Film Name: 悬崖之上 / Impasse / Cliff Walkers
This year’s “May Day” new films are released in piles, selling differently, but dared to advance the screening of the film but only a few, of which, Zhang Yimou’s directorial career in the first spy thriller “Impasse” is the largest screenings, with the current word-of-mouth, it is likely that it will stand out in this period.
There’s no reason for this to be particularly complicated, just because it’s “good-looking”.
After watching the movie, I carefully recalled some, convinced that this feeling is correct: if the narrowly defined works of espionage “battle of wits” standard to measure, “Impasse” in fact, there are a lot of logical shortcomings and deficiencies, but from the point of view of a commercial movie, “Impasse” picture is beautiful, the pace of the right, full of characters, two hours to watch down quite smoothly. However, from the perspective of a commercial movie, “Impasse” is beautifully photographed, well-paced, well-fleshed with characters, and is a fairly smooth two-hour watch.
I believe that this movie can be recognized by the majority of the audience.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below, so read at your discretion].
There are several dimensions to the “good looks” of Impasse, the first of which is visual (literally) good looks – the images.
We all know that Zhang Yimou likes to play with colors, and almost all of his blockbusters use bold colors, such as the red of Red Sorghum, the colorful Hero, the green of House of Flying Daggers, and the black and white of Shadow.
This time, Zhang Yimou still chose black and white as the baseline primary colors, but instead of a simple black-and-white style, he relied on this simple use of color to somewhat produce a black-and-white texture out of a color film.
The stage of Impasse is located in the northeast of China, Heilongjiang and Harbin. Whether it’s the wild old forest or the city streets, the snowy white that always falls/covered the ground constitutes the base color of the film, which symbolizes the purity and beauty of the world, and the deep black on the protagonist’s team and the Japanese secret agents mixes with the sporty colors of the world where both nobility and sin coexist, and embellished with the dusky yellows of the night, the blood red of the perishable, and the indigo of dawn, the atmosphere is absolutely spot on. The atmosphere is absolutely spot on.
This “understated flamboyance” style adds a touch of solemnity and romance to this espionage story that takes place between the white mountains and the black waters.
In addition to the right colors, stable camera work is also a plus point of Impasse’s image sense, thanks to Zhang Yimou’s camerawork, the basic skills are solid, the use of different lenses such as freeze frame, sports, close-ups, and so on, and there is no fancy, very stable, the audience’s eyes will enjoy this sense of comfort.
Of course, the good looks of the picture and other hardware dimensions are the icing on the cake, while the good story is the core competitiveness of Impasse to win the audience’s favor.
The movie takes place in the 1930s, four communist agents trained in the Soviet Union, came to the pseudo-Manchurian country to carry out a secret operation code-named “Utra”, but due to the betrayal of traitors to disclose the secrets, the four-member team just landed on the ground when the enemy secret service section has been targeted – the story is different from the traditional spy war, the story is not the same as the traditional spy war. This story is different from the traditional espionage story, in the narrative focus on a great deal of trade-offs, basically give up the interlocking cocoon, focusing on the successor of the enemy and the two sides of the personal entanglement.
(PS: Zhang Yi + Qin Hailu + Zhu Yawen + Liu Hao Cun + Yu He Wei, a decent team with an eye-pleasing facial configuration.)
Impasse puts the crisis on the table right from the start, and apart from Zhou Yi, who halfway indicates his latent identity, there are few unexpected plot setups, and the audience is aware of all the contradictions and dangers, playing all the cards in the open.
As a work of espionage, the movie discards most of the suspenseful elements, and replaces them with a relaxed, step-by-step progression.
Zhang Xianchen and Xiaolan’s group is the first to break the enemy’s disguise, but Chuliang and Wang Yu’s group is still in the dark, should the mission continue? And will they be able to rescue their comrades behind bars? As Zhou Yi enters the picture, new variables are added to the story, and the identities of the rescuers and the rescued are changing all the time.
Impasse is fantastically paced, targeted and staggered, from the four-man parachute jump paired with a traitor’s leak, to the splitting of Groups 1 and 2 and their solo fights, to the counter-espionage of the enemy in me, and the enemy in me, and even the mission of the secret agent team changes (from rescuing survivors of the Japanese human experiments to circling around and confusing the enemy’s secret service section)… …
The film does not seem to have a particularly clear main line, but the vein has always been very clear, the audience at any time by the development of the story and changes in the pull, the whole time to maintain a moderate tension, unknowingly involved in the completion of this dangerous and important mission, so the heart-wrenching movie naturally look good.
In addition, the characters in the movie are also more vivid, not too simple, flat, such as Zhang Xianchen, Wang Yu, the couple to join the revolution, in addition to the fall of the homeland of the national hatred, but also forced to be separated from their children’s family hatred, Chuliang and Xiaolan, the pair of couples, and a few more points of the romance of the ideal of communism, as well as Zhou Yi’s stoicism and introspection, the Jin Zhide’s very spicy and rough, and even Xie Zirong because of the greed for life and fear of death, and betrayal of faith sinking, all of them are the most important thing. The story of Xie Zirong’s betrayal of his beliefs has injected a lot of warmth, tenderness and tenderness into this otherwise cold and solemn story.
But here to a small spit a little Lan, I quite like Liu Hao Cun this beautiful and soulful little girl, she played Lan also completed the due provisions of the action, and did not fall off the chain or dragging feet …… but she is still too young point, in this “middle-aged sense” quite strong film, such a tender skin and voice image is always a bit out of place, I hope the director to hold the “Mou girl” to see more occasions ah. But she is still a little too young, in this “middle-aged feeling” quite strong film, so tender skin, voice image is always a little out of place flavor, I hope that the director to hold the “girl” have to see more occasions ah.
Next, we have to talk about the shortcomings of “Impasse”, in fact, this is also the inevitable problem after the creation of trade-offs: logic is occasionally missing, the rationality of the disappearance of the intermittent loss of fluency.
Since the selling point of “suspense” has been lost, the audience will naturally pay more attention to the extension of the story, but there are many scenes in the movie that have big and small lumps in their presentation and bite, such as the sprained leg of Lan, who escapes after shooting the enemy at the train station, Zhang Xianshen looking for his child while escaping from the agents, and Zhang Xianshen explaining to Zhou Yi that he has to find his child. Zhang Xianchen, after explaining to Zhou Yi, should have died generously, but in order to lead to the subsequent plot, he was taken back and injected with psychedelic drugs, and the enemy did not have a clear explanation for the abnormalities of the secret agent team, and so on.
The movie’s script is good, but the individual joints are obviously still unpolished, and if it weren’t for the excellent pacing and performances, which dilute many of the implausibilities, the viewing experience would have to fall down a notch. …… Even so, the movie falls flat with a portion of the audience that likes to use their brains and logic.
Therefore, “Impasse” is still a long way from being a good movie (especially in the sequence of Lao Mouzi’s works), but it’s not a bad-looking commercial movie.
Finally, I can’t help but praise Zhang Yimou, in fact, I already did so last year when I reviewed One Second. At 70 years of age, he still possesses such a strong creative force, and it’s really rare for him to work on a number of movies and large-scale events in a row. As one of the old-timers who are still active, this professional attitude and spirit can really be an example for the younger generation.
It is worth mentioning that “Impasse” is not only Zhang Yimou’s first attempt at espionage themes, but also to a certain extent for the domestic melodramatic film “type of film” to further indicate the direction of the creation – the previous “Wolf Warriors My People, My Country” and ‘My People, My Homeland’ focus on ‘platter’ (this road is now blocked), and this time the main ‘espionage’ can still be successful, which proves that the road of genre film creation is feasible.
Under the premise of remembering the patriotic stance, letting go and using sufficiently professional means to do professional things well, the audience and the market will give positive feedback: respect is never mutual.
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