Film Review: Busted Water Pipes 爆水管 (2026) - China
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★
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A Refreshing Splash that Eventually Springs a Leak. No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough. “Busted Water Pipes” is neither great nor terrible, yet at a bloated 132 minutes, it overstays its welcome by roughly a reel, drowning in one too many mistaken-identity routines that go from clever to exhausting.
This is a picture caught between identities: part slippery South Asian-style heist thriller, part broad Chinese slapstick ensemble comedy. The two impulses collide like oil and water, though in this case the water triumphs, spraying in every direction with messy, giddy enthusiasm. For the first hour, that chaotic energy carries it.
The premise sparkles with promise. A sleepy town has somehow achieved zero crime, leaving its police force so bored they begin fabricating minor infractions to justify their salaries. Enter a crew of genuine grave robbers, followed by a catastrophic water main rupture that turns the entire place into an aquatic madhouse. You can sense the screenwriter’s delight in this absurd Rube Goldberg construction.
Eddie Peng, long stuck in grim action roles where he mostly scowled and threw punches, finally unleashes a lighter side here. As Yu Dahai, a disheveled cop on the edge of desperation, Peng commits fully to physical comedy. The moment a burst pipe blasts him across a room and pins him to the ceiling like a panicked housecat is pure silent-film delight—one of the few times I laughed out loud with genuine surprise.
He’s matched by strong supporting work, particularly Yan Peilun as a stammering small-time crook who accidentally rises to criminal mastermind status. There’s something endearingly Chaplinesque about him: trying to project menace while anxiously apologizing to the people he’s supposedly kidnapping. The early sequences where the phony cops and real grave robbers keep crossing paths feel like a rowdy Cantonese remix of “Rififi” filtered through the Marx Brothers.
Yet the film slowly begins to leak.
It juggles too many subplots—a budding romance between rival gang members, a mystical missing jade amulet, and a heavy-handed flashback involving a child lost in a flood—and demands we invest equally in all of them. We don’t. By the time the climactic flooding sequence arrives, what should feel exhilarating becomes a slog. A prolonged chase through waist-deep water, drenched in flashy neon lighting, drags on until you start pondering the practicalities of underwater cinematography.
The tonal whiplash is the biggest problem. One scene has a man’s head comically wedged in a toilet; the next delivers unsettling body horror in the grave-robbing tunnels. These shifts never quite land. The movie keeps yanking the emotional steering wheel without ever finding a consistent rhythm.
Still, I respected the ambition. Director Kelvin Kwan, in a cinematic landscape dominated by safe, formulaic fare, swings for the fences with this one. Some swings connect. The water-centric stunts show real creativity, echoing the inventive physicality of Jackie Chan’s glory days. The production design—labyrinthine underground passages and glistening night markets—brings a tangible, lived-in texture.
But ambition without discipline has limits. A sharper script and a braver editor could have trimmed the fat and turned this into something special. As it is, “Busted Water Pipes” remains an uneven but likable popcorn flick: amusing in bursts, occasionally confusing, and largely forgettable by the time you reach the parking lot. Go for Eddie Peng’s long-overdue comedic breakthrough, the delightfully absurd water gags, and Yan Peilun’s nervous criminal, who could carry his own movie. Skip it if you prefer your crime comedies tightly plotted or if mixed metaphors and flooding gags make you roll your eyes. A wet, wild, and somewhat overlong affair with more heart than polish. I smiled more than I sighed. In this summer of blockbusters, that’s worth something—barely. (Neo, 2026)