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Absurd Accident is a 2016 film from China, directed by Li Yuhe.

Yang Baiwan and his wife Ma Lilian are the proprietors of a dilapidated hotel (but apparently a pretty good noodle shop on the ground floor) somewhere in rural China. Yang has been suffering from impotence, and has been going to a sleazy quack doctor, Dr. Bi, for bogus impotence cures.

Yang's inability to get it up had led him to believe that his wife must be cheating on him. When he gets confirmation from a third party that Ma is cheating on him, he decides to kill her. But he can't bring himself to do the deed, so he calls Dr. Bi, who has spoken about having some organized crime ties. Dr. Bi takes 40,000 yuan and says he will get in touch with a contract killer who will kill Yang's wife that very night.

It's important that Yang be away so he goes to visit a friend. But he has a change of heart and rushes back home...and events get crazier and sillier from there. Over the course of one night there's a murder, a hit-and-run, a corpse in a trunk, a cop on his last night before his retirement, a blind date gone horribly wrong, a pair of bumbling jewel thieves, and more bloody, gory farce.


Tropes:

  • Auto Erotica: With a very unfortunate result. The blind date couple are having sex in his car, but in the throes of passion she manages to knock the gearshift into Drive and he winds up stepping on the gas. The car lurches forward, crushing Dr. Bi between it and the car in front, killing him.
  • Babies Ever After: The movie ends with Yang and a heavily pregnant Ma expecting the birth of their first child.
  • Back-Alley Doctor: Dr. Bi, an obvious quack who claims he can cure impotence by hanging Yang upside down and slapping him. He also sells a wine that he claims will fix Yang's problem.
  • Big Guy, Little Guy: The two jewel thieves who stop at the inn for noodles and wind up getting ensnared in the murder and mayhem. The short one is aggressive and pugnacious and clearly in charge. The other one is much taller and heavyset, and also meek, deferring to his skinny buddy and calling the short one "boss."
  • Black Comedy: A Tarantino-esque action comedy that involves Stupid Crooks, a contract killing gone awry, a corpse that doesn't stay dead but instead wanders off, two different attempts to dispose of a body, and a couple who try to enjoy some Auto Erotica and wind up killing a man.
  • Blood from the Mouth: How the audience knows that Dr. Bi is really going to die this time, after he was bashed on the head with a cane but eventually regained consciousness.
  • Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Yang hires Bi to arrange Ma's murder, and then Ma and Yang wind up trying to dispose of Bi's body when the murder goes awry. That craziness runs into an entirely separate plot about a pair of jewel thieves who just happened to eat at the hotel that day; one of them comes back to retrieve a hidden jewel and winds up knocking Bi out. And if that isn't enough, a pair of single people out on a blind date wind up killing Bi by accident, and then they have to dispose of the body.
  • Distant Finale: The final scene skips forward to "a few years later". Yang was paroled for the murder of Dr. Bi, since he has little memory of the incident due to the brain damage he suffered after his wife bashed him in the head with the cane. That brain damage also had the side effect of greatly increasing his libido and solving his The Loins Sleep Tonight problem. The movie ends with Yang and Ma happily married and Ma heavily pregnant.
  • Facecam: The camera tracks Yang's face as he runs downstairs after his wife screams his name. She needs help making the noodles, and she's clearly sick of his ineffectual dithering.
  • Fake Boobs: The dating couple having been caught and arrested for a hit-and-run, Officer Huang says that they'd better not tell any more lies. The woman, panicking, says she'll tell the whole truth. She then proceeds to take off her wig and her fake eyelashes, and finally, to her date's astonishment, she pulls some rubber falsies out of her blouse and throws them away.
  • Flipping the Bird: And also a Dying Moment of Awesome. The dating couple has hit Dr. Bi with their car, crushing him against the car in front of him. He is obviously fatally injured, coughing blood as the man and woman get out of the car. The man, who is named He Nuli, stupidly asks "Are you ok?" Dr. Bi flips him the bird, then dies, his middle finger still upraised.
  • Hit Me, Dammit!: After Yang chases a man out of his wife's room—it turns out that he's a massage therapist—he raises a walking stick to hit her. She screams "Hit me! Hit me!" He can't do it.
  • Impairment Shot: The camera shows Ma's vision blurring as the sedative Yang slipped into her drink takes effect.
  • It Was Here, I Swear!: Ma decides that they have to come clean and tell Yang's uncle, Officer Huang, everything that happened. He tries to stop her, but finally she opens the trunk—and it's empty. Huang tells her not to drink so much, and leaves. It turns out that Dr. Bi actually wasn't dead, and he climbed out of the trunk.
  • The Loins Sleep Tonight: A long-term problem for Yang, which has led him to consult with Dr. Bi the quack, has left his wife immensely frustrated, and which has left Yang paranoid that Ma is having an affair.
  • No Name Given: No name is given for either the fat or the skinny jewel thief, nor for the woman who comes to the restaurant on a blind date.
  • Once More, with Clarity: A short, aggressive guy, and his much larger, mild-mannered companion stop in the noodle shop for lunch. After Yang picks a fight, the short guy accepts the challenge, and tries Flipping the Table—but the big guy grabs the table, and won't let him flip it, and tries to calm his buddy down and pay the bill. Later this scene is played again, after the film has revealed that the big guy and little guy are thieves who have just knocked over a jewelry store and made a huge score. The big guy noticed a ruby ring amongst their haul, and tried to hide it from his short buddy by sticking it under the table with a piece of gum. That's why he wouldn't let his angry little friend flip the table over.
  • P.O.V. Cam:
    • A camera shows the point of view of the killer as he ascends the stairs. It turns out to be Dr. Bi himself.
    • This is done again for a similar scene near the end, when the fat jewel thief has come back for his ruby ring, and looks for Ma.
  • Professional Killer: Averted. Dr. Bi claims he knows a hit man, "Mr. Marco," who kills with fatal chopsticks. A gullible Yang swallows this, but when the time comes, it's Dr. Bi himself sneaking into the inn to kill Yang's wife.
  • Punk in the Trunk: A lot.
    • Ma does this to herself first. Having escaped from Dr. Bi and made it out into the courtyard, but with Bi hot on her heels, she dives into a car trunk and shuts it on top of her. Bi is still trying to force her out when the fat jewel thief sneaks up and clubs him in the back of the head.
    • Then Dr. Bi goes on a little odyssey. Yang comes home moments after this and is still staring at Bi's motionless body when Ma climbs out of the trunk. She thinks he did it, and that he saved her. The two of them throw Bi's body back in the trunk.
    • But Bi isn't dead. He gets out of the trunk and is wobbling back to his feet when the couple on the blind date accidentally kill him by starting their car and crushing Bi against the trunk he just escaped. So the dating couple throws Bi, dead for real this time, into their trunk.
    • They still have to get rid of the body, though, so when they see a flatbed truck parked by the side of the road they throw Bi's body into it. It's Yang's truck, and he winds up driving back home with the body.
  • Retirony: Yang's uncle, Officer Huang, a cop on the beat who stops by and keeps talking about how it's his last night on the job as he's retiring, so he doesn't want any trouble. He winds up solving a murder, a hit-and-run accident, and a jewel heist, all at once.
  • Shower of Love: The opening scene is Yang catching Ma having sex with another man in the shower. It turns out to be a nightmare.
  • Silence Is Golden: Three separate action scenes are filmed in the style of silent movies, complete with black and white photography and title cards for dialogue. They are 1) the fight between Dr. Bi and Ma, when she comes to and finds him ransacking her room, 2) the scene where He Nuli and his date accidentally kill Bi by crushing him with their car, and 3) the climactic fight between the fat thief, Yang, and Ma.
  • Slipping a Mickey: Dr. Bi gives Yang a sedative to slip into his wife's drink, so that she'll be unconscious when the hit man shows up. Yang does so, and knocks Ma out, but evidently he didn't give her enough because Ma wakes up while Bi is ransacking the room.

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