Film Name: 你好，李焕英 / A Writer’s Odyssey / Assassin in Red
The movie I was most looking forward to during this year’s Spring Festival was Assassin in Red, which was the earliest film to be scheduled and the one with the least amount of information revealed prior to its release – the film’s setup and mode are rarely seen in Chinese cinema, so this attempt was the most likely to result in an unprecedented surprise.
While the movie didn’t quite live up to the wow factor I expected, it was by no means disappointing, and I’m willing to give it a favorable review for its efforts.
Assassin in Red’s special effects are outstanding, its plot is full of strange and ingenious ideas, and its fusion of two worlds in an interactive narrative brings a great sense of freshness and hierarchy, but at the same time, the film lacks some strength in the “effective transformation of the viewing experience”, which makes the overall level of the film However, at the same time, the movie lacks some strength in “effective transformation of the viewing experience”, which makes the overall standard of the movie less favorable.
Nevertheless, the movie still accomplishes this whimsical story, and contributes ordinary and down-to-earth touches after the fantasy.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below, so read at your discretion].
First of all, let’s throw out a conclusion: the special effects of “Assassin in Red” have reached the “top” level of domestic movies, and even the modest term of “first-class” can be dispensed with.
The villain is by far the best digital virtual character ever made: vertically, you can refer to the ghostly visions in Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings two years ago, which were also titanic, but the optimization of the ghost is so good that there’s almost no post-production stiffness in this film; For a side-by-side comparison, you can refer to another work by the same team, The Wandering Earth, where the stiffness and simplicity of some of the close-ups and action sequences have also been greatly improved.
Not only the characters, but also the virtual world in Assassin in Red, except for some real actors, the rest is created by special effects, from the imperial city to the ruins, from the burning dragon to the red armor warriors and so on, not to say that the real is not real, but it is also not far from it. In addition, in the real world, several people with supernatural powers seem to be real or fake “action scenes” also added a lot of similar interesting.
After watching the film, my biggest feeling is that, although there is still a distance from the top industrialized level of Hollywood, the gap between domestic special effects is really not that big, at least it is no longer a gulf visible to the naked eye.
Of course, there have been plenty of articles praising the special effects of the movie, so I’m just going to point it out here as a non-specialist viewer.
And without malice, whenever someone blows hard on a new movie’s special effects, it often means that the rest of it doesn’t work …… So, let’s talk about the story of “Assassin in Red”.
The fundamental contradiction of the movie is based on reality: the hero Guan Ning has been searching for his abducted daughter “Little Orange” for six years, and when he is on the verge of despair, the cross-discipline giant business conglomerate “Aladdin” appears before him and promises to retrieve his daughter, on condition that he He is promised that he can get his daughter back on the condition that he will assassinate the novelist LU KONG-WEN, who resembles him and is also trapped in a “bewitchment” that he has not been able to solve for six years.
All the grudges and feuds in the world are often inseparable from human obsession. The loss of a child is indeed incredibly painful, but very few people can do like Guan Ning, after losing their jobs, wives and normal life, like a mad dog running after the traffickers, but it is the road empty text such as writing novels written “waste” of people appear from time to time …….
Originally, everyone can continue to live in their own world, until the emergence of the spoiler Aladdin Group’s big boss Li Mu – he wanted to kill Lu Kongwen because many episodes of the other novel “Godslayer” alluded to his own sordid history (the villain Chifa relied on the brutal murder of his sworn brothers to become the leader of the long days, corresponding to the murder of Li Mu’s partner, Lu Kongwen’s father), and the dishonorable history of his own family. father), and dishonorable goals (Red Hair is cruel and murderous and wants to become a “god” who controls the world, while Li Mu has achieved success and fame and wants to become a god who monopolizes everything on earth), and that it also leads to his own illness (??????). The reason why Guan Ning is chosen to do the murder is because his encounters, abilities and dreams make him the perfect killer and scapegoat.
Can a fictional plot really affect a person’s health and even life and death like zapping a doll? Pure bullshit, this is nothing more than Li Mu’s mind’s demons at work.
If Li Mu had a clear conscience, he would not have to care about what the loser Lu Kongwen writes. It is precisely because he has a ghost in his heart that he blames Lu Kongwen’s novels for his indescribable sense of fear and guilt, until he is driven to kill, even if this big kid has no idea what happened in the past.
That said, there is one problem with Assassin in Red: there is no relationship between the real world and the fictional world, and all the seemingly ingenious nodes are connected by “coincidences”.
Guan Ning’s dream about the city and the little orange, the more intervention in “Deicide”, the more he wants to kill Chifa, etc., are all a bit of strong setups/explanations, even if we can explain the two worlds by saying “Li Mu added to the story” and “the movie has a special style”! Even if we can use “Li Mu’s drawing” and “the special style of the movie” to explain the development of the two worlds, so many coincidences are still not clever enough.
The movie also has a problem, that is, the use of a large number of novel-style “stream of consciousness” expression – and comics, novels and such need to readers to take the initiative to complete the story of the understanding of the carrier of the brain, animation, film and television story carriers, the audience is more passive information, “Assassin in Red” in this regard does not fully complete the corresponding transformation. Assassin in Red” does not fully accomplish the corresponding transformation in this regard, which is called ‘individuality and white space’ in the good sense, and ‘not gripping and lacking strings’ in the bad sense.
This leads to the fact that the audience must be able to accept and be very involved in this kind of tone to be able to understand and appreciate the story of the film (for example, Li Mu’s behavior and the logic of some of the other characters’ behaviors, you have to make up more to be able to understand it), so it is no wonder that some people would think that “the plot is not enough, the special effects to come together,” and I am afraid that is the reason why Assassin in Red has not been able to get wide acclaim. This is the main reason why “Assassin in Red” could not receive wide acclaim.
Apart from these shortcomings, the rest of the movie does a good job, such as characterization and personality transformation.
Like the character of Tu Ling, the persona is very simple and typical, on the surface of the Aladdin Group’s CIO, in fact, it is the adoptive father of Li Mu to do the dirty work of the black hand, the experience of being abandoned by her parents in her childhood, making her particularly hate Guan Ning this kind of lost children’s parents, so let her be responsible for the assassination operation is the most appropriate, but it is also the Guan Ning’s persistence and Li Mu’s ferociousness, so that she turned her mind back to the water, to complete the salvation.
What I like even more is the ultimate positioning and landing of Assassin in Red’s intention: perseverance in doing something seemingly futile may be useless, but the quality of perseverance can bring rewards.
Honestly, Lu Kongwen is an unimpressive network writer, writing for six years have not been out of the wrong (Guan Ning finally made up the ending is even worse), but without his persistence, would not have attracted the weak-minded Li Mu self-bombing, pay off the debt – it can be predicted that Lu Kongwen and his mother were able to obtain a fortune enough to be free of the compensation, in the future, even if he continues to be a scrappy novelist, he is at least a scrappy novelist with no food or clothing.
What’s even better is Guan Ning’s bright future, his persistence in exchange for the traffickers and Li Mu’s favor, and then in the process of assassination from the mouth of the scavenger boy heard belong to him and his daughter’s ballad, and ultimately, in the protection of the novel’s “Little Orange,” the hope to win back the reality of the Little Orange, ushered in the reunion of the father and the daughter.
The slogan of Assassin in Red, “If you believe, you can achieve it,” is not just a delusion, but an unwavering and unshakable belief.
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