Wang Jingchun in a scene from Police Diary Photo: Courtesy of Blue Diamond Culture Media

In the city of Jungar Banner, in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, everyone has heard about the hero Hao Wanzhong. Director of Jungar Banner's public security bureau, he risked his life solving crimes while dedicating all of his time to helping civilians deal with injustice. However, during morning training on May 14, 2011, Hao died from a heart attack brought about by years of overwork.

After his death, 64 diaries documenting all his cases and thoughts throughout his entire career were discovered. Quickly catching the attention of famed director Ning Ying, these diaries soon became the source material for her new movie, Police Diary.

At the 26th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) last October, leading actor Wang Jingchun, who plays the hero Hao, won the best actor award for his performance in the film. Now after its journey overseas, Police Diary is coming back home. Currently, the film is scheduled to hit domestic screens on Friday.

Diary of a director

Wanting to base the movie on real crime cases, Ning Ying and her script writer spent quite lot of time reading all the diaries, analyzing word by word how they described dangerous crime cases intermixed with a warm portrait of Hao's daily life. After showing at TIFF, some described the movie as depicting one man's quiet dignity and greatness while delivering a positive message to audiences.

Deputy director on the classic film The Last Emperor (1987) by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, Ning has studied at the Beijing Film Academy and in Italy. These experiences helped her learn how to present Chinese society using Western cinematic language. Police Diary is not Ning's first movie about police, her previous film On the Beat(1995) also focused on a group of police officers.

However, unlike her previous work, she chose to use lots of close-ups and flashbacks to interpret the main figure of Hao. When asked about this change in style, Ning said she was just trying to keep up with the times.

"The language of movies is always changing with the times. I think one of the most difficult things is keeping up with the times, while also preserving a distinct personal style at the same time," Ning said.

Commenting on the film, critic Shi Fan wrote: "It is a film with a main stream theme, but it doesn't portrait the figure like a stereotype. Instead it shows the ordinary life of a policeman in a very delicate way."

Police specialist

This is not the first time Wang Jingchun has portrayed the life a policeman, in fact many people in the industry refer to Wang as a "police specialist" because he has played this role in many of his films.

Ning revealed that she realized Wang was the ideal actor for this role during early auditions.

"His performance helped determine the style of our film," Ning said, explaining that Wang actually gave a very subtle performance, which is rare since most actors have a hard time combining intensity with subtleness.

At first, Wang wasn't sure how to interpret the role. After talking with Ning, he realized that it was important to break out of the typical police stereotype portrayed in other movies. In the end, they decided that the best thing to do was not to try and create a heroic figure, but to do a real biography of an individual.

Although he's played a policeman numerous times, Wang stated that he's not worried about being typecast. "A police officer is just a job. Those policemen I played were actually all different characters," Wang said. "However, this time was especially difficult because the role was a real life figure."

In order to better represent Hao, Wang not only gained weight, but also interviewed Hao's relatives and friends. He even learned the local dialect.

One incident in particular was especially eventful. Once when the cast and crew went to a local village, a bunch of locals stopped him and requested that he settle a legal problem they were having. As it turned out they thought Wang was the real director of public security.

"It was amazing, because I felt there was no distance between the character and myself," Wang said.

Also scheduled for Friday is the Golden Bear winning Black Coal, Thin Ice, another film in which Wang plays a role. This basically means that Wang will be competing against himself when the two movies hit theaters.

"I hope to bring some unexpected surprises to audiences. I hope everyone can come and watch these two films and judge for themselves as to whether or not I succeeded," Wang said.