Li Yang's debut film Blind Shaft opens with a long, shaky descent into darkness, following three miners as they head deep into the earth. Only two of them come back up, and in the harsh surface light, the survivors (played by Wang Shuangbao and Li Yi Xiang) make panicked claims about a cave-in and a lost brother. Actually, they murdered the third man, a stranger whom they set up. Since, as the mine manager says, it's almost the new year and a corpse lyin' around ain't auspicious, Li and Wang agree to take a payoff, burn the corpse, pack their bags, and hit the road. Later, they put the ashes in a shoebox, put the shoebox in a shopping bag, and toss the bag into a ditch. Blind Shaft is a rangy little working-class murder ballad set against the backdrop of a China struggling with how to open markets when the labor supply far outstrips demand. At the next mine Li and Wang hit, the manager offers them next to nothing, grumbling, "China has a shortage of everything but people." Of course, long before they reach the mine, the duo picks up a gullible, eager-to-please 16-year-old boy who's fated to be their next unfortunate "relative." The kid is similar in age and ambition to Wang's son, and though the older man claims the resemblance doesn't bother him, he nevertheless finds reason after reason to put off doing him in. Blind Shaft has a noir flavor, but it's more The Wages Of Fear than Double Indemnity, and it includes a dash of The Last Detail. The plot's just an excuse for quiet tracking shots through barren industrial landscapes, and intimate portraits of the curdled characters who inhabit them. Wang comes off as an especially pungent fellow, and stingy with his ill-gotten gains; when Li asks why the dish they order at a roadside diner is called "longevity lamb stew," Wang snaps, "To rip you off." Blind Shaft is a little slow for a crime story, and a little obvious with its anti-capitalism message, as when Li and Wang hook up with prostitutes who rewrite the red anthem "Long Live Socialism" into a randy pro-Western singalong. But the prostitutes are as vividly drawn as just about every other character in this thoughtfully positioned, harshly flavored film. Wang gets mad when he's stuck with a pro who resists being felt up, but he of all people should understand the conditions of wage slavery: It's easy to take the money, but hard to do the job.