Have a Nice Day (2017) - Jian Liu

A plea for more humanism in a world driven heavily by greed, self-interest and detachment, Jian Liu's Have A Nice Day weaponizes its low-key crime narrative to touch on larger assertions about the state of humanism in our contemporary, every-changing world.  Set in Southern China, Have A Nice Day effectively establishes a bag containing a million yuan as its main protagonist, one which finds itself constantly exchanging hands among a diverse group of people from different backgrounds, each driven by personal motivations and the promise which this material object can provide.  Have a Nice Day is blunt and assertive, using its animation to showcase China in a darker, seedier fashion, one in which poverty lurks around every corner, hiding in plain site behind the massive infrastructure changes happening in the region.  While it would be easy to call many of these characters selfish that would be far too simplistic.  They are all out for themselves of course, but what Have A Nice Day manages to create with its characterizations are individuals who driven by the desire to make their lives better, many losing their better judgment to the allure which this case of money offers them- a way out.  These characters feel shaped and molded by their environment, one which hasn't proven very forgiving, leaving them hardened and detached from others.  This money is a destructive force which effectively leads to misery and death for everyone who comes across it, their internal self-interest, detachment, and greed leading them to misery and even death.  For Have A Nice Day, this million yuan and the chaos it causes throughout this blood-soaked narrative is symbolic representation of the state of humanism in the world, one which recognizes the ever-growing detachment happening in the information age.