Bright Day

The great Chinese star Shi Hui portrays an energetic lawyer fighting for the good of his neighbors in this stirring drama from Cao Yu, one of China’s most important twentieth-century playwrights. Using reason and knowledge to aid his fellow citizens, an affable, good-hearted neighborhood lawyer faces his toughest task: to help defend an orphanage against corrupt businessmen, war profiteers, and wealthy thugs. Its melodramatic crescendos lightened by the relentless charisma of Shi Hui (not to mention several moments of orphan-related cuteness), Bright Day recalls the little-man-battling-windmills heights of Capra, yet with Cao’s own remarkable sense of justice and morality.