Text / Levin
The trailer for "24 Hours: The Last Road" looks quite savage and exciting. The plot settings of "Resurrection from the Dead" and "24 Hours Countdown to Death" are also attractive to the audience. In addition, there is Xu Qing, which gives Chinese audiences one more reason to pay attention to the film. Therefore, before watching it, I was full of expectations that this was a high-quality B-level shootout action film. After watching it, I found that although this film has some wonderful points, the overall performance is mediocre, especially the ending climax scene is quite bad. The villain was stupid at the same time, and almost gave up resistance, allowing the hero Ethan Hawke to show his power. "24 Hours Countdown to Death" also did not create the sense of urgency it should have. There are actually two very obvious deletion points in the film. The audience should be able to delete the passionate scenes of Xu Qing and Ethan Hawke. Nude scenes, no exposed points, and very limited exposed flesh, even the scissors? Has the censorship standards been tightened again recently? Ha ha!
Therefore, Mr. Poison Tongue feels that it is necessary to warn everyone before watching the movie. Maybe everyone should lower their expectations when watching the movie, so as not to be too disappointed! In the following "Analysis of the Film Review", the poisonous tongue will describe the film and its advantages and disadvantages in detail.
"Resurrection from the Dead" + "Countdown to Death", "24 Hours: Rebirth at the End" seems to have a wonderful sci-fi setting, but the main creator of the film still does not intend to be sci-fi, nor does it have any in-depth excavation of sci-fi. It's just a novelty and a gimmick for an action drama. Through the sci-fi gimmick of "Resurrection from the Dead", the character of the mercenary killer played by Ethan Hawke has been transformed. Together.
The film sets a story background of "the lawless mercenary company". In reality, there is also the lawlessness of the American "Blackwater Company" in Iraq, so this has become the inspiration for filmmakers to create new villains. In recent years, many Hollywood In the film, this kind of mercenary company or security company has become a behind-the-scenes mastermind who covers the sky and has great wealth. The villain in Wu Jing's "Wolf Warrior 2" is a typical representative. The Chinese-South African co-production "24 Hours: The Last Rebirth" also uses the same model.
The United Nations agent played by Xu Qing escorts a surrendered employee of the "Red Mountain Company" from Africa, ready to expose the company's huge shady story. The "Red Mountain Company" bought the local black uncle militants to kill Xu Qing and others. The opening shooting scene was quite powerful, and the tension was good. As a result, Xu Qing broke through the siege and hid the witness in a secret location in Cape Town, South Africa. So "Red Mountain Company" thought of a retired capable man, Ethan Hawke, and asked his mercenary "good friend" to be a lobbyist, lured him out of the mountain with a huge salary to approach Xu Qing, and used his "beautiful man strategy" . But after he got the information, he softened his heart for a while, and did not kill him. Instead, Xu Qing shot him in the chest and killed him!
The sci-fi stunt appeared in time. Ethan Hawke was resurrected from the dead in the secret stronghold of "Red Mountain Company". After the boss of the company asked the witness's hidden location, he was going to let someone end his short life, but he was caught Ethan Hawke fought back and escaped, with a countdown on his arm showing that he had less than 24 hours to live. In the secret United Nations stronghold, the witness also said in the video testimony that he saw the company use poor black people to conduct cruel human experiments in Africa. The audience saw the scene of the human experiment and knew that it was developing a technique of "reviving the dead". . Poison Tongue Jun really doesn't understand what a mercenary company is doing to develop such high-tech life sciences, anyway, it doesn't matter, this kind of big shady is enough to become a "Red Mountain Company" at the risk of killing people. Ethan Hawke's mercenary "Good Friends" led his subordinates to raid the secret UN stronghold. The scene of the sniper blasting the UN agents directly through the glass window was impressive. Xu Qing took the witnesses to escape again. At the critical moment, Ethan Hawke drove to rescue.
The film is quite reasonable for Ethan Hawke's psychological transformation from a cold-blooded killer to a valiant warrior. Previously, we can see from his flashbacks of his wife and children that he is a good man who loves his family. He is only in order to perform tasks to earn money to support his family, and he is often unable to accompany his family and encounter family crises. When he decided to retire to accompany his family, his wife and children died unexpectedly, causing his life to lose its "meaning" and became a middle-aged decadent and greasy man. And this "resurrection from the dead" experience made him re-examine his life and rescue Xu Qing, which became his way of realizing the "meaning of life" at the last moment of his life. Later, Xu Qing's son was kidnapped and threatened Xu Qing to hand over the witness video, which made Ethan Hawke have an "empathy effect" on Xu Qing's mother and son as if he was saving his wife and children. In the end, in order to ensure the safety of Xu Qing's mother and son, he simply went to the headquarters of the "Red Mountain Company" alone and made a break with the "good friends" and the big boss.
The film is OK for the relationship between Ethan Hawke and Xu Qing, the "dead partner". The two can't say that they have a strong chemical reaction, but their rivalry is not against each other. However, in order to simplify the narrative, the film still uses the audience's omniscient and omnipotent "God's perspective" to confuse the audience a little. The audience has seen the process of Ethan Hawke's resurrection, but Xu Qing does not know it, so when Ethan Hawke is a magic weapon When she rescued Xu Qing and the witnesses, Xu Qing was not surprised or frightened at all when she saw this "dead man", which was really unreasonable.
Once again, it is very unpleasant that the two people's passionate scenes and Xu Qing's nude scenes have been deleted!
As for their respective performances, Ethan Hawke, an old Hollywood actor, can play B-level action movies that are not too challenging. He is still a decadent and greasy middle-aged man one minute. You can transform into a suave white-collar man in minutes, and the transformation of image and temperament is easy. Xu Qing, on the other hand, plays a rare role in beating girls. On the one hand, it can be regarded as showing the iron-blooded temperament of a female man, and on the other hand, she can show femininity and maternal tenderness. She speaks English well, and she can call Xu Qing "International Xu" in the future. what!
The only shortcoming of Xu Qing is that when performing some shooting action scenes, her shooting skills are not strong enough. Although the film has tried to make up for this through sharp editing, it can still make people see her shortcomings in this regard. . In addition, as a co-production between China and South Africa, the film is also slightly inconsistent in order to bring the two countries together. The headquarters of "Red Mountain Company" is located in Cape Town, South Africa, while Xu Qing, as a United Nations agent, lives in Hongkong. In order to coerce Xu Qing, the "Red Mountain Company" kidnapped her son in Hong Kong and airlifted her to Cape Town. Does the time taken from carrying out the kidnapping mission and flying from Hong Kong to Cape Town perfectly correspond to the countdown to Ethan Hawke's death? Anyone with a heart can do the math.
Originally, even if "24 Hours: Rebirth" couldn't be a B-level action film masterpiece, it is not difficult to become a qualified film. The film works well for most of the time, and the excitement of the shootout is at the end. It was basically online before the war. The behind-the-scenes team of the film did a good job of creating the visual impact of the shootout and car chase scenes, but the two flaws lowered the overall level of the film.
First, the "24-hour countdown to death" did not produce enough sense of crisis, urgency and strong rhythm. I believe that many fans see this setting and take Jason Statham's "Angry Heart" as a reference, but this film obviously does not have the tension and rhythm of "Angry Heart" that hangs by a thread. The setting of "Countdown to Death" actually acts more on Ethan Hawke's emotional drama. Whenever his life passes away and his consciousness is confused, he will have the illusion of a dead son, reflecting his inner love and regret for the deceased family. And for the rhythm and tension of the whole film, it's really useless.
But the most intolerable thing is the unfinished ending of the climax of the film. Ethan Hawke single-handedly entered the Cape Town headquarters of "Red Mountain Company", and it was a big explosion and a hot shootout all the way to the high-level office of the big boss. Although the film renders Ethan Hawke very brave and invincible, there are times when he falls behind and reveals his flaws, but at this time, the two great "good friends" and the big boss of "Red Mountain Company" pose a pair of "good friends" and "big boss". The posture of "waiting to die" presents a very ridiculous "force" - when Ethan Hawke and their subordinates had a hot shootout, the "good friend" was sitting on the side and drinking calmly, while the big boss seemed to be It was like being immobilized by someone, standing motionless in front of his desk in the hail of bullets!
In fact, the audience can see that if "good friends" and the big boss join the battle group to fight him when Ethan Hawke is at a disadvantage, Ethan Hawke can't hold it anymore, but these two People just watched Ethan Hawke kill all their men without moving. If the "good friends" chose to watch out of shame for Ethan Hawke - the film uses a very cliché setting, and the death of Ethan Hawke's wife and children was finally revealed as a In order to keep Ethan Hawke, "Red Mountain Company" asked "good friends" to kill his family - this is still a little reasonable. But the big boss is quite strange if he has not shot, and he neither shoots nor escapes, and it is even more strange among strange flowers. It seems that when all his men were dead, he remembered that he wanted to escape, so he tried desperately with Ethan Hawke, but it was too late, and he was finally killed by Ethan Hawke. What the hell! ! !
Oh, by the way, in the last shot of the film, Ethan Hawke was resurrected again, leaving the possibility of shooting a sequel. Of course, this possibility is only possible with a big box office, hehe!
The above content can be regarded as a comprehensive and detailed summary of the advantages and disadvantages of this film. After listening to the description of the poisonous tongue, will you go to the theater to watch this film? (Text / Levin)
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