nature to see the best in people. She was pretty much Luo Wen's defense squad leader after realizing how much pain he was in.
Up until her brother's death, Zhu Huiru continued to go by the script that Luo Wen had outlined for her and Guo Yu. She believed in him (more so after she learned about his personal struggles). And after her brother's apparent suicide, she had no one to turn to whom she could trust other than Guo Yu. Guo Yu had gotten rid of 2/3 of Zhu Huiru's trusted friends in that incident.
After the time skip, Zhu Huiru started getting restless, but she was also starting to see how status and money were changing Guo Yu. He was a totally different man, no longer a friend of the law and only after the money. He was also pretty controlling of her actions, not wanting her to ever be out of his sight. He also didn't really care about her feelings. Of course the first anniversary of her brother's death would be a huge freaking deal for her and despite him denying that he forgot, we all know that Guo Yu forgot.
Things changed for Zhu Huiru when she had a chat with Yan Liang, who suggested the idea that her brother didn't actually die from suicide. After all, he was so far removed from the case, and he'd also had completely different plans earlier in the day. But she was blinded by Guo Yu's sacrifices for her in the prior year and only then did she realize that maybe she trusted the wrong person.
I thought it was pretty cool that Zhu Huiru put together a scheme to trick Guo Yu into showing his true colours. After that confrontation, both Zhu Huiru and I as an audience member stopped believing anything that Guo Yu said. It was pretty heartbreaking when Guo Yu was forced to pour the molten on Zhu Huiru. I mean, yeah, technically he was forced to do it, but everything up until that didn't really help the case that he apparently still loved her.
We don't know what happened between Zhu Huiru and Guo Yu in the vehicle, after Guo Yu had stabbed himself. Apparently he thought that that was what Zhu Huiru wanted as revenge for killing her brother. I doubt that she wanted that at all. She had only ever wanted them to face justice together. I think that Zhu Huiru probably let Guo Yu go because she didn't want anything to do with him again. She was willing to come clean to the police, and she'd give evidence that Guo Yu was guilty and she probably had trust that the police would catch him, which they did.
At the very end, Zhu Huiru went to jail, but she was on good terms with Lin Qi and Yan Liang. She was pleased that she could finally sleep. She was wracked with guilt up until then, and knowing the extent of Guo Yu's crimes also probably haunted her too. I like Zhu Huiru as a character. She'd done some things out of panic, but over time she came to terms with the fact that she had to atone for her crimes, and to believe in the justice system.
Luo Wen
Luo Wen was the serial killer Snowman, but he was actually using the real Snowman's fingerprints and information. I'd say that Luo Wen was a bit of an eccentric. He didn't really have the same thought process as the average person. While this may seem obvious, I'd actually put him on a different wavelength than Yan Liang. Though Yan Liang was pretty smart and also intent on achieving justice, he said that he didn't want to become Luo Wen, to become the kind of person who'd kill to achieve justice. (Technically, that did happen in the end, but Li Fengtian was actively threatening his life, so that changed the situation a bit.)
Finding out the truth was Luo Wen's only goal in life. 8 years ago, he opposed Yan Liang's decision to name the mother as the culprit. The reason was that apparently the stepson had a bright future ahead of him, and the victim was an abusive monster anyway. (I have qualms with this point of view, but that's a conversation for another time) For Luo Wen, this was unacceptable. The truth was the truth, and nothing should alter that.
In recent years, Luo Wen's entire life was devoted to finding out the truth behind his wife and daughter's disappearance. He'd go so far as to kill people in order to get other people to help him. Before he died, he had one opportunity to meet the mystery man, but unfortunately was unable to do any harm. Luo Wen knew this was going to happen anyway, as he'd left the hospital injured. He passed the baton over to Yan Liang to have Li Fengtian brought to justice.
Laosong and Xiaoli
They were Lin Qi's main subordinates. It's interesting that we didn't even get names for them, but they still fulfilled their purpose. Laosong was the older guy and Xiaoli was the younger guy, and they were both there to do Lin Qi and Yan Liang's bidding.
Jin Biao
He was Yan Liang's thug correspondent. He first helped Yan Liang and Lin Qi in providign some intel on what was going in the world of mobsters. When Yan Liang was out of the police force, Jin Biao was basically his right hand man, and probably the guy who recruited others to work for Yan Liang.
Liu Xiaodong
He was Yan Liang's stepson, from his second ex-wife's previous marriage. This ex-wife had become a citizen of another country and didn't seem to have any plans of coming back to collect her son, which was honestly so shitty for him.
Dongzi and Yan Liang had a really rocky relationship because he was terrible with talking to children, and he wasn't Dongzi's real father, which created some tension. Yan Liang was busy with the case, and so Dongzi spent a ton of time at the police office. Dongzi ended up helping the police a few times, and gained some encouragement from Lin Qi. Lin Qi provided the positive feedback when Yan Liang couldn't.
As a side note, it's pretty wild that Dongzi randomly had a photographic memory. Like, how could Yan Liang and his ex-wife not realize that they had a kid with a talent? Just goes on to show how much the ex-wife didn't care :(
Dongzi decided that he wanted to enter the police academy. It probably felt good to be praised for the work he did for Lin Qi. Immediately after Yan Liang agreed to help him get into the academy, he caught sight of Li Fengtian and tried to follow him, not knowing he was a really dangerous guy, and lost his life.
After his death, we see Dongzi being referred to as Yan Liang's family. It kind of hurts that he was only able to admit this after Dongzi was dead. But we see how hard Dongzi's death hit Yan Liang. Not only did he want to avenge Luo Wen, a mentor figure, but also Dongzi, a kid that he was responsible for. Despite their arguments, they definitely grew closer and it was such a pity that Dongzi lost his life while trying to be helpful.
Director Zhao Tiemin
He was Lin Qi's superior, and Yan Liang's former supervisor. He'd recruited Yan Liang onto the Snowman investigation squad, with the promise that he'd be allowed to return as a police detective if the case was solved. I don't know why he took back his words afterwards :/ Maybe it was because he never had the authority to do so from the beginning, but he needed some way to get Yan Liang on this very difficult case.
Lawyer Jin Hui
What an incredibly slimy guy. Right from the beginning, he was not a good lawyer nor a good boss. He only worked on the cases that raked in a lot of money, such as working for Li Hua. The decor around his office showed what a money hungry guy he was, including superstitious idols and such.
He also had a bunch of gambling debt, and that usually got him in trouble with Zhang Bing. Things started getting desperate for him when Laohue lost his bank book, so he REALLY needed the debt collected from Laojin, and Li Fengtian was sent to collect the debt. Li Fengtian was relentless, which was pretty freaky.
Laojin sort of had an affair with Li Hua when she was a client of his, but she wouldn't lend any money to him after he asked. Shao Hai informed his boss that Guo Yu was acting shady surrounding the death of Huang Mao, and Laojin actually used that information to threaten his own employee, using a voice changer and all. That was such a slimy thing to do.
Anyway, after seeing that he was probably going to continue struggling to get money, Li Fengtian just killed him.
Shao Hai
This guy had such rotten luck. He did all the things I'd probably do if I was in his shoes. Guo Yu was acting weird so of course he asked him what's up. One, to see if Guo Yu needed any help, and two, to see if he needed to protect himself. Then Shao Hai went to their boss to say that Guo Yu was acting shady. In normal cases, your boss should be a trustworthy person. It just so happened that Laojin was the shadiest person on the planet. After a second "breakin" happened in Guo Yu and Shao Hai's shared apartment, of course he'd get suspicious.
I think Guo Yu manipulated the situation to get Shao Hai to sleep on the couch so that he'd be the first person that Li Fengtian saw, and honestly, that's such rotten luck. Even Li Fengtian admitted he'd wrongfully killed the wrong person. Just a nightmare from beginning to end for Shao Hai.
Sun Hongyun
He was the Snowman's fourth murder. He was married to Li Hua, but technically had Zhu Huiru on the side. Zhu Huiru just accepted the "relationship" because she needed the money for her brother's surgery and later their restaurant, and also because Sun Hongyun would aggressively reject a break up.
Zhu Huiru had actually planned to try to break up again but Sun Hongyun was murdered before that came to happen.
Li Hua
She was Sun Hongyun's wife, and hated Zhu Huiru for being "the third woman." She first gave Zhu Huiru a hard time, which prompted her and Guo Yu to hire Huang Mao for protection.
Later on, Li Hua backed off from Zhu Huiru. She didn't actually care about getting the restaurant. She just wanted to give Zhu Huiru a hard time. When she heard that Zhu Huiru was probably going to get arrested for murder, she backed off too because then the situation would resolve itself.
Post time skip, Li Hua hired Guo Yu for her cases. Guo Yu handled the cases successfully for her, just as Laojin had. Guo Yu insisted that their relationship was nothing more than professional, but to people on the outside, it would appear that Guo Yu was no different than his former boss, intimidating people into submission rather than using the law in more reasonable ways.
Zhu Fulai
He was Zhu Huiru's older brother. I don't understand why he hated Guo Yu so much. Apparently, he hated Guo Yu even when they were high school students which ???? While he was outwardly polite to Guo Yu, he continued to urge Zhu Huiru not to be close to him for whatever reason.
Seeing that all of this stuff surrounding murders was really affecting their lifestyle, Zhu Fulai told his sister that they should return home and start anew. While this wasn't ideal for Zhu Huiru, she loved her brother more than anyone agreed. Zhu Huiru went to see Luo Wen and to my surprise (and hers), he told Zhu Huiru to heed her brother's words and to maintain a distance with Guo Yu. Luo Wen said that maybe her brother was more complex than she thought. I don't really see in what way "he was more complex." If anything, I think Guo Yu's increasingly dodgy behaviour would've been more reason to stay away from Guo Yu.
Zhu Fulai was manipulated into committing suicide. He wanted to protect his sister from going to jail. The issue was that he was never on the police's radar, and his committing of the murder didn't make sense at all. There was literally nothing to tie him to the murder other than this extremely random confession. In any case, he was dead, and Zhu Huiru had no one to turn to but Guo Yu.
Even though Zhu Fulai had his flaws, he and Zhu Huiru loved each other very much. After all, the sibling bond is always special in its own way. I think Zhu Huiru acknowledge that her brother wasn't the best man in the world, but she valued him and respected his authority more than anything, even her love for Guo Yu. So of course she was incredibly hurt when she realized that Guo Yu had killed Zhu Fulai indirectly.
Laohuo/Huoge
He was the main loan shark boss. He was the supervisor of Zhang Bing and of course was furious when Zhang Bing had lost the bank cards. He'd hired Li Fengtian to collect the rest of the debts since it seemed Zhang Bing wasn't reliable at that time. Unfortunately, Laohuo tried to rip off Li Fengtian and that didn't go so well for him.
Zhang Bing
He was a loan shark, and the boss of Huang Mao. He did the dumb deed of forgetting the folder of bank cards and asking Huang Mao to hold on to it. It was probably a mistake not to take it back from him right away, even just for safekeeping reasons, whether or not Huang Mao was going to get whacked.
He eventually tracked down the folder to Guo Yu, who was unwilling to give up the folder. In the end, Zhang Bing was killed by Luo Wen. Luo Wen had been killing people who might've been related to Snowman, but he'd also done it to distract the police from interrogating Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru. This murder was also done in broad daylight, which was super ballsy.
Huang Mao/Xu Tianding
Another slimeball. He probably didn't really have any intention of actually helping Zhu Huiru, and wanted to get intimate with her from day one. He claimed that he'd set up a meeting with Li Hua to discuss a settlement, but he hadn't, and had planned on getting Zhu Huiru drunk and raping her.
He was Luo Wen's target anyway, but Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru ended up killing him to defend Zhu Huiru.
Lao'er
Zhang Bing's right hand man. Also a doofus.
Li Fengtian
The Snowman. Li Fengtian was portrayed as this guy who didn't really give a shit about anything. He never seemed to have anything to lose and no one could "make" him do anything. I just couldn't figure out what it was in life that kept him going. What was his drive to stay alive. He stayed anonymous, didn't have a fixed address. But what was the point? Was it to stay alive until his son came out of jail?
He was hired by Laohuo as more of a mercenary/contractor than an actual employee. We see that Li Fengtian didn't really respect Laohuo's authority at all. He first worked with Guo Yu because Guo Yu knew that Luo Wen wanted to kill him. There was no chance of Luo Wen killing Li Fengtian to begin with because he was very sick anyway. Guo Yu and Li Fengtian were involved post timeskip because Guo Yu brought up the possibility of killing Yan Liang to get him off their trail. And then Zhu Huiru set up the sting that made Guo Yu threaten Li Fengtian with calling the police. Li Fengtian just needed to get rid of Guo Yu and Zhu Huiru and he'd be back to his regular life, so he did that, but Yan Liang was there this time, and forced him in a position to be shot dead by Lin Qi.
He was an okay villain, but I didn't particularly find him impressive. He was a little intimidating, I suppose, because of how much he didn't care.
Themes
Evidence
A lot of the evidence of crimes in this show were erased by Luo Wen. The point was that he'd erase all evidence that pointed to him and he'd only leave evidence pointing to Snowman so that the police could investigate who Snowman was.
A lot of the evidence in this show is actually testimony, even post time skip. Zhu Huiru had evidence of Guo Yu's crimes, but it was all via confession. She did have that video of Li Fengtian killing Shao Hai though, so I guess that's one. But other than that, nothing. Li Fengtian had used acid to burn off his fingerprints so nothing could match him to those crimes.
Justice
Luo Wen didn't care about how justice was achieved. He felt that killing unrelated people was okay if it meant catching Snowman. He thought that those he murdered were related to Snowman, but they weren't directly related to the kidnapping of his wife and daughter and so it was still unfair to kill them due to guilt by association.
Yan Liang didn't want to see himself become a second Luo Wen. He wanted to catch Li Fengtian alive and have him face the courts. Lin Qi was also worried about Yan Liang killing Li Fengtian. In the end, Yan Liang actually forced Li Fengtian to attack him in order to force him in a situation that warranted arrest. I think killing Li Fengtian was not Yan Liang's first choice, but it was better than not catching Li Fengtian at all. Plus, Li Fengtian was literally holding him at gunpoint.
Overall
Overall, I'd recommend this show. There aren't many Cdramas that have this mini-series format that are focused on a very specific story, so Burning Ice is a good change of pace. Many dramas that are based on books are actually based on webnovels that have several story arcs, which is not quite the same as books such as this that have one overarching plot and that's it.
The acting is good, and the dialogue is okay. But I think the strength of this show is how it sticks to the relevant events and has no fillers or fanservice to distract or bait the audience into thinking it's something more flashy or positive.