Film Name: 唐人街探案3 / Detective Chinatown 3
The 2021 Chinese New Year’s slot has officially kicked off, and from the pre-sale and first day box office point of view, it shows the situation of “one super, many strong”, this “one super”, that is, delayed the release of a year, on the first day of the New Year’s Day, it blew out 1 billion yuan “Detective Chinatown 3.
This performance is not a reflection of the quality of the movie, but the audience’s expectations of the movie, after all, those who want to see the audience waited too long – so, how is the quality of the movie?
Detective Chinatown 3 (hereinafter referred to as “Detective Chinatown 3”) is sad to say that it is going to be a disappointment this time around. If the first movie in the series was an entertaining reasoning movie, and the second one was a good reasoning movie, then the third movie is a farcical entertainment movie with reasoning gimmicks, which is not good enough for audiences who have been looking forward to this sequel for three years. Compared to what audiences have been waiting for over the past three years, this sequel is not quite up to snuff.
Perhaps it’s time for us to re-adjust our perception and positioning of the Tang Dynasty universe.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below, so read at your discretion].
The Tang Detective series is unique in that it can create a big IP with such a high commercial value with only three movies and a web series.
The success of the series, I think a very important point, is the use of Chinese-speaking protagonists in foreign countries to solve crimes, not only in the subjective feeling of the audience to take care of the sense of intimacy, not to rusty, but also in the process of watching the full display of exotic flavors, and through this to achieve some of the inconvenience of the domestic filming of the “degree of freedom”.
For that matter, Tang Detective 3 has the biggest row to date: the story stage comes to Tokyo, Japan, with Haneda Airport, the streets of Shibuya, Akihabara, Shinjuku, and other well-known locations unlocked, so it’s not a bad time.
In addition, the film also played a number of classic Japanese cultural elements, including gangsters, ninjas, sumo wrestling, kendo, secondary and so on, but also in a number of places to pay homage to the classic Japanese drama and Japanese film, and the use of these homage is not all simple to use, for example, in the yakuza baths, in the crowd of stabbing dragons and tigers painted ferocious middle-aged and elderly gangsters scared at the same time, Qin Feng did not forget to popularize the reality of Japan’s yakuza not enough youth! The movie is a great example of how the creators have done their homework.
The protagonist group, Tang Detective 3 also upgraded again, in the “funny bear + invincible lucky star” Tang Ren and “reasoning / face value bear + memory master” Qin Feng based on the addition of the “host + big money + Qin Feng two “Noda Hao, and “force bearer + Tang Ren No. 2” Jack Jia, a complete configuration of the Asian (China, Japan and Thailand) men’s group.
It can be said that Tang Detective 3 is luxurious in terms of costume and chemistry, and other basic configurations (really blood money), and sells first-class, reaching a new height of fashion Chinese commercial films.
But what about the actual effect? The entertainment component of the movie has reached the point where it overpowers the main focus – in fact, I’m not opposed to entertainment in a deductive movie, such as the exaggerated banter in Detective Chinatown 2, which is quite fun and interesting – and even more critical is that the entire Tang Detective 3 movie is a very entertaining one. More to the point, most of what goes on in Detective Chinatown 3 is just bad work, and it’s not very clever.
Starting from the sudden outbreak of “chaos” in the airport at the beginning of the movie, Detective Chinatown 3 has a chase scene or a vulgar paragraph from time to time, once or twice is fine, but more is really a bit of aesthetically fatiguing, compared to Detective Chinatown 2, which seems to be much more restrained. ……
Just to give a few examples, the farce in the hospital to change the body to drop the bag, Akihabara to change COS clothes in disguise, the main group needs to defeat the sumo wrestler/kendo group to pass the three scenes, purely for the sake of the whole job and the whole job, but also do not control the length of the film, as if it is hard to tickle the cackling nest to make people laugh, “laughter” how to vary from person to person, the film’s overall tone is thoroughly! The overall tone of the movie is completely destroyed.
The above conclusion is not exaggerated, the most direct reason, or “Tang Detective 3’s main case is really not ideal.
The main story line of the movie contains two cases, one light and one dark.
Nodaho is unable to solve the mystery and clear the name of the Black Dragon Society’s president, Katsu Watanabe, so he enlists the help of the Chinatown group to help with the investigation, and as he reviews the crime scene and organizes the various clues, they gradually get closer to the truth.
In terms of design and difficulty, there is nothing wrong with this secret murder case, but it has a big problem: the volume is on the small side, the people involved, the case clues and the background of the relationship is not complicated, even if you count the rest of the funny, watered-down content, by movie standards, more than an hour of time can be almost solved.
Obviously, Tang Detective 3 is not so simple, so in the main group of protagonists close to the key character Kobayashi Anna, the dark conspiracy gradually came to the surface, the mysterious Q entrance ……
Towards the middle of the movie, a new plot line suddenly appears to replace the original one, and the main characters are brought into Q’s game, which then reaches a climax in the part where Qin Feng is arrested for murder.
From my personal point of view, this kind of “side story” is not very pleasant, especially, except for Murata Akira’s kidnapping of Kobayashi Anna, the dark case has nothing to do with the light case, and the sense of tearing is a bit too strong.
Anyone who has seen the movie knows that the real purpose behind Qin Feng’s public killings is not to set up obstacles to solving the murder case in the secret room, but to Qin Feng himself – this is a test of Q for Qin Feng, but also a formal recruitment.
Q, which is ranked No. 1 on Crimaster’s list, is not a single person, but a transnational criminal organization. The Japanese police officer Naoki Tanaka in Tang Detective 3, the hitchhiking murderer Song Yi in Tang Detective 2, the main “smiley face” criminal Ivy in the Tang Detective web series, and Andy Lau, who appears at the end of the show with a boss face, are all Q members, but Qin Feng refuses to join. They wanted Qin Feng, who had “seen the world carry out perfect crimes”, to join Q, but Qin Feng refused.
In fact, if based on the whole “Tang Detective series” to see, Tang Detective 3 of the dark line of the plot performance and fill holes to do a good job, the continuation of the development of Qin Feng’s demon, explain the reason why Song Yi joined the Q organization, the main characters of the web series Lin Mo, Noda Haoji, etc. to help the movie, and even Tang Detective 1 of the sinister girl Si Nuo hard out of the face of the brush, a detective world of good and evil struggle. A good and evil detective world has unfolded, Tang Detective universe, the future is promising ah ~ ~.
But what if we go back to the Tang Dynasty 3 movie? Masami Nagasawa is still beautiful, Shota Someya’s evolution is quite flavorful, the relationship between war orphans and parent-child spells is thought-provoking, and even the thoughts on “eligibility for judgment” and “world peace” are meaningful… …
However, the case on the bright line can only rely on the dark line of the “charity” to finish the rest of the play, the movie is unfair to the case, and a bright and dark two almost the same size of the case there, the primary and secondary are not divided, the strengths and weaknesses are not apparent, so that the Tang Detective 3 caught in the dilemma of an awkward situation, the director ” The director’s “utilitarian desire to create a series of IP” has completely overridden the need to make a good movie.
Some people say that Chen Sicheng and his role in “Soldiers Sortie” is very similar to Chengcai, this point will not be commented on for the time being, but this argument has led me to another idea: only in terms of making movies, rather than a successful commercial director, Chen Sicheng is more like a good product manager, he does not have too much outstanding talent, but he knows very well what looks good, how to capture the audience’s goodwill. He doesn’t have a lot of talent, but he knows what looks good and how to capture the audience’s favor.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to negate Chen Sicheng, in fact, until this “Detective Chinatown 3”, I’ve always had a positive attitude towards his work, and it’s also a skill to be able to use people and scheduling, and domestic movies also need talents like him on the road to marketization, and it’s not like that…this summer, “Mozart from Space” is also going to be released! This summer, Mozart from Space will also be released in theaters, and it’s planned to be another long IP series.
However, the performance of Detective Chinatown 3 seems to indicate that Chen Sicheng has hit a bottleneck as a director, and should either stop and settle down for a while to improve a bit, or consider further retreating to the background as a producer or executive producer, which was a good attempt with Sheep Without a Shepherd the year before.
That said, I’ll probably still go see Detective Chinatown 4 when it comes out in the future ……, but if Chen Sicheng still only has these three axes to grind, then the Tang Detective series is really going to lose its current commercial status, I’m afraid.
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