In 2002, with the success of "Hero" at the box office, it also promoted Chinese films into the blockbuster era, and the good market prospects also made Hong Kong filmmakers believe that "the box office potential of the mainland market will continue to grow", so 3 years later, Chen Kexin blew the horn of going north with "If • Love", and then he proved the value of his "blockbuster director" through "Submission", in order to be able to adapt to the mainland market, in February 2009, Chen Kexin, Huang Jianxin and Poly Bona's Yu Dong founded" Renren Film Co., Ltd.".
The entrepreneurial work (and the only work) of "Renren Film" is the "October Siege" released in 2009, the total investment of the film is 150 million yuan, and the filmmakers even spent 43 million yuan in the 1:1 ratio to create a 1905 Hong Kong Central Street Scene for filming at the Shanghai Shengqiang Film and Television Base, which is unprecedented.
The cast of "October Siege" is very prosperous, it is based on the Wuchang Uprising, by the British colonial rule, the haze of Hong Kong as the background of the story, telling the story of Sun Yat-sen (Zhang Hanyu) in order to plan a revolutionary uprising, decided to arrive in Hong Kong to meet with representatives from various places, the Qing court learned of the news, sent Yan Xiaoguo (Hu Jun) to come to kill, in order to protect Mr. Sun, the newspaper president Chen Shaobai (Liang Jiahui) invited the class owner (Ren Dahua) out of the mountain, but did not want the drama class to be slaughtered, he was arrested, only the class leader's daughter Qiu Hong (Li Yuchun) survived.
After the accident, Chen Shaobai's friend Li Yutang (Wang Xuexi), a wealthy merchant, decided to take up the task of escorting, and at his call, the coachman Ah Si (Xie Tingfeng), the beaten girl Qiuhong, the peddler Wang Fuming (Bartle), the gambler Shen Chongyang (Zhen Zidan), the beggar Liu Gongzi (Li Ming), and even his most reluctant son Li Chongguang (Wang Baijie) joined the action, and finally, the guards died in the confrontation with the imperial court eagle dogs, but the spark of the stars had long become a burning trend. Movies tell us that faith is priceless and worth guarding with life.
The film eventually grossed RMB 220 million (according to Lighthouse Professional Edition) in Chinese mainland, HK$16.65 million in Hong Kong and US$50.25 million in other parts of Asia, and was nominated for a number of nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards that year, and eventually won 7 awards including Best Director and Best Film.
Although the film is directly adapted from "The Brave And The Good Man" directed by Chen Kexin's father Chen Tongmin, its narrative structure and the guard plot in the later part of the film cannot be separated from the suspicion of "paying tribute" to Zhang Che's "Thirteen Taibao on the Beach". But unlike the film, "October Siege" pays more attention to every individual in the escort operation, and has more humanistic care, and the film clearly explains the personality of the little people such as gamblers, students, coachmen, and beggars through a large number of literary dramas in the first half, which also makes their final sacrifice more logical.
In order to make the character modeling in the play more able to make the audience feel a sense of substitution, it is said that the crew spent 1 million yuan to invite the makeup team of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and spent 9 hours to make up Zhang Hanyu, who played Sun Yat-sen, in addition, the scarred face, the unkempt Xie Tingfeng, and the Hu Jun who looked like "Ji Chunhua possessed", the two also had a big breakthrough in the image comparison with the previous roles.
Although the film adopts the combination of fiction and reality to show the story, some of the characters in the film have historical archetypes, in addition to Yang Quyun (Jacky Cheung), who was assassinated at the beginning of the movie, Chen Shaobai, the president of the newspaper, the main prototype of Li Yutang and Li Chongguang's father and son is Li Yutang, the owner of Hong Kong's Jinliyuan Medicinal Materials Company, and his son Li Zizhong, and Liu Gongzi, played by Li Ming, is actually Liu Yubai, the last Wu zhuangyuan of the Qing Dynasty.
The use of the combination of virtual and real techniques to create characters has two advantages, the first is to increase the sense of history, but also with the help of other virtual characters to narrow the distance between the audience and the archetypal characters, more close to and restore the real situation in history; the second is to increase the sense of tragic fatalism, convenient for actors to shape the role, so that the audience can empathize with the heroes who sacrificed. In such an era when everyone is in danger, the little people dare to dedicate themselves and sacrifice themselves for righteousness, which brings emotions and makes the logical hard wounds in the script negligible.
After "October Siege", the main theme of this all-star lineup of commercial themes seems to have become an important genre in Chinese films, and watching this film 11 years later, in addition to lamenting its first-class production standards, it is more of an admiration for the film's solid script. In 2014, under the leadership of Bona, the same story was made into a TV series of the same name by ju jueliang and Zou Jicheng, starring Zhong Hanliang and Zhang Xiaolong, which tells us that no matter what kind of themes, high-quality content can always shine. (Zhang Liyuan)