The breakthrough of "Border Water" completely ignited the excitement of the audience. This year is about to end in one quarter, and the battle for the small screen has entered a fierce stage. Who will be the next dark horse? Facing the fierce competition in the fou

will end in one quarter this year, and the battle for the small screen has also entered a fierce stage.

The next dark horse, who will win?

Faced with the fierce competition in the fourth schedule, Youku defended itself and once again submitted its answer sheet first.

is also a White Night Theater, with the same crime theme, the same local expression, and the same heavy cast...

Following the success of "Border Water", it is obviously more ambitious.

is not only addictive, but also "addictive":

Snow Maze

executive producer, Zhang Yimou.

Director Lu Xing, 's masterpiece "Undocumented Crime", refreshed the resume of domestic villains with the role of "Li Toyota".

Including the team behind the scenes, I have to say that Youku is really willing to release this book this time.

The new generation is responsible for attracting fans:

starring Huang Jingyu , Zhang Yu , Wang Ziqi , Xie Keyin .

An experienced actor with good acting skills:

Liang Guanhua changed from being a virtuous minister with ease, and turned into a rough guy from the Northeast in a matter of seconds, with a mouth full of dirt.

Liu Wei plays the former captain of the investigation team, who turns around and becomes the old uncle of the cooking team.

Che Paul , TVB gold medal supporting actor, playing the role of a Guangdong drug lord is completely easy.

Two generations of actors compete on the same stage.

purpose?

is just to recreate the past events in Northeast China.

The title of the play "Snow Maze" defined the regional attributes early on, laying the foundation for the cold and deep criminal tone of the whole play.

but at the same time translated as: first shot, has another sudden change in style, with a straight-to-the-point flavor.

As we all know:

Northeast has always been a hot spot for crime literature.

If you just watch a domestic crime drama for fun, it is not difficult, but the fun only goes so far.

The key is, How to understand the "play within the play" and "the words within the words" that are not directly given.

reveals the regional customs.

shows those nooks and crannies that hide dirt and evil in the northeast sunlight.

1

What was the Northeast like in 1997?

Pork stewed with vermicelli, large chicken rack, pot of meat, fragrant.

The old recorder is creaking, the top ones are , Ren Xianqi, and the Four Heavenly Kings.

has a strong atmosphere of the times, is not only for experiencing the character’s living environment.

The now extinct "three halls and one room" was a hotbed for entertainment to death.

In 1997, traditional drugs extracted from opium poppy had not yet exited the Northeast market.

New types of drugs are changing with each passing day, and they use deceptive appearances to penetrate into the rear of dark night culture.

The police captain played by Huang Jingyu.

There is only one word for investigating and handling cases: fierce.

nightclub anti-drug, click just do it.

Unfortunately, it fell behind when it came out.

After his identity as a plainclothes officer was discovered, no matter how handsome he was, the mission could only be considered interrupted.

those days.

The Northeast police's main anti-narcotics targets are marijuana and heroin, which the police are accustomed to targeting, and even worse, common drugs such as ecstasy.

No one expected that something beyond the knowledge of the police would happen.

One night:

Zheng Bei received a report and went to the small white building of the steel plant to call the police.

White snowflakes fell, reflecting the two bloody corpses.

Murder is naturally a big deal.

But what made the police frown more than the victim was the discovery of a new type of drug at the scene. The

series focuses on the early days when it entered China in the 1990s. At that time, the police only had ignorance about it and fear of the unknown: "They had only heard about it in the news and bulletins."

meth.

Ice crystal-like methamphetamine, which has huge addictive properties.

This seems to indicate that it will fall like snow in the Northeast, sweeping every most secret corner.

Without further ado.

The Harlan City Public Security Bureau, where Zheng Bei is located, quickly set up a task force to investigate the methamphetamine case.

Trace inspection expert Ding Guozhu (played by Zhao Yutong), chief of force Zhang Xueyao (played by Xie Keyin), and drug consultant Gu Yiran (played by Wang Ziqi) all spontaneously participated in the investigation.

Here is an episode.

The opportunity for Gu Yiran to join the task force stemmed from his hatred of drugs.

Not long ago, he witnessed with his own eyes the tragedy of a friend's drug overdose.

Meth, murder, two-pronged approach.

Jiang Xiaohai (played by Zhang Yu).

The security guard of the steelmaking plant, who was also the reporter that night, was the first to enter the sight of the task force.

He said that in addition to the deceased, there was a third person at the scene that night.

The trace inspection results also confirmed: the murderer is currently at large.

Everything was going smoothly.

Zheng Bei led the task force and saw that after several rounds of investigation, the murderer was about to be caught.

But it was too late and soon:

The murderer, was actually stabbed to death under their noses.

You will understand this when you see it.

Both the victim and the murderer himself are just pawns of the forces behind it.

At this time, the bigger hand hidden behind the murder finally surfaced:

The two drug lords. "Boss Qin" and "Brother Hao", from south to north, monopolize the drug business across the board.

The murder case in Xiaobailou was the result of a failed deal, and the murdered murderer was Ma Zai, who abandoned his car to protect Shuai. The intervention of the

task force undoubtedly touched their cake.

-The city bureau is afraid that this time it will crack down

-That line is obsolete, I will arrange a new one as soon as possible

For good people, the Northeast is their hometown and an unpolluted pure land.

But for the undercurrent of evil forces:

The vast white land represents huge business opportunities that have never been explored.

This is the background board for their carnival, the petri dish of animalistic desires.

is a "snow maze" that urgently needs to be violently cracked and conquered with drugs.

2

What is the most important thing for an anti-drug drama?

Needless to say, the process of exploring and suppressing drug-related chains.

But in Sir’s opinion, if it is just about simply meeting and killing ghosts, it will naturally lose some of the intensity that a realistic theme should have.

Solving the case is just the ending.

The most important thing in an anti-drug drama is actually to have enough details about drugs in addition to action scenes and chase battles.

Let’s take Gu Yiran as an example.

As mentioned before, the reason why he joined the task force was because he witnessed a friend overdose.

What kind of scenario reverses his decision?

A detail:

Gu Yiran went to look for the person. After knocking on the door several times and getting no response, he put his ear to the door and listened, but there was still no movement.

But then, his nose twitched.

The smell of rotting corpses?

maybe.

But as we walked into the scene with the camera, we discovered that the remains were far from decomposed.

In addition to the deceased, the source of the smell may also come from spoiled garbage and scattered drug paraphernalia.

Gu Yiran smelled the familiar smell of drugs and broke into the door, which fit his personality as a police academy consultant.

But at the same time, sir noticed another blind spot.

In addition to the multiple scars and bruises on the body of the deceased, her pupils were still dilated.

This is consistent with the symptoms caused by certain drugs mentioned later.

△ For your sake, I won’t leave the close-up of the corpse, sir.

What did the Northeast police face thirty years ago?

is a "drug friend" who can't stay in a drug rehabilitation center, and a "lamphead" (drug dealer) who is as indestructible as a cockroach.

and various new drugs that were just identified and seized today and developed tomorrow:

Compared with many film and television works about drugs, they all start from the subjective feelings of drug users.

" snow maze " is different.

Its perspective comes entirely from the anti-drug personnel, adopts a head-up attitude of pure science popularization and safety.

explains to the audience what is scattered on this land, and embodies the evil.

Marijuana will have a greasy feeling

It will have the smell of lard

Meth, which is chemically synthesized

So it will have a heavy metal taste

Ecstasy will have a milk-like fragrance (White Rabbit toffee)

closer to The distance between drugs is to maintain distance.

But there is no point in just following the script and explaining the truth. Same for

.

The lens also gives intriguing details about the anti-drug process:

Xiaobailou case.

The poisonous materials were placed in thermos bottles, which were used instead of bags to avoid detection during the transportation of drugs.

Zheng Bei pretended to be a drug dealer and dealt with the "lamp head", but the trap was revealed in less than five minutes.

Why?

The other party handed him poison, but he didn't answer.

For drug addicts, refusing drugs is as weird as workers refusing wages.

Details and foreshadowings like this are full of details.

Because of this, in that era when technology was scarce, the difficulty of anti-drug work increased without limit.

Why are the anti-narcotics police willing to rush to the scene in three shifts, willing to accept the futile efforts of the field team, and even risk their lives to infiltrate the enemy? This is a more sufficient reason.

Because I have motivation:

The memory of my friends, the love of life, and the hatred of drugs.

Because there is a methodology:

Even if it is a mess at the beginning, as long as you persist, will definitely be able to harvest more clues than the last time until the task is completed.

and most importantly.

As the person who knows the most about drugs in the world after drug addicts and drug traffickers.

Their existence is a high wall standing between ordinary people and the abyss.

And this is also the theme of the play.

What we are fighting against is far more than just apparent evil.

No matter how terrible drugs are, they are more terrible than human nature.

The biggest addiction always exists in the invisible heart.

3

In fact, even today, Sir will still hear some people express doubts, why do we hate drugs so much?

Because drugs alienate people? Will

destroy people's lives?

Perhaps what they did not say is:

It is better to let those "poisonous insects" fend for themselves.

Physical addiction can go to a drug rehabilitation center, and the drug trafficking chain will eventually be shattered in the dragnet.

What kind of mentality do we have?

To be honest, in many drug-themed film and television dramas, we can never find the exact answer. Just like "The Disciple", we see the hallucinations that drugs bring to drug addicts, and we also see the real life of drug addicts. Twisted, but there is always the illusion that "that is someone else's business."

and "Snow Maze".

For Sir, a very important point is to clarify a truth:

Drugs alienate not only people, but also the environment.How do you say

?

A scene in the seventh episode:

A prisoner who has just been released from prison gets into a taxi.

The passenger and the driver did not know each other, they were completely strangers.

However, when he saw the passenger taking out a small packet of white powder, the driver’s reaction was:

Laugh.

is dismissive.

After a while.

He went on to say: "You guys have been out of fashion a long time ago, and there has been a new trend a long time ago." What does

mean?

It means that when drugs are pervasive in a city, then talking about drugs and coming into contact with drugs may be as simple and natural as "Where to buy groceries". Is

an exaggeration?

does not.

In 2023, the "Daily Mail" reported that under the popularity of a new type of drug "xylazine", the streets of Philadelphia in the United States were filled with users of this drug. They stooped and ran rampant, creating a " The illusion of a zombie siege.

Under such circumstances, isn’t buying drugs the same as buying food?

is more than that.

The scary thing is that this is just the beginning.

Later we learned:

In the series, taxis in the entire city, including the drivers, have become tools for drug lords to transport and disperse drugs.

Under the temptation of huge profits from drugs.

Dance halls, nightclubs, and billiard halls that young people love to go to have long become experimental fields for new drugs.

so you can see.

Ordinary people who have no intention of taking drugs, even if they are really self-controlled, cannot escape the fate of being induced:

If "persuasion" fails, they will be secretly drugged.

explicitly refuses and will be violently attacked.

Why are drug dealers so "spending money"?

Because "there are only zero and unlimited times of drug use", once you start, you will do everything you can to continue taking drugs. Whether you have distorted the brain nervous system, whether the pain makes you crazy, it doesn't matter to drug traffickers at all. .

The important thing is that they can gain huge benefits from this.

will even truly cover the sky with one hand.

When everyone is enjoying the pleasure brought by drugs, is an era when everyone is an addict.

Drugs are the cause of the corruption of the entire city.

and what’s even scarier is.

Such environmental changes may take several years, or even longer, to reverse.

and in this process.

You and I are the lambs put on the table to be slaughtered.

Speaking of this, sir remembered a picture.

comes from the title sequence, those circular images scattered throughout the play.

pills, turned into clocks, clocks, turned into water cups, and finally turned into black umbrellas like chess pieces.

By coincidence, these same black umbrellas were used to protect the drug dealers outside the taxi company.

The black umbrella opened and the chess pieces fell.

so to say.

"Snow Maze" wants to show not only a murder case, but also several drug dealers.

From pharmacology to trafficking, profiteering to homicide, is the cause and effect of an entire land infiltrated by drugs.

Just like that straightforward poster:

The task force wanders in the snow.

In front of me is a giant maze that I don’t know how to go.

Is their goal a maze?

Look carefully.

Who is the person hiding in the maze?

Perhaps the answer will not be revealed so soon.

But at least we know.

The trap disguised as paradise has actually been lurking around us, tempting us at any time. And what we can do is

, only should be aware of:

.

Those who want to satisfy themselves through drugs and try to escape from reality.

will eventually create a self that cannot be turned back.