Film Name: 狙击手 / Snipers
Another slap in the face – when I saw the trailer and promotional materials for Snipers earlier, I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be a good movie, but I never expected it to be the biggest surprise of the Chinese New Year season.
Although Snipers is not destined to be a box office hit in this period due to limited market resources and many other factors, the steadily increasing word-of-mouth, movie releases and attendance over the past two days show that the film is being recognized by more and more people.
To a certain extent, “Snipers” has taken a path that runs counter to the increasing number of “big” Chinese war movies, picking up the creative concept of “small but fine”, with only a dozen or so people at war, and focusing all their energy on specific battles and characters. and the role of the small to see the big, should have all.
Zhang Yimou with his daughter, Zhang Mo jointly completed such a sharp and exquisite war film, interpretation of what is called the sword is not old, learning is never-ending.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
Snipers’ greatest strength, as well as its most fundamental selling point, is that it shoots its battles well enough to be clean, sharp, competent, and fluid.
The story of the movie is set in the late anti-US war against North Korea, “Cold Gun Cold Artillery Campaign”, the volunteer sniper squad leader Liu Wenwu gave the enemy a heavy blow and reputation, the US Army lieutenant to defeat this strong enemy, mobilize good people carefully for each other to set up, the whole film almost all the battle scenes occurred in the two teams of people between.
The movie has an excellent sense of pacing, and quickly gets to the point after a brief explanation of the background and characters. Starting with the ambush of Squad 5, and ending with Onaga’s killing of the enemy’s leader, John, the series of dizzying battle sequences always keeps the audience firmly in the tense and brutal battlefield.
In the process, the tactics used by Squad 5 are noteworthy, and they are often related to characterization and relationships, such as the “luring snakes out of their holes” led by Mi Lao Er, which points out that they have done similar performances before, and hints at the not-so-boring lives of volunteer soldiers in their spare time.
Afterwards, Liu Wenwu and Dai Yong’s full-firepower output of “catching the duck on the shelf” demonstrates the superior ability of the two best snipers in class five, while Dai Yong’s final victory with the “backfire” highlights his inheritance and development of his strict teacher Liu Wenwu, symbolizing the passing on of combat skills and combat spirit. It symbolizes the passing on of fighting skills and fighting spirit.
What’s remarkable is that Snipers sets up an evenly matched opponent for Class 5: an elite sniper team led by John, a top U.S. Army sniper (thanks in part to Zhang Mu’s efforts).
Although this squad is slightly smaller than Class 5, the trap was laid by them and the battlefield was picked by them, plus the fact that they have successively put down four Class 5 fighters as soon as they made their sneak attack, and at the same time, they also have the advantage of firearms and equipment, so they create a huge pressure on Class 5 and the audience – it’s a tough battle against the wind.
Unlike many similarly titled works, the U.S. troops in Snipers are no longer thinly-veiled villains relying purely on superior firepower or delusions of grandeur; the film does a great deal to fit its cultural context, and they too have military honor and sevens, as well as extraordinary combat prowess – for example, after being taken out of the enemy line by Squad Five with a After taking out two members of his team in the side corner with a snake draw, John doesn’t hang his head, but quickly gets into a fighting stance and then finds a shell in front of the enemy line, waiting for an opportunity to fire and an eye for an eye.
Respect for the opponent is respect for themselves, no matter how much the strategic principle should be contempt for the enemy, in the specific tactics and more levels, should always pay attention to and face up to the enemy’s power.
Because the movie’s camera is always focused on specific battle details and characters, Snipers’ characterization results (compared to the actual ink spent) are unexpectedly good.
This aspect of the movie obviously falls on Liu Wenwu and Danyong, especially Danyong, who is also responsible for the subtle, compact but still present line of growth, his strengths are educated and gifted, but his weaknesses are not decisive enough, and prone to sentimentalism.
Although there’s not much interaction, Liu Wenwu’s regard and concern for the soldier is evident in a few scenes, admonishing him not to cry, teaching him to be quick and ruthless in critical moments, and emphasizing collective values and the will to fight when Dae-young is frustrated.
Like the fifth squad down to only three people, Dayong by the great loss and pain of injury pulled pessimism, began to recite the enemy’s ship and artillery, Liu Wenwu immediately stopped his spread of emotions, roared out “you and I in the fifth squad in the” tenacity.
Therefore, in my opinion, the “emotional” part of Snipers is very advanced, not intentional, not pretentious, but buried deep in the plot, waiting for it to appear naturally, and then seep into the hearts of the audience.
My favorite scene, which also made me cry, is the scene where Class 5 yells at Liang Liang “don’t go to sleep”. Seeing that Liang Liang, who was seriously injured, did not move, Liu Wenwu, in a moment of desperation, came up with the idea of singing the “Battle Hymn of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army”, “Majestically, with great vigor, crossing the Yalu River. To protect peace and defend the motherland is to protect the hometown. Good sons and daughters of China, united in solidarity. Resist the U.S. and aid North Korea, defeat the U.S. Empire’s ambitious wolves!” The song over and over again made Ryo react.
From a functional point of view, the purposefulness of Liu Wenwu’s 3 people singing the military song was very clear, it was to arouse Liang Liang’s consciousness, but it was under this objective circumstance where it had to be sung that the sense of honor and the high fighting spirit of the volunteer soldiers broke out fully in a way that was four or two to a thousand pounds, which was the ideal quality lyricism.
I don’t know when our mainstream movies started to pursue bigger investment, bigger scale and bigger scenes. This direction is correct, because in the past, we really couldn’t make “blockbusters”, just like “too much gas, too little steel” to overcome the problem of “too much gas, too little steel”. It’s like “more steel, more air” over “more steel, less air”, it’s also a kind of inevitable choice, who doesn’t want to have better and stronger weapons and equipment? –Now that we have the conditions, of course we have to make more movies that once only Hollywood could make.
But at the same time, we should not forget that “more gas” is the fundamental key to winning a war. Nowadays, there is more and more money for making movies, but the movies are getting harder and harder to impress people, in the final analysis, it is still slacking on the cultivation of internal strength.
Snipers” is a lesson in ‘rejuvenation’ for domestic war movies and all other blockbusters: small has its own shrewdness and concentration, and the silhouette of a leopard in a tube is as good as a big and comprehensive style, and it also has the advantage of ‘lowering the threshold of creation and viewing’. and also has the advantage of “lowering the threshold of creation and viewing”.
While Snipers still has some dramaturgical issues, it’s good enough considering its 96-minute runtime and the actual finished film.
I find myself praising Zhang Yimou every time I see one of his movies in the past two years, not that he’s back to his creative peak (which he never will be), but that he still maintains a strong desire to create and explore in his seventies, and today is the opening of the Winter Olympics, so when I think of him working back-to-back on several projects, I feel that his title of “Master of the Nation” is well deserved. The name “Master of the Nation” is really well deserved.
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