Before the release of "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath", the important prop in the film- "My Territory Listens to Me" Coffee Cup took the lead in the circle of friends.
The "cup" that the old editor is still begging for
Although the box office did not show a big explosion, the film's reputation was extremely good, and many netizens and media peers were even more generous about the film script. However, the four words "anti-Agatha" that appear repeatedly in the slogan and comments really hit the nerves of the old editor.
As a fan of "Grandma" for 20 years, the old editor only wants to respond to this argument: the reasoning of the Golden Age is not as "classical" as today's people think, and Agatha's routine is far from being easily walked out by the next generation of disciples by whitewashing. As a new product filled by reasoning aging, the success of "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" lies in the effective compliance and imitation of the classic style, but also in the appropriate carving of its connotation and technology of the times.
Today, 43 years after the death of Agatha Christie, her old people's works are still selling well around the world. As the most prestigious reasoning master of the 20th century, her status as the "grandmaster" of the world's speculative writing circle, known as "Grandma" by Chinese book fans, is difficult to shake.
Agatha Christie (15.9.1890–12.1.1976))
The director and screenwriter of "Blade Out of the Sheath" is Ryan Johnson, who took over the Star Wars series in recent years. His other identity is that of a loyal fan of Agatha Christie.
Ryan Johnson (left) on the set of Blade Out of the Sheath
If you look at the elements that make up the film's reasoning process, "Blade Out of the Sheath" is undoubtedly Johnson's gorgeous tribute to his idol.
The luxurious and mysterious suburban villas, the deformed families with ghost fetuses, and the bloody murders in the plot of inheritance completely restore the typical background elements in classic works such as "The Strange Case of Stiles Manor", "Strange House", "Poirot Christmas Detective" and so on. In terms of direct crime methods, poison and dagger, the two grandmothers, are the most "conspiratorial" to sacrifice. Even Fran, the "sharp-eyed" maid who tries to "blackmail" the suspect halfway through, is a tragic version of the greedy maid Louis in "Massacre on the Nile".
Guess what role the "AMERICAN TEAM" played in the crime?
From a certain point of view, the actors in the film seem to be distributed by the director with the "script kill" instruction written by Grandma's soul. Most notably, detective Blank, played by "007" Daniel Craig. The French etymology of the name with the accent of the "red neck area" in the southern United States, the humility and courtesy of the inadvertent arrogance, all make him like a funny variant of the great detective Poirot.
Netizens summarized the "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" character relationship diagram
The example of the "anti-Agatha" argument lies in the film's early disclosure of the "God's perspective" of the "crime" process and several reversals of the question of "who is the murderer". In fact, the amazement of these settings is nothing more than the fact that it is rare and strange to understand the richness and pioneering nature of Grandma's works.
As early as the beginning of Agatha's reasoning writing, she had created a strange book narrated from the first perspective of the murderer (please explore which ones yourself). As for the several changes of the suspected murderer in the process of investigation, even the completely "impossible" transformation, it is a special skill that Grandma has played with for a lifetime. If you've seen the famous "Massacre on the Nile" and been teased by the "witness"-style crime scene, you won't be surprised by Johnson's work.
On reasoning alone, "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath", which can only be regarded as an old wine and a new drink, has not brought too much of the pleasure of exploration to speculative fans. The fierce suspect that everyone loves is actually exposed in the middle of the film. Detective Blank's key to solving the problem is just Sherlock Holmesian sharp-eyed observation.
Daniel Craig as Inspector Blank
However, like Sherlock on the Plains, which was released at the same time, even if the reasoning is weak, "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" still succeeds in form and style.
Adaptations of speculative fiction are often not easy. Ryan Johnson also borrowed the choice of the film's victim, the mystery writer Harlan Slomby, to complain: for the film and television adaptation, the mystery writer chose to refuse. Agatha Christie, whose work has been adapted countless times, preferred to write the script directly for the film project during her lifetime, and the script of the masterpiece "Prosecution Witness" was originally customized by Grandma. Compared with words, she is also more inclined to strongly dramatic expression for the reasoning presentation of stereoscopic visualization.
Prosecution Witness (1957)
The theatrical concept of the grandmother of the "stealing master", from the opening font to the group drama lineup, fully implements the classic mode of the 70s film version of "Murder on the Orient Express" and other adaptations of detective films, and the image style of "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" is polished extremely delicately under the appropriate poisonous tongue humor. The exaggerated skill of the key figure Marta to "vomit as soon as she lies" has become the key to the cult that leads to all clues.
Marta, in a dangerous bullseye
What fills the aura for this refinement is also the exploration of class differences inherited from grandma - under the examination of the American concept of race, its exploration is also more effective. The final "winner" of the film's legacy is Marta, an undocumented caregiver who is the descendant of illegal immigrants in South America. Except for the murdered old man, no one in the entire cold family cared about her in the true sense of the word, and even after the first second of booing and greeting, he immediately and continuously emphasized the wrong guess of her racial nationality in the next second.
Such moral irony is probably more able to restore the class humanistic feelings that Agatha is also concerned with in a new way than reasoning.
In the view of Jin Yuxuan, a teacher at the Communication University of China who will be a guest of "Today's Film Review" tonight, although "Sharp Blade Out of the Sheath" is good-looking, there is still a certain "threshold" for ordinary audiences. As a grandma fan, it is naturally difficult to ignore Ryan Johnson's highly integrated Agatha's creative essence; such a high-quality detective work of "old wine and new clothes", if it can really put more viewers into the genre "threshold", I am afraid that it is also continuing the glory of the reasoning kingdom established by the former grandma.