***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This film is about two con-men who lure unsuspecting rural chinese men who are hard up for jobs into working at coal mines with them. They convince the sucker to tell the mine operators that he is related to one of the con-men. After a few weeks they get the sucker alone in the mine, kill him, claim a part of the mine collapsed on him and then get monitary compensation from the company as relatives. The story is intresting but the ending is the usual "good guys win in the end" dribble. The most intresting part of this film is the exposure of lifestyles in rural China and the demeaning and dehumanizing aspects of being one of the countries millions of under educated migrant workers. The coal mining aspect of this exposure is most poinant in that thousands of coal miners die every year because of the types of conditions displayed in the film. The insights into the lifestyle are reason enough to see "Blind Shaft". This is not the kind of movie the Chinese government really wants out there and it's just short of miracle that this is out there. If you get a chance check it out, you won't be disappointed.
Review of Blind Shaft
