text/Scarlett
If " Negotiator " has a score of 7.5, then " Customs Front " can score up to 6 points under the same standard. Within a year, Qiu Litao used his reputation to drag himself down, which can be regarded as a momentum with Hong Kong characteristics.
Out of my love for Hong Kong movies, I wanted to watch them but they weren’t released in Hong Kong yet, so I went to Shenzhen to watch them.
But, to be honest, this movie is really perfunctory.
1
Whenever I go to the mainland recently, the marketing point of film and television dramas is to miss the forest for the trees. What does
mean?
marketing will guide the audience to pay attention to a certain feature of the film and television drama, and make the audience forget the fact that the film and television drama is overall terrible.
For example, the overall logic of the two TV series " Mo Yuyunjian " and " Degrees of China " is very perfunctory.
In terms of marketing, "Mo Yu Yunjian" was very popular, while "Hua Hua Nian" was very popular.
This method is like building a house with crooked steel bars that collapse in minutes due to wind and rain.
However, marketing will say, you see this brick on my house is very beautiful, blow it up for me, you must lock this building for me to see this brick.
Do you understand? The marketing method of
allows the screenwriter to be very perfunctory, because the screenwriter does not need to be responsible for the overall finished product. He only needs to add one or two marketing points to the script.
Now movies do the same thing.
2
The same is true for "Customs Front".
First let’s talk about marketing’s favorite hot spots.
is the advantage that the movie itself wants the audience to pay attention to.
first: fight.
Nicholas Tse personally served as the action coach, really fighting.
My 10-year-old son is very satisfied with this.
He said this movie is better than "The Negotiator" because it has fighting scenes.
"Negotiation Expert" is a bit too theatrical for him.
Of course, he also admitted that Liu Qingyun and Francis Ng Chun-yu had very good acting skills.
Therefore, I think young men like my son may be very satisfied with this fighting part.
But I estimate that if I take him to watch the " Bourne Supremacy " series, he will know what is a wonderful game and what is just okay.
Anyway, I didn’t see the excitement.
Second: Jacky Cheung’s literary drama.
The low-level customs captain played by Jacky Cheung takes on the drama of this movie.
is also workplace bullying that many people talk about.
This matter is indeed a common reality, but how the script is written and how the actors perform are different from the reality.
You can’t think about workplace bullying and feel sad, and then immediately applaud a movie with this plot.
Jacky Cheung's acting skills cannot be said to be bad or very good here.
He acted very hard.
Maybe it was the era when all the stars gathered, but his acting skills were not out of the ordinary. Nowadays, many old actors are returning to the world, and he also wants to come back and try again.
can only say that the best thing he did in the whole film was to sing the ending song. I listened to it in full. The lyrics were written by Nicholas Tse. They fit the character very well and he sang very well. He is worthy of being called a god of music and has great resources. When the time comes, just scroll to the end of the film and listen to the song.
3
Now that we have talked about the two hot spots created by marketing, let’s talk about the problems of this movie.
From beginning to end, whether it is literary or martial arts, there is a roughness and slowness.
is like someone playing a movie at 0.25x speed.
This is the overall feeling.
Let’s talk about the structure.
The first impression a movie gives to the audience is that the structure of a commercial film must tell a complete story.
The male protagonist Nicholas Tse broke up with his girlfriend at the beginning. He gave her a ring when she was getting married, but she returned it to him. Then he went on a mission and was killed by a smuggling gangster.
Logically, when arranging this emotional scene for the male protagonist, there must be bigger moves later, such as what kind of impact it will have on the character, and what kind of character fluctuations there will be in the future.
However, that's all.
Thinking in reverse, if this girlfriend character does not exist, will it have any impact on the character's behavioral motivations?
I think it can be removed.
has no effect.
and even lost points.
You can pay attention to the scene where the ex-girlfriend is killed by the gangster. The director
specially gave Nicholas Tse a close-up shot. He looked at his girlfriend lying on the ground and then started to make facial expressions.
I thought he was constipated.
Really, no joke.
is trying hard to suppress the feeling that I am about to cry, but it also looks like I am too embarrassed to cry.
Delicate emotional scenes have always been Nicholas Tse's shortcomings.
To be honest, Hong Kong movies blew up a few niche actors back then:
Nicholas Tse, Edison Chen, Shawn Yue were the successors in the film industry.
Later everyone knew that because of one door, everyone was no longer able to do it.
In fact, whether there is such a thing, the three of them are not good at acting, and they all rely on their faces to make a living.
The role played by Nicholas Tse should not be given this emotional scene. He cannot act with delicate emotions at all.
Under the focus of the camera, his shortcomings in acting were greatly emphasized.
should let him play from beginning to end, and he himself feels very happy.
So, actually when I saw the so-called small peak at the beginning, I felt like it was impossible.
Everyone seems very tired.
4
Then let’s look at the logic of the bombing of the secret customs warehouse.
is too problematic.
Hong Kong is known as the safest city in Asia.
The smuggling gangsters actually drove their cars and rushed directly to the secret warehouse of the customs to grab weapons.
Do you believe it?
This is Hong Kong.
I know you are filming a movie, but in modern dramas, you still need to be reasonable.
After grabbing the weapons, he drove away in the helicopter. After playing
for so long, it can be regarded as a small peak in the first half.
However, no customs officer called for support throughout the process.
Moreover, no one is surprised, how do these gangsters know where the secret warehouse is?
How can they accurately determine that the weapons they want must be in this secret warehouse?
I really don’t believe that the Qiu Litao who filmed “Customs Front” is the same Qiu Litao who filmed “The Negotiator”.
Who are you trying to deal with?
What’s strange is that no one later wondered why this secret warehouse was exposed. It seems that I am the only one worrying about the logic of the screenwriter.
5
The character played by Jacky Cheung is actually a sandwich pancake. However, I can't empathize as many marketing accounts say.
is very simple. The role played by the singer is a multi-faceted and three-dimensional character.
However, his acting skills were not up to par and I couldn't get into the role.
Actually, when I was watching the movie, I thought of the character played by Liu Qingyun in "The Negotiator".
The situation he faced at that time was that everyone was betrayed and separated, and no one trusted him. He was also very entangled and anxious, but he was also calm and worked hard to solve the problem.
It cannot be said that the situations and personalities faced by the two characters are the same, but both of them appear in a position where they need to show the multi-faceted character and crisis management.
Lau Ching Wan made me feel the same way, and Jacky Cheung only made me feel that he worked very hard in his acting.
He tried hard to keep his eyes wide open, tried hard to remain silent, and tried hard to be anxious.
just didn't make me feel the connection between the characters and the actors.
6
Let’s talk about Lin Jiaxin.
I don’t know if it’s the director’s roughness or the actress Lin Jiaxin’s own acting skills that exceeded the director’s requirements.
The character played by Jacky Cheung is a sandwich between his girlfriend in different departments and his boss.
The role itself is really difficult.
I didn’t understand this from Jacky Cheung, but I understood it from the two characters of Carrie Lam and Ng Zhenyu after watching the movie.
Think about it, if your boyfriend has a lower position in the company than you, and you and his boss are competing for the position of second-in-command in the company.
now has a task. If you do it well, you will be the second-in-command. However, your boyfriend's boss will definitely pass the responsibility for the failure to your boyfriend, and it will be difficult for him to do his job in the unit.
But if you don't answer, it will have no impact on you, because it is not your scope of responsibility.
Moreover, you also know that your boyfriend has mental problems and needs to see a doctor.
At this time, will you ask your boyfriend to pass on your boss and give you information privately to help you get promoted?
As long as you have a little understanding in your heart, wouldn't you do this?
Would you go to the doctor with your boyfriend when you want to get promoted?
But, she didn't.
Lin Jiaxin has been using the opportunities and clues created by Jacky Cheung for her in the movie to investigate the case. At the same time, her biggest concern for Jacky Cheung was that when she felt that he had emotional problems, she said, go see a doctor.
Lin Jiaxin's expressions, lines and behavior all make people think that there is something wrong with her.
However, in fact, at the end, she missed Jacky Cheung very much.
In other words, her acting skills show that there must be something wrong with this character, but the plot tells us that she actually doesn't have any problems, so the problem lies with the screenwriter.
From the handling of the emotional scenes of the two characters Jacky Cheung and Nicholas Tse, it shows the failure and perfunctoryness of the screenwriter and director in the emotional scenes.
I guess it just needs an emotional scene, so there is one. The director doesn’t care whether the two protagonists are good at it or not.
If Wu Zhenyu were to play the role played by Jacky Cheung, at least in terms of acting performance, it would be 1 point higher. Because what Wu Zhenyu is best at is delicately expressing the multi-faceted characters.
The boss he played in this movie was originally an annoying negative character, but he also worked hard to make his presence felt, although in the second half, the director made him disappear for no reason.
7
Let’s talk about Mark who is constantly mentioned. Because
is mentioned every time, people feel that there must be some big trick.
However, it does not.
There is a certain gap between the audience's expectations and the director's actual ability.
8
Finally, let’s talk about the mole.
When Jacky Cheung discovered smuggling for the first time, he just took a look and discovered it.
I would like to ask why such a perfunctory smuggling method can be used so boldly?
Can’t other customs officers see it?
uses this to express Jacky Cheung’s first involvement in smuggling, which is unconvincing. Under the logic of
, looking at the subsequent operations only makes people feel sloppy.
Friends who haven’t watched it, don’t waste your money. If you want to watch Hong Kong movies, just wait for resources. Or play "Negotiation Expert" again.
above
July 3, 2024
in Hong Kong
