If you really want to discuss "completeness", you should look at Korean commercial films. Regardless of the extreme experiments in Korean movies and the famous art films, we discuss the mainstream cinema films individually, almost every one of them provides insights on how to tell a good story like a textbook. The suspense movie is one of the very important genre branches. A few years ago, Korean films had already proved their strength with this genre, and this time, "To the End" responded again.
In a nutshell, this is a story about "bad police." Police officer Gao Jianzhu used his position to collect money privately with a few colleagues. On this day, he was on his way to his mother's funeral and accidentally drove into a passerby, who died on the spot. At this time, he received another call, and the discipline inspection department discovered his private vault. In a desperate situation, he hid the body in the trunk and drove to the hospital. Because he did not want to have a greater impact because of police corruption, after the private money was confiscated, Gao Jianzhu was not held accountable. However, he began to receive anonymous calls, and the other party learned that he had run into someone and escaped. Soon, the caller appeared, who turned out to be another police officer. He participated in a lot of underground transactions, and the person killed by Gao Jianzhu is his business partner who donated money and escaped...
"To the End" is a typical movie that uses suspense to set and solve suspense to promote progress. It has always been an upgrade. , The atmosphere of customs clearance, all suspense intertwined and progressed with each other, and there was almost no room for breathing. This kind of tense atmosphere relies on fast-paced editing, which makes the whole movie full of movement. This is a processing method that meets the current aesthetic needs.
More importantly, this movie does not set up a contrast between positive and negative characters. Almost all the police officers present are "bad police" in some sense. But these bad policemen have their own moral bottom line. They are greedy for money but they are capable. They make money from criminals, but they do not bully civilians by using their positions. They never kill. This is the typical setting of a "hard-hard" detective story. It is more in line with the real complex human nature, and put an end to the preaching taste of facial makeup. This is another winning feature of mainstream Korean movies. Wide range of subject matter and free expression. They always put narrative stories first, rather than warning and education. An important reason why Korean movies produce good stories is that they never shy away from the so-called "dark side." If you don't touch it, those dark sides still exist, and if you really wrote about a group of bad police, no one would think that all South Korean police are evildoers. When adults watch movies, especially mainstream feature films, they see illusory stories, enter situations, project emotions, and withdraw back to reality. That's all.
"To the End" starring Lee Sun-kyun is actually the queen actor of the famous art film director Hong Sang-soo. In the previous films, he has always played some charming, but also wretched, conceited men. This time, he still shows off his acting skills in this standard commercial film. Although there is no need to convey emotions in subtle details as before, he is very precise about the extreme emotions of a person in continuous crisis. Of course, compared with classic word-of-mouth suspense films such as "Memories of Murder" and "Catch That Guy", this movie still has a gap. Some details that seem to be more likely to dig out the big suspense and the big reversal have not been used in place, but The current situation already reflects the director's ambition. The bird’s-eye view of the shooting chase, the symbolic dogs exposed in the wilderness, and the setting of the vault hidden in the ruined residential area in the last bridge segment, all reveal the director’s imagination.
This is a commercial film with "completeness", and it does not want to be elevated to the category of thought and humanity. It is not the function of this type of film. What it has is the respect and effort for the industrialization of film production. It has reached this type of film. The market will give a decent feedback.
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