Last year, because of the work relationship, I contacted a crime drama, so I have some general understanding of the censorship of such dramas by the Ministry of Public Security and Radio and Television. This also analyzed the creative ideas of "Drug War" for me. It helps a lot.
Let's watch the first scene of the film-the toll station capture scene. In fact, for a movie, the first ten minutes are very important, because you have to construct the characters, events, world and rhythm within ten minutes. In other words, this is the ten minutes for someone to do what, where and what to do and bring the audience into the mood of watching the movie at the fastest speed. Not only the audience, but also the actors and directors will use these ten minutes to judge the value of the script.
Gu Tianle’s driving crash caused doubts in the audience’s mind, and the arrest show showed Sun Honglei’s identity and the theme of the movie, both drugs... etc. In the first 12 minutes, I felt that I was just listening to the story following the plot, but It is impossible to fully enter this story. There is one thing missing here, which is the construction of the characters.
"Die Hard 3" exploded in the first 2 minutes, Willis appeared in 4 minutes, and then the plot did not develop rapidly, but let us see a big guy wearing a sweaty vest in a hangover. , The audience will immediately have two questions: How did he fall into such a field? Can such a stubborn guy save the world?
The reason for this example is that it has a similar structure to the beginning of "Drug War", and it is the same processing method, but the only scene we see that is helpful for character construction is the close-up shot of Gu Tianle's resistance and the scalpel being put down. This In fact, it is one of the few pavement for Koo Tianle to become an anti-bone boy. But this is a dual-protagonist movie. We can't find any doorway into the world of characters in Sun Honglei's body. What we see is only his reasoning about the case of Gu Tianle and the drug trafficking incident.
Fortunately, the plot is very exciting. It wasn't until the amazing "Haha Ge Acting Class" that we officially entered the plot. However, the rhythm of entering the movie's rhythm and the rhythm of the opening is seriously out of line, which obviously does not match.
After finishing "Haha Ge's Acting Class" is Sun Honglei's cosplay. This scene is stunningly designed with a drama blocker that sucks white powder. Sun Honglei's choice makes the characters a little clearer. Well, we are at the climax of the first act. Sort out the characters of the two protagonists.
Gu Tianle: A person who is greedy for life and fear of death, but there seems to be some potential desire hidden behind him.
Sun Honglei: In order to let the gangsters break the law, they are desperate.
The last thing that Galaxy films worry about is the plot. The combination of Du Qifeng, Wei Jiahui, and You Naihai can always create enough suspense for you, and they can always come up with rare or unseen performance methods in a functional drama. The plot development is very smooth, during this time period also appeared the plot of Gu Tianle's second character construction, when it got the gun, it chose. The choice made by the character of Louis Koo for the subsequent behavior is logically complete. At the moment of disclosure, the audience can already have enough information to compare his reaction before and after.
But looking at the police, I like Sun Honglei less and less. The incidents he encountered were only strengthened on the original basis: drug use—sacrifice; not sleeping—persistent; handling the case vigorously—decisively. The value of these things is the same. The character of Sun Honglei is like a piece of white paper, using marker pens to paint the same place repeatedly, while Gu Tianle's white paper already has lines or outlines.
It stands to reason that if such a problem occurs in the construction of dual protagonists in a movie, it is obviously very dangerous, but there are enough developments and transitions in the plot, and it has no gaps for people to stop and think, so we are watching the movie. I will ignore these issues, but the moment of outbreak will end, and the clouds will be sailed to the sea.
When Gu Tianle parked his car at the entrance of the campus, his desire to hide was completely revealed to the audience (previously, there was a foreshadowing of deliberately concealing the factory tunnel to allow the deaf and the deaf to escape). In the film, the character arc is not necessarily the character change or what he has learned, it can also be the logically logical final display of the hidden desire, but note that this law may only apply to the villain). The character of Sun Honglei's Golden Chain Man is qualitative. After 90 minutes in the dark for a long time, what we see is that Sun Honglei is chasing Garfield on the screen like Odie with a golden chain.
Of course, you can also say that the climax of the final shootout with Eastern philosophy is the final portrayal of Sun Honglei's role. Yes, the end of this tribute to Eric von Strohheim’s 1924 film "Greed" (the ending is that the protagonist handcuffs the villain before dying of thirst and prevents him from escaping the desert) is indeed This character is elevated, but in these 120 minutes we only repeatedly experienced Sun Honglei’s character personality. It was qualitative from the beginning and has not changed. The role of the ending plot is only to strengthen the plot. It is a pity to be dramatic instead of enhancing the characters and drama.
With many years of experience in filming with Johnnie To and the Galaxy team, these problems are not that they can't find out, but the result of a compromise. Speaking of having contact with a crime drama project before, I learned a lot of bottom lines from the producers, and the core of this is the protagonist. When I proposed that the protagonist’s incompleteness is the foundation for the script to stand, the producer strongly objected, saying that the censorship agency absolutely does not allow public security personnel to have any negative characterizations. We are not talking about the bad police embezzling these things. It is the family pressure, social pressure, fear of life and death or numbness that a real person produces when facing a case. So it is not difficult for us to understand why the role of Sun Honglei is so flat, but under such a restriction, "Drug War" can still present such a high level of entertainment. It is something that people have to admire: suck white powder and burn RMB. The scenes of the police being shot and killed made me stunned. I was wondering how did this pass the trial? In addition to deliberate circumvention and metaphors in creation (the brand that prohibits extortion of confessions during interrogation is a good irony), I think there are also the main creators who continue to collide with and fight for censorship agencies. In fact, Lou Ye also did it before the release of "Floating City Mystery". Encountered such a problem, but because of Lou Ye's rationale, he strives to preserve the dignity that an artist deserves. These examples are good examples for domestic production companies. Since I was X, why not change to a posture you like? X? I only think about how to cater to the censorship agency, and in the end, the word-of-mouth collapse caused by the deviation of the work and the original intention, which is extremely harmful to the entire industry.
There are a lot of "maybe", maybe this film changes the background to Hong Kong, it can be fuller and more complete. However, the gap in genre films in the mainland is an urgent need for mature and highly entertaining films to rebuild box office confidence, so it is necessary to temporarily set aside these "maybe".
"Maybe" is just a hypothesis, but "but" is a turning point after it happened. For this film that maximizes the impact of the censorship system and sets a new benchmark for mainland police and criminal films, I think it is not excessive to give 4 stars.
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