Viggo Mortensen's performance was outstanding, and that naked fight was enough to become a topic of discussion among fans - compared to this, Liang Caowei was embarrassed to say how much he sacrificed in lust and quit? But what I want to say is not this unrestrained part. Many actors can do unrestrained performances, but except for this one, most of the time, his performances are very restrained, and there is no trace of deliberate suppression. Really achieve the freedom of retraction. (Spoilers below.) But the character setup creates some obstacles for his performance: He's an undercover agent. Originally, his unbearableness and his struggles had all been well interpreted. The later release of such an identity was disappointing—it was nothing, what he did was just what he should have done. Moreover, the various behaviors that he had been diligently trying to climb into the organization before, and then being brought out at this time, it seems too cliché.
In fact, this is the failure of the entire film. The gray tone set off by the help of the never-sunny winter in London could have been able to externalize the struggles and contradictions in the character's heart and in actual actions, but it's all in vain. The cliché is the same as the Hong Kong films of the early 90s.
I'll admit that the last part was a bit of a let down, actually, for the most part, it's pretty well done. It begins with two seemingly unrelated threads running at the same time, then quickly converges, interspersed with violent scenes that are always at hand in Cronenberg's films but on a surprising scale, keeping the plot quite intense. The role of Vincent Caso returned to the image of the performer's famous work of hatred, with a strong street flavor, but with unabated simplicity and innocence, and the Russian gangster godfather is even more bright, on the one hand cunning and cruel, on the other hand On the one hand, there is the moral sense that the Russians often have when they do things - when he curses London as morally corrupt.
I don't know if Cronenberg is of Russian descent, but speaking of this, the film is more based on the title and diary voiceover, like a spiritual history about the entangled psychology of Russian immigrants - such as the heroine's uncle at the dinner table at the beginning. Are remarks made in the tone of an old-fashioned Russian really just a transition? Is the gangster's ambiguous feelings towards the male protagonist just homosexuality? This group of people left their hometowns and made a living in a completely unfamiliar environment. Every tattoo on their body is the best proof of identity. If you start with these, then the emotions that the film wants to convey are too rich.
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