The woolly beige beauty of the Tibetan antelope is on short display in "Mountain Patrol: Kekexili," a tense Chinese wilderness drama about the hunt for the animal's relentless poachers. Instead, the antelope, springy and lithe, are seen as pieces and parts, skinned and broken, their valuable pelts laid out in the snow, forming a momentous carpet of mourning, a sort of wildlife AIDS quilt. This entrancing, wind-whisked picture is more about the humans outraged by the antelope slaughter, which really happened in Kekexili, a yawning animal reserve in the mountainous border area of Tibet. Read the full review
Kekexili, the largest animal reserve in China, is home to many rare species, including the Tibetan antelope. In the 1990s local Tibetans formed a volunteer patrol to try to stop the illegal poaching of the endangered antelope, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.
Director: Lu Chuan
Starring: Duo Bujie, Zhang Lei, Qi Liang, Zhao Xueying
Run time: 95 minutes
Release date: April 14, 2006
Rating: Not rated.
Language: In Mandarin and Tibetan with English subtitles.
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Austin American-Statesman: 3 of 5 stars
"(Writer-director Lu) Chuan wants us to feel the tragedy of both antelope and human, and we do."
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