" directed and written by Malaysian director Ke Wenli, was released on July 3 and won the box office championship on the first day. The total box office predicted by major movie platforms has also been rising, and now reaches 1.27 billion yuan. As of 14:00 on July 8, the film has achieved a box office record of 400 million yuan, becoming the best-performing film among all films released this summer. Film director Ke Wenli has collaborated with top commercial film director Chen Sicheng in the movie "Manslaughter" and the web drama " Chinatown Detective ", and now he is presenting "Silence", which is gaining momentum at the box office. So, is this Does it mean that he has become a mature filmmaker? Does "Silent Kill" really have the gold content to become a hit?
is a story of school bullying
is not a story of school bullying
From all aspects, "Silent Kill" is not a first-tier commercial blockbuster. However, judging from audience feedback and box office response in recent years, there are still many small and medium-cost films that can achieve commercial success. For example: setting the background of the story in an exotic country, arranging suspenseful and exciting crimes, using eye-catching shots, focusing on gambling, domestic violence, bullying, doctor-patient conflicts and other issues that can arouse the audience's emotions, and finally giving the ending a clearing of the clouds. The reversal... "The Disappearance of " directed by Chen Sicheng, which was released on June 22 last year, is such a film that meets all the blockbuster formulas. Although the film is a remake, it still scored 3.5 billion yuan at the box office. . There is also "Manslaughter" directed by Ke Wenli, the director of "Silent Kill", released in 2019. It is also a small-to-medium-cost remake. It relied on good word-of-mouth reputation and finally locked the box office at 1.3 billion yuan. "Silence", which was released on July 3, is also a remake, but it is a remake of an old work that Ke Wenli shot in 2018. This time he reunited the team for a "self-remake", and Ke Wenli's ambitions are even greater.
Before it was released, "Silent Kill" had the slogan "Minors choose to watch carefully", and the cause of the entire murder incident was a piece of school bullying that may happen to every minor: somewhere in Southeast Asia In an ordinary class of a Chinese girls' school, Xiaotong (played by Wang Shengdi), a mute girl who was transferred to a special education class, was bullied by four classmates, led by the principal's daughter. After that, four bullies died under the hammer one after another.
Police officer Dai Guodong ( Wu Zhenyu ) discovered through investigation that the bully was killed by a raincoat butcher on a rainy night. Li Han (played by Zhang Junning), a cleaner at the school, once wore a raincoat to clean up flowers and plants outside the house. She was bullied. Ling's Xiaotong's mother has the motive of revenge for her daughter; school worker Lin Zaifu ( Wang Chuanjun ) seems to know the inside story but is indifferent and distant. He is the second suspect; Wu Wang ( Huang Minghao), a young man with a voyeuristic hobby ) often takes candid photos of girls. He is a candid camera maniac who is suspected of having perverted tendencies. As the third suspect, he often smiles...
In order to ensure suspense, "Silent Kill" has as many settings as possible There are many elements that disturb the visual, auditory and thinking. However, whether it is through the cast of the actor, the motive of the crime, or the level of suspicion, most viewers can still guess that Wu Wang, the candid camera maniac, was only a witness to the entire incident, and that the murderer was either his mother Li Han or the school teacher. Good luck to Gonglin again.
Perhaps the director believed that the identity of the murderer was too easy to guess. In order to ensure the suspense and excitement of the film, he began to continuously stack other stories in the process of promoting the main story and insert some plots that were dispensable to the main plot. . For example, about 65 minutes into the film, the whole story of the death of another bullied, Xiaotong's best friend Huijun (Xu Jiao) was explained, and the father-daughter relationship between her and Lin Zaifu was revealed. relation. The entire main plot is basically revealed, that is, a mute girl encounters campus violence. The perpetrators are the principal's daughter and other classmates. The father who has lost his daughter cannot bear it anymore, and several perpetrators are capable of committing many crimes. After that, the film revealed the past secret of Li Han's mother and daughter's family, which was that Xiaotong killed her stepfather Chen Mingzhang ( Xing Jiadong ) after being sexually assaulted five years ago.
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In other words, the suspense of this film is not to explore the whereabouts of the perpetrator, or to reveal the identity of the murderer and the murder process. Instead, the perpetrators were hammered to death one by one not long after the film started. His identity was also quickly revealed halfway through the film. Each new character and new relationship not only did not provide new clues or new ideas for the film, but instead stacked the film into a "stitched monster": the film is just a campus bully, but also involves voyeuristic filming, domestic violence, Rape of young girls, police corruption, torture to extract confessions, educational failure, collective indifference, reincarnation, suffering of all living beings and other topics... Each of these topics can be made into a movie, but they are collectively tolerated and entangled in "Silent Kill" in a movie. And the 2-hour film length is not enough to describe each line completely. The emotional highlights and social issues come one after another, the big and small are reversed again and again, and the "large-scale" scenes are one after another, and the suspense is not constructed well. In this case, not only is there no thrilling feeling, but there is a sense of numbness that comes from a sudden shock, and the actual effect is too much.
The "dimension wall" is broken
The suspense is not enough for actors to join in
In addition to the "stitching" of the story content, "Silent Kill" is also "stitching" each of the leading actors. Compared with "Manslaughter" released in 2019, "Manslaughter" has more starring actors and a larger number of celebrities. Among them, there are both powerful and idol groups, including actors of all ages, from all over the world. They are also collectively "stitched" together in this story that takes place in Southeast Asia.
The director and screenwriter of the film, Ke Wenli, is a Malaysian. Special thanks go to Chen Sicheng, who is from the Northeast. Wang Chuanjun, who plays the actor Lin Zaifu, is from Shanghai. Zhang Junning, who plays the heroine Li Han, is from Taiwan, China. Police officer Dai Guodong is played by Zhang Junning. Wu Zhenyu is a native of Hong Kong, China. In addition to these more important roles, there are Beijing native Cai Ming who plays Xu's mother, Chinese Taiwanese Jin Shijie who plays Fang Juezhong, and Qin Hao who plays Xiaotong in the suspense drama "The Hidden Corner" Popular Beijing kid Wang Shengdi, as well as Huang Minghao, Aruna, Wang Chengsi, Liu Xiaohai, Xing Jiadong, Li Meng and other actors who have become popular through different film and television works and variety shows. It's not that actors can't break the "dimensional wall", it's just that they each have their own temperament and aura, and they didn't create a novel chemical reaction in this film.
Take the male lead Wang Chuanjun as an example. As a father who has lost his beloved daughter and has nowhere to redress, he embarks on the road of cold-blooded revenge. Wang Chuanjun completed this role in a relatively restrained way. He is very familiar with the character's struggle and Repression gave an excellent performance and is one of the more unique characters of the same type. Especially the last rooftop scene is one of the more touching scenes in the film and can better touch the hearts of the audience. Wang Chuanjun has been choosing to break through in the film industry in recent years, and his acting skills have been recognized by the audience time and time again. The shaping of this role can be regarded as his normal level of performance.
In comparison, Li Han portrayed by Zhang Junning is not a breakthrough, and the character image is not clear enough. As a mother who loves her daughter, Li Han would rather give up her clerical job and work as a school cleaner. However, she was secretly photographed often domestically abusing her daughter at home, which greatly weakened her image of a loving mother. But such a violent mother chose to endure when her daughter was bullied at school. However, she went crazy and wanted to confront Lin Zaifu and take the blame for her daughter. She created an image of a struggling and anxious mother, but this sense of tension and anxiety does not give people a sense of suspense and mystery, but instead gives people a sense of panic and confusion.
What is even more difficult to stand is the police officer Dai Guodong (played by Wu Zhenyu) who solved the case. He did nothing to prevent his son Wu Wang (played by Huang Minghao), a candid photographer, from secretly filming a mother and daughter for five years. He did not stop his son from secretly filming. Nor did they stop the mother and daughter from killing their stepfather. He relied on this secretly filmed video to investigate the case, but destroyed this video that was considered evidence.
At the end of "Silent Kill", the film expresses special thanks to Chen Sicheng. Just like "The Disappearance" directed by Chen Sicheng in 2023, such a film that meets all the blockbuster formulas can be called a commercial blockbuster or a masterpiece at best. To put it mildly, it’s called a “stitch monster.” As a young director born in the 1985s, Ke Wenli cannot overly learn those tricks. A good director needs to be clear that he must have his own best plan and scheduling ability to tell stories and present themes. A 2-hour movie Time is limited, and the limited space cannot accommodate too many elements and too much ambition.
Proofreader: Liu Tian Reporter: Xing Yuan Editor: Xing Yuan
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