After watching it yesterday, I feel that the movie is far inferior to the original.
The biggest failure is to reveal the mystery prematurely. This is a suspense movie. Under the premise that the director has done a good job of laying the groundwork ahead, he is eager to shake the burden halfway through the game. The suspects died one after the other, and I was expecting everyone to die tragically and quietly, leaving the audience in a cloud of fog to finally reveal the truth. What a "No Survivor"! But he actually shook out who the old ghost was so easily. Then, inexplicably, the character "Old Gun" was added. Hehe, I think this is obviously for the sake of adding drama, or I'm not willing to let Gu Xiaomeng and Wu Zhiguo be the passers-by, worried that Zhou Xun's bitter scenes and Zhang Hanyu's righteousness will be wasted.
The second is the change of character settings. Li Ningyu is an old ghost, and this character is set up in the original book to be reasonable and shocking. And as soon as the movie trailer came out, I said to my heart that it was "broken". Regardless of the proportion of Zhou Xun in the trailer and the brightness of the lights, I realized that Zhou Xun is definitely the protagonist, and she will never only play a female military spy . As expected. In the original book, Gu Xiaomeng's background is B+C, Li Ningyu is A+C, and in the movie, Zhou Xun is A+B, and Li Bingbing is C+C. In order to set off the tall image of the female underground party, all the auras are added to her. And this makes her sacrifice especially worthless.
Third, the information that the old ghost wants to release in the original book is true information. Because it was intercepted by the enemy, and the content of the information was very important (the time and place of the Communist Party representative meeting was revealed and must be cancelled), it was so urgent and desperate to sacrifice one's life to send the information out. In the movie, because Zhou Xun sent false information, he felt sorry for his comrades, so he sacrificed himself. These two things cannot be compared. Gu Xiaomeng was a small officer who spent a large amount of bribes on a plane to be placed in the headquarters. Such a high price was ultimately exchanged for the sacrifice of a comrade in the assassination operation to be avoided. I think it's definitely a matter of temperament. This shows that she lacks the quality of a far-sighted Communist Party member, "You are very important, and the chess piece that took so much effort to put in place completely broke the line in order to avoid the failure of an assassination operation. I don't think Gu Xiaomeng's death is very important. It is worth it. She is definitely more valuable than Wu Zhiguo in the headquarters (because Wu has no chance to get close access to intelligence). Which is more noble to die for the ideal or to live in humiliation. Comrades sacrifice to protect themselves, and go to their own risk. Death or watching the sacrifice of a comrade cut off his nails and still look on his face, which is more shocking? You can't have to shoot emotional dramas because of Zhou Xun, and you can't automatically mess up because of her good acting skills. In the
original book, Gu Xiaomeng is a military commander . Secret agent, Dai Li took the money for that plane. In the end, only Gu Xiaomeng left. I think this is convincing. And the friendship between Gu and Li can also be understood as the mutual hatred between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in the face of the Japanese puppets. That's great.
Fourth, the issue of small details. In the original book, Li Ningyu had a pen in her pocket to keep the cleaner who sent the information away from her. There is no such hint in the movie. The two underground parties Because deliberately not looking at him also aroused the suspicion of the Japanese. There is also the problem of handwriting. I don't think the text on the lottery to transmit the information is the old ghost's own handwriting. The original book said that the information was sent from the old ghost during the transmission process. It was intercepted, and this was the handwriting of the old ghost. Alas, there is no reason for the identification of handwriting in the movie.
There is also the setting of torture tools, which is very bloody. And it occupies a considerable amount of space, but the director obviously has a preference in this regard. But your card is suspense, not bloody horror. How can you let your good cards go to waste? Suspense, if it can be made into a Chinese spy war version of "No One Survives", how awesome! But the director gave up the opportunity to become a bully and underestimated the IQ of the audience (but this is also possible. After watching the movie yesterday, I heard someone ask in the bathroom, who is the old ghost? He fainted on the spot) plus Overestimated the audience's expectations of heavy taste. Ugh.
Overall this one seems okay. To star in so many stars, to finally find a dubbing for Huang Xiaoming, for the movie scenes, props, atmosphere, music, and Su Youpeng's acting skills, it is worth entering the cinema. But maybe I've read the original book and expected too much from it. In all fairness, it is also a very good domestic genre film.
PS. A really good movie doesn't depend on how many stars you use, it definitely depends on the script. The director is very important, the star is also very important, and investment is of course more important. But without a good script, it would be completely different.
View more about The Message reviews
