AllMovie

Zhao (Liu Zifeng) is a business translator who is demoted when a chess piece referred to as the "black cannon" in his letter is mistaken to be a weapon. He is pulled off an assignment that would send him to Germany, and an incompetent replacement kills the company's multi-million dollar deal. Although he proves the incident was a mistake due to another translator, Zhao becomes the victim of an unflinching bureaucracy and political ideology that hampers his once-promising career.