Yang Shupeng’s The Robbers takes places during the Tang dynasty and follows two robbers (Hu Jun and Jiang Wu) who arrive to a small village and are about to rob one of the houses, when a group of soldiers burst into the village and start raping a young woman. The two robbers intervene and kill the soldiers, but they are not met with gratitude from the villagers who, led by a narrow-minded mayor, fear the army’s retaliation. They tie up the robbers to deliver them to the authorities, but when a larger contingent of soldiers arrives to the village and starts ransacking it, the robbers once again intervene and kill them. They then decide to stay for a while, as they are both falling in love with local girls. But the mayor is still intent on giving them up to the authorities.

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