It’s 1998. Wang Xiang is a big man among the factory workers in Hualin, a one-company steel town somewhere in Northeast China. Gong Biao is a young recruit to the firm, a university-educated, handsome, up-and-coming manager. But the future of the steel company is shaky, and even a model worker like Wang has to try to ensure his job is safe. Wang and a reluctant Gong team up with hard-as-nails detective Ma Desheng to investigate a gruesome murder, hoping to get a favorable mention from the police in the final report but not realizing that the case traces back to Wang’s own family.
Jump forward to 2016. The factory went bust years ago, and the town is dying. Gong is a failure, unhappily married and bloated, and Wang is an old and saddened man. Together, they scrape together a living sharing shifts in a taxi—until Gong tries to buy his own car and gets cheated. Their quest to catch the con artist ends up dredging up the
