Have a Nice Day (2017)

Image courtesy of hollywoodreporter.com/

MacGuffin, per Wikipedia: an object, device, or event necessary to the plot and to the characters’ motivations, yet insignificant or irrelevant in itself. Is the bag of cash here one of those? It kicks the story into motion and everyone wants it, but somewhere along the way it stops mattering. People are simply greedy, and nobody cares who gets hurt or whether there’s any real payoff at the end.

In an unnamed industrial city, a low-level driver called Xiao Zhang lifts a black gym bag containing a million yuan from his gangster boss, hoping only to cover a botched cosmetic surgery fix for the woman he loves. News of the missing money ripples through the city’s underbelly, drawing in a parade of minor dreamers and minor killers: an enforcer sent to reclaim the cash and collect a debt in blood, a hopeful inventor gripping a business plan he’s sure will change his life, plus a hairdresser, a guard, a trucker - each glimpsing the bag and briefly imagining it as their escape route.

The cash passes from hand to hand through half-constructed, neon-soaked streets, and with every exchange the line between who survives and who doesn’t shifts again, violence landing abruptly and without any buildup. What remains is the dull grey monotony of a city built on unfinished construction and unfinished dreams, watching its people claw at one another over an amount too small to rescue any of them. Eventually the bag goes up in an accidental fire, the money simply vanishing, and Xiao Zhang ends up right back where he began - the city unchanged, as if the cash had never dangled the promise of anything different.

The animation style reads very 90s MTV, in the vein of Beavis and Butthead (I was squarely in that show’s target audience and still never got into it). This look has never worked for me, Mike Judge-adjacent or not - it comes across as unfinished and choppy rather than intentionally stylized. Even though I liked some of the underlying themes (the execution just doesn’t fully land), this was a real barrier to enjoying it.

Like I said, the money itself isn’t the point. But the chase for it introduces a whole cast of characters, each pulled along by their own reasons to find the cash or just stay alive. There’s talk of freedom and faith, bursts of violence, and plenty of driving that seems to go nowhere in particular. But much like the Maltese Falcon or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, it’s only a vehicle for the story. Nobody walks away wealthy. Nobody actually benefits. It’s just a fantasy of a better life - a shortcut to freedom that never quite arrives.

3 out of 5 Stars