This film can be described as the most tragic failure of John Woo's directorial career. According to statistics, it seems that MGM lost nearly 70 million to 80 million dollars, basically burying John Woo, such a well-known Chinese director, one of the most famous films in Hollywood. road! It is very embarrassing that after John Woo returned to the Chinese film industry, he insisted on shooting such big-themed war films as "Red Cliff" and "Tai Ping Lun" in succession.
Simply analyze the reason for the failure.
1. The so-called Navajo code is interpreted very superficially, without in-depth and delicate demonstration of the importance and power of this code in the Pacific War, and the two Navajo "Wind Whisperers" are not the protagonists of the film.
2. The male protagonist's task is to kill the "Wind Talker" when necessary, that is, to kill his comrades-in-arms. This is indeed a very amusing contradictory setting, but as a professional soldier in the war, whether it is "Windtalker" or his protector, this is a sacrifice that must be made in order to win. It can even be said that in the entire brutal Pacific War, there were many situations of killing comrades in arms when necessary.
Wu Yusen, who is good at depicting the friendship between the two heroes, failed to use this setting to play his level in this war film. The interaction and friendship between the male, the male and the second are very routine and not smart. After Bai Ma died, after learning the truth, Deya Z did not take any action against the system, but just blindly killed the Japanese to vent his anger, and finally reconciled after being saved by Enders. Enders couldn't get rid of the fear of losing his comrades. After killing the white horse if necessary, he was finally redeemed in the process of saving Ya Z. The practice of praying to God before death is quite old-fashioned. Another pair of characters set by the director, namely the white horse and the bull, one plays the flute and the other plays the harmonica, which is a bit like the sympathy between the two heroes in John Woo's past films.
Nicolas Cage played very hard, but the psychological contradictions of the excessive routine, combined with the too powerful individual combat ability settings, and the unintelligible voiceover "love letter" emotional branch, made Enders really unable to stand up.
3. Woo's action-movie style has had a backlash that's hard to ignore. The bomb could not be killed at close range, the invincible charge, and a gun killed a piece of Japanese. Enders, the protagonist of the pony-style protagonist halo, is very out of the logic of war movies. Expensive bombing shots are too many to be offensive, and the texture doesn't look good. Ya Z turned into a Japanese soldier and Enders stole the enemy radar; after the death of the white horse, Ya Z turned into a violent god of war, his combat power suddenly increased and ruthlessly annihilated the enemy; at the end, both wounded Enders and Ya Z miraculously escaped from the strict Japanese artillery fire, the Enders team The plot paragraphs of the members suddenly possessed by the god of war and annihilated a large number of Japanese soldiers are exaggerated and illogical, which is really embarrassing.
4. Unfortunate to catch up with 911, many rescheduled and withdrawn; films such as "Saving Private Ryan", "The Thin Red Line", "Black Hawk Down" in previous years have raised the G-spot of fans, especially military fans; It is also the reason why the film failed at the box office.
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