Crazy Lottery on AllMovie

A fortune comes between two close friends, one of whom finds himself in a mess of his own making, in this darkly satiric comedy from China. Lu Jianfei (Zhao Chunyang) is driving around the farther reaches of Beijing one night with his wife Xiaoyan (Xu Jun) and daughter (Dong Hui) when he sees a car has ended up in the lake. Jianfei recognizes the auto as belonging to his friend Wang Wei (Li Yixiang) and he calls a policeman he knows, Ma Hong (Ji Ning), to report the accident. However, the car is empty and police suspect it was involved in a hit and run accident earlier the same evening. The next morning, Wei calls Jianfei and tells him he's at the hospital; Wei's wife has been hurt, though her sister insists on telling anyone who will listen that Wei beats her. Wei is worried about the news of his car, especially when he learns that the number he plays in the national lottery has just been drawn as the winner of a 12 million yaun jackpot, and his ticket was left in his car. Given his recent problems, Wei is reluctant to claim the prize himself, and hatches a scheme in which Xiaolian (Liao Weiwei), who cleans house for Jianfei and Xiaoyan, will claim the prize and turn it over to Wei in exchange for a piece of the action. But Jianfei has mixed feelings about this notion, and earns Wei's enmity when he asks for a share of the winnings for himself. Caipiao Ye Fengkuang (aka Crazy Lottery) was the first directorial credit for Gong Yingtian, best known as a novelist and playwright.