After many twists and turns, "Chinese Ping Pong: The Jedi Counterattack" is finally released. Judging from the current box office, the situation is not optimistic.
On the one hand, the frequent shifting of files may have consumed part of the audience's interest; on the other hand, when seeing the familiar name of "Deng Chao Yu Baimei" on the director list, it is estimated that many audiences will be blinded and start to be memory of death Attack...
After all, "The Breakup Master" and "The Villainous Angel" were the nightmares of many movie fans back then. As a result, when Deng and Yu formed a combination, everyone crazily resisted.
But this time "Chinese Ping Pong: The Jedi Counterattack", they finally got it right.
Regardless of story, art, photography, performance, you can see their hard work and dedication, and compared with the previous ones, there has indeed been a significant improvement. It is absolutely no problem to say that is the best of Deng Chao and Yu Baimei's directorial career. Even if it is compared in the dimension of domestic sports movies, this movie is considered wonderful and good-looking, and it is worth the ticket price.
Many people may find it boring when they hear the movie is about Chinese table tennis. With the strength of the Chinese team, who will not win? Are you still making movies?
Young viewers may only see Chinese table tennis dominating the world today and seeking defeat alone, but they don’t know that more than 30 years ago, Chinese men’s table tennis also had a dark moment for a long time. This movie tells the inspirational story of how men's table tennis under the leadership of head coach Dai Minjia from 1989 to 1995 got out of the trough and achieved a Jedi counterattack. Since
is a sports movie, the fierce competition on the big screen is often the biggest attraction. At this point, "Chinese Ping Pong: The Jedi Counterattack" has been completed quite well. The film restores a total of three competitions, namely the Busan Invitational, the 1993 Gothenburg World Table Tennis Championships and the 1995 Tianjin World Table Tennis Championships. The film creates a tense and exciting game atmosphere through excellent scene scheduling and photography, and the hard-working performances of the actors. The portrayal of players on the field, sideline coaches, commentators, live audiences, and audiences in front of the TV makes the overall restoration more comprehensive.
Deng Chao plays the head coach Dai Minjia, who was coaching in Italy at the beginning of the movie. When he learned that the Chinese team he had played for had repeatedly failed, he returned home with his pregnant wife and successfully ran for the head coach with a short but passionate speech. How
rejuvenates a team that has fallen into a trough and returns to the top is what the movie focuses on. It can be seen that Deng Chao and Yu Baimei must have done a lot of interview work and dug up a lot of stories from that year.
For example, how did Dai Minjia select the lineup that was later called "five tigers in table tennis" , but was ridiculed at the time as "wounded, blind, small, old" .
In order to change the team's lax style of work and the bad habit of smoking and slacking off, Dai Minjia made a surprise inspection of the dormitories and fired the players who violated the regulations.
The movie used a lot of space to describe the technical and tactical adjustments Dai Minjia made to the team after he took office. For example, take the players to practice physical fitness, send the players to play in European clubs, let them be "agents", find out the opponent's technology and come back to find a way to crack it, and even take the apprentices to talk to the company in order to attract sponsorship. Drinking at home and performing poignant scenes such as somersaults.
The film's remarkable performance in audio-visual language and is one of the most surprising progress of Deng Chao and Yu Baimei this time. After all, their previous works are really lackluster on this point. Many compositions in the
movie can be seen to be carefully designed. For example, the banner of the photo of the Swedish "Five Tigers" slowly falls at the end of the film, and is replaced with the Chinese "Five Tigers", symbolizing the change of the outcome of the two sides. Dai Minjia intends to send his team members to "lurk" abroad, and in the foreground passers-by appear to be fishing. The scene where the coaching staff leads the players to run by the beach is a tribute to the classic sports film "Chariots of Fire".
There are also several beautiful transitions, such as from the circular Colosseum in the painting to the circular staircase of the General Administration of Sports, and using circular table tennis balls to connect to the circular Lantern Festival. Not to mention the use of various slow motion and rotating lenses on the field. What is particularly impressive about
is that after the defeat in Gothenburg, used Dai Minjia's subjective shotLooking at everything around him, the feeling that the whole world seems to have nothing to do with me after a huge setback, and the noisy arena is silent for a moment, is presented very vividly by such audio-visual processing.
If it is said that Deng Chao and Yu Baimei were more or less playful as directors before, then judging from the finished product this time, they must have put a lot of effort into it. I heard that Deng Chao has read a lot of film-related books, and he has a WeChat group with Wu Jing and the others, where he often shares his favorite movies or his experience as a director.
Looking at the performance, this time Deng Chao also put away his usual joking and joking. Most of the images in the film are more serious, and his appearance is a bit reminiscent of his appearance in "Chinese Partner". Although the overall feeling is that he is a bit deliberately holding it this time, it is still far better than the previous Deng Chao who spilled blood and exaggerated acting skills.
Sun Li's performance was a bit of a surprise. In the past, everyone always complained that she could only act on TV, and she couldn't do it when she appeared on the big screen. This time, she was not against the harmony in the movie, and she acted cute and lovable. Probably this is the magic power of 's true CP, , and her husband in real life also acts as a couple in a movie, can there be no tacit understanding? Although the "teacher" she played still hasn't got rid of the "edge" character of a good wife and mother, but the love, tolerance and understanding of this character for her husband are indeed touching.
In addition, I have to mention the five actors who played the "Five Tigers" in the film. Their performances are very exciting and convincing. I heard that I practiced table tennis for a long time before shooting, so I was able to restore the game scenes well.
Xu Weizhou who played Bai Minhe painted his face black in order to be close to the prototype, so that Mr. Yizhan didn't realize that it was Xu Weizhou from the beginning to the end, and he didn't realize it until the end of the credits.
plays Ding Guansen's Hou Zhuoxiang , the young man has a talent for comedy, he contributes a lot of jokes in the film.
played Huang Zhao's Duan Bowen , who had a good performance in "The Murder Chaser" before, and this time he restored many famous scenes in the history of Chinese sports.
Aruna , who became popular recently because of "Hurricane", played a tragic athlete in the film. He had a crying scene that was very contagious.
