Sheep Without a Shepherd review – perky Chinese thriller that toes the line too carefully

A father uses his obsession with the movies to help his daughter when she is unjustly suspected of murder

It turns out that cinephilia is a productive use of time after all. When his computer is searched, Li Weijie, protagonist of this perky Chinese thriller, has watched 838 films in a year - and he uses his superior knowledge of the seventh art to get his family out of a pickle. Chinese but living in northern Thailand, he scrapes by as an internet technician, but his daughter finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation after she accidentally kills the son of a police chief who was trying to blackmail her with smartphone-filmed rape footage.

A remake of the 2013 Malayalam film Drishyam, this big Chinese hit ultimately doffs the cap to Korean cinema: it is Jeong Keun-seob's 2013 film Montage that inspires Li when he has to provide his family with an alibi.