In North Korea in early 1952, it was really cold.
The first cold was in the temperature, north Korea entered the winter, the battlefield is often minus thirty degrees Celsius low temperature, so that soldiers on both sides of the war will fall into frostbite if they are not careful. Even life-threatening.
The second cold is in the war situation, and the negotiations between the warring sides have fallen into a freezing point. The U.S. military, taking advantage of its naval and air superiority, demanded that the volunteer front retreat 40 kilometers. They also frequently attacked the exchange of prisoners and had no sincerity in negotiations. But there was nothing to bring the volunteers to their knees.
The third cold is at gun muzzle, and the front line of the long confrontation has changed the shape of the war. Our army has extensively launched the "cold gun and cold artillery movement" to wear down the will of the enemy army at the least cost. Large-scale campaign offensives were replaced by squad-sized cold guns and cold guns. The contest between the two sides turned into a contest of individual skills and will to fight.
Whoever can overcome the cold, who can not be afraid of sacrifice, who can survive the long years of war!
The new film to be released on the first day of the Chinese New Year, "Sniper", directed by Zhang Yimou, reflects the history of this "cold gun and cold gun movement" and is the first film adapted from the material of the real sniper group portrait of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
Collective sniping
When the shooting plan of "Sniper" was announced in the early days, I heard that the film was not optimistic about the release of the film during the Spring Festival.
I think the reason is not difficult to understand, sniper war scenes, relatively large war scenes, relatively static, shooting is more difficult.
But Zhang Yimou, as the most experienced director in China, challenged this kind of creation. With extremely delicate expression techniques, he created a rare flesh-and-blood war movie.
Historical war films, what is the most important thing? That is naturally expensive in the word "real".
The most important thing about war movies is "real or not". This is not just about the pyrotechnic effects, but also about the detailed historical evidence. From the words and deeds of the characters and their mental outlook, to the tactical logic behind the weapons and equipment and behaviors, they all need accurate historical evidence. The war movies made in this way can be "true" enough and have a sense of substitution.
I can give a high score for "Sniper" of the old strategist. Because it shows some real tactics that other movies have not touched on.
It can be said that it has completely grasped the core characteristic of the "cold gun and cold gun movement" in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea -- collective cooperation.
In the past, there were many movies about snipers, and I searched for the word "sniper" on a certain petal, including TV series, about forty or fifty kinds. But there is a commonality, foreign movies generally like to deal with dynamic battlefields as individual heroic sniper duels. In fact, this situation is a very rare situation in real war.
Although we also vigorously publicize the "sniper god" like Zhang Taofang, the core characteristics of this movement are collective action and teamwork, otherwise it would not have been elevated by the volunteer army to a tactical means of large-scale promotion, nor could it have relied on this tactic to annihilate as many as 52,000 enemies from May 1952 to July 1953, and profoundly affected the entire course of the campaign.
So sniper-themed battles are not easy to shoot. There is no main line of the campaign, no general game, and the Korean front after the five battles is precisely in this not very "wonderful" glue state. Dark Forest-style cold guns and cold guns were the main war situations at this stage.
This is a highlight of the film's "reality": the real form of sniper warfare is fully restored, and the squad cooperates in ambush.
The US military can suppress the firepower of one squad of our army by relying on its fire superiority. During the confrontation around the 38th line, as soon as our army opened fire and the target was exposed, it would immediately attract intensive artillery fire, including attacks by deep artillery and aircraft.
So what to do? The volunteers found that it was not easy to fight alone, so we engaged in team coordination. At that time, the more common way of playing was like this:
Group operations, led by the group leader, the team of 1-2, one of whom is dedicated to observation, the shooters are hidden in the surrounding hidden positions, just shoot, each gun is divided into 2-3 fixed targets and 3 active targets. After finding the target, the observer sends a signal, the shooter immediately opens fire, and after the fight, regardless of whether the target is dead or alive, it is immediately transferred. The outcome of the battle is finalized by observers.
In addition, the selection of sniper positions, the actions after shooting, and the statistical methods of battle results all have strict standards and operational norms.
The film mainly depicts the sniper duel between two teams in China and the United States. In real history, when dealing with specific enemies that have been ambushed, it seems that sniper marksmanship has become less accurate. The two sides confronted each other for several hours, and each spent nearly a hundred rounds of ammunition to divide the victory and defeat.
In the absence of an optical sight, what was the true marksmanship of the snipers of the Volunteer Army? We may be able to get the answer from some historical data.
Taking the 42nd Army, which almost covered the whole field, as an example, the first batch of units of the Volunteer Army to enter the DPRK conducted targeted military training during the northeast period, and the hit rate of the rifle 100-meter fixed target shooting was 83.6 percent, which was only the hit rate of the target, 100 people and 83 people on the target, not the accuracy of the 9 rings and 10 rings, and the hit rate was very low. It was normal, there weren't so many bullets to feed the shooter at that time, and it couldn't be fed.
However, the overall difference does not mean that the volunteer army does not have high-precision shooting talents. According to the situation of the 1964 all-army competition, a military-level shooting champion can hit 40 targets in 40 seconds at a distance of 150 meters with a semi-automatic rifle.
So, in the stalemate phase of the Korean battlefield. The "Cold Gun Cold Gun" movement can be said to have shaped a large number of snipers of the volunteer army through actual combat. Zhang Taofang of the 24th Army killed 214 enemies with 436 rounds of ammunition in 32 days (this is the kill rate, the hit rate is higher), setting a record for the highest number of cold gun kills by the Chinese Volunteer Army on the Korean battlefield.
Therefore, the squad leader in the movie teaches the soldiers that it is always "to strike later, see the fire and fight again." On the one hand, this is because the volunteer army has limited logistical capacity and the low quota of bullets carried by individual soldiers. On the other hand, for most sniper fighters, this is also a practical lesson exchanged for blood, and it seems passive to attack later, but it is actually easier to lock on to the target, improve the hit rate and the survival rate of the warrior.
It can be said that the US military relies on bullet feeding, while the sharpshooters of our army are all shaped by solid survival experience. In our movie, the snipers of the US army are always fighting with a game mentality, while the volunteer soldiers can feel the cruelty behind the war more, and every time the trigger is pulled, there are human lives behind it.
So we need teams and collectives to ensure the survival of individuals. The film captures this trait. It portrays not the story of a single sniper hero, but focuses on the fifth sniper squad led by Liu Wenwu, which is a "group portrait". This is a very real restoration of the history of the Korean War.
After a group of people arrived at the battlefield and were attacked by the enemy, Liu Wenwu immediately issued a division of labor and cooperation orders, observation, sniping, and fire cover, all of which had a clear division of labor.
One of the plots that I was more impressed with was that In order to force the enemy to be exposed, Liu Wenwu also used a move called "catching ducks on the shelf", that is, arranging two team members to strafe the opponent's position through extremely fierce firepower, forcing the opponent to rush, letting them show their heads to return fire, and then letting the snipers who had been arranged in advance kill.
This tests the team's ability to work closely together, as well as the sniper's ability to kill quickly.
But the ingenuity of the film is that even if The man Dainaga is fighting, the film still appears in a collective image, and Dayong himself seems to be the shadow of the entire sniper fifth squad, so that the enemy also exclaims that he is a "ghost", that is, one person has completed the action of multiple people.
The film echoes the real history. Facts have proved that the effect of team sniping is indeed very obvious, and after the sniper war began, the "United Nations" army on the opposite side of the position no longer dared to be arrogant, and even did not dare to show its head, and its morale plummeted. Among them, the 45th Division of the 15th Army annihilated 5,040 enemy troops in 6 months, so the enemy called the 537.7 heights where the division was stationed "Sniper Ridge".
Lao Mozi's "Sniper", based on the "group portrait deeds", rather than simply promoting the heroism of any individual sniper, is very professional from a real historical point of view.
The reason why I say that Lao Mouzi has special respect and reverence for history this time, and has made efforts to understand this history, is here.
Mortal flesh
In fact, as long as you have seen Zhang Yimou's films in recent years, such as "One Second", "On the Cliff" and other works, you can feel a change in the Guoshi in recent years: more focus on the character story, pay attention to the delicate carving of the character's heart.
This Sniper also continues this feature! The opening scene seems to be telling the story of Liu Wenwu, the "sharpshooter", but in fact, the more core theme is the growth of a soldier named Dayong led by Liu Wenwu.
Dayong, cultured and capable, is full of young people's flesh and blood. Among the many dialect characters with mixed accents, he has become an outlier who speaks Mandarin.
The audience's first feeling for Dayong is: sensual, tear-prone young man. Then the film cleverly depicts multiple characters, multiple lines in parallel, and finally the audience suddenly realizes that It turns out that Dayong is the witness to all this! This makes the film appear more delicate, warm, and especially touching.
Some of these fighters are single sticks, some wives have just become pregnant, some are wearing gloves woven by their lovers when they die, some people want the telescope of the squad leader to "play", and some of the mother-in-law's house collapsed not long ago, and later found someone to repair it.
Of course, this is not deliberately sensational. In fact, every subsequent plot is strictly in line with military logic.
The scene in the movie is Liang Liang, who needs to save the wounded and unable to move intelligence officer in the center of the battlefield, and after the enemy sniper has blocked the battlefield, Liu Wenwu first quickly conducts a review of the previous battle. Our military has always advocated military democracy, and after clarifying the problems existing in the mission and the team, everyone began to discuss solutions together.
Sniper duels are like playing chess, and the slightest careless decision at each step will lead to the failure of the entire operation. At this time, it is more necessary to give full play to the advantages of the team as much as possible and solve the problem.
The warrior Fat Dun was strong and proposed to rescue his comrades with a very heavy armor plate. In the era of underdeveloped material technology, there were cases of using homogeneous steel as individual equipment on battlefields around the world at the same time.
But the rope tied to the armor was broken by the opponent, and the fat mound was finally shot, and the moment he fell, his bloodied mouth shouted out the name "iron plate" given to the child who was about to be born.
After unsuccessful attempts, the solution to the problem changed to shooting as many enemy forces as possible.
Squad leader Liu Wenwu has the most experience in sniping. So he asked two soldiers to drill to the side of the tunnel of the cookie------------------
This trick "luring the snake out of the hole" really worked, and after a while, the opponent shot, trying to shoot the soldier "Yang Tu" when exposing his arm outside the tunnel, as a result, he exposed half of his head just after pulling the trigger, the sniper on our side immediately returned fire, and the gun hit his eyebrow.
This plot, stimulating tension, the moment the bullet flew out and hit the target, it made people feel shocked and the impact was extremely strong.
Collective decision-making at every step always comes at the cost of life. Every step is logical, yet so lamentable.
If sniper warfare is not dependent on ordinary soldiers, it will certainly not achieve the desired effect. These warriors are not god-like beings, they have fear, love, concern, character, are mortal flesh, are small people, not born with divine power, and need to grow.
But because of this, every soldier in the movie is moved to tears at the moment of sacrifice, because I feel that they are like me, ordinary and weak, but bravely stand up and surpass the ego at the moment when the country needs it.
With the teaching of the squad leader, the sacrifice of his comrades, and the madness of the enemy army, Dayong finally plucked up the courage to be alone and completed the final task of the team.
Our audience witnessed their experiences like Dayong, and when the surviving man returned to the company to report, the company commander told him: You forgot, your squad leader didn't let you cry.
At this time, you found that this feature of the original Dayong love to cry was set up from the beginning to break the fourth wall. The object of the squad leader's roar is not Dayong, but reminds the audience in front of us: you can't cry, you have to inherit our spirit, even if you fight to the point of a soldier, you must complete your task!
The film respects ordinary individuals in war, and behind the personal feelings on the battlefield are all living human lives and families.
These living warriors are just like us, with seven passions and six desires, as well as selfish thoughts. It's just that the war has molded them into the shape of steel, and the warmth of the heart is still wrapped in it.
Instead of talking about anything soaring or grand narrative, without depicting battles or movements in a panoramic way, without turning the film into a game of generals or heroes, the film focuses on an unknown battle in which a sniper team and unknown warriors have never appeared in the annals of history. But the faces of these warriors are not blurred and facial, but vivid, flesh and blood.
There are many similar details of individual life in a war movie, which seem trivial, but it is precisely these elements that are closely related to the individual, so that the individuals in it have a temperature, not just a cold and uniform war piece. So when each of them dies, it will make you feel the pain of tearing your heart and lungs, because you can clearly perceive the loss of a life, the brokenness of a family.
Collective and individual, sacrifice and inheritance. This is my simplest summary of the film.
End
I've interviewed many veterans. They have experienced the same fierce battlefields in different eras, different wars, and different environments, and have defended our common motherland.
In my interactions with them, I had one of the biggest feelings. The real experiences that impressed me in their mouths are often not the achievements and feats in the historical materials, but the detailed descriptions of our lovely warriors by those who have experienced it.
Only film and television works that truly depict the magnificence behind the tragedy of the war and fully show the true appearance of our soldiers can be called classics.
Nowadays, there are more and more movies about the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, which is a good thing. But there are only a few who can reach this level!
In the past war movies, characters who liked to make faces would overly heroically portray the image of the warrior, making it difficult for us to contact the hot heart of the warrior.
But the praise of mankind is the praise of courage, Zhang Yimou's "Sniper", showing the courage of the volunteer soldiers, is the foundation of our victory in this war! History does not need too much carving, we only need to correctly reflect history itself, which is enough to let everyone experience the cruel face of war and the great soldiers trapped in it.
The plot direction and the delicate carving of human nature by multiple people to rescue key characters are something that many domestic audiences have never experienced before. So I would like to recommend that you go to the cinema to experience it, this emotion brings the whole characters, like facing the cold winter in North Korea, full of bloody new feelings.
They are brave and fearless, they are innocent. The movie shows this "sniper spirit"!
In "Sniper", even the American troops who are opposed to the volunteer army are characters with their own personalities and characteristics. This movie will tell you that we are not defeating a cowardly, incompetent, and inaccurate "blind" opponent, but a powerful enemy who is equal to us and brave and strategic. And what defeated them were ordinary Chinese, but they did not rely on equipment, but on a firm will and a strong heart.
Realistic, objective and professional presentation of war, this is how "Sniper" gave me feelings. It was also this movie that made me feel for the first time the meaning of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea as a "subversion of the war in human history."
A few words of netizen Juli on how to view the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea have now been widely circulated, and at the end of the article, I also copied the following:
One generation has eaten the suffering of five generations, one generation has done the work of five generations, one generation has fought the battle of five generations, and one generation has established the merits of five generations.
How many heroes have buried their bones in other places, how many youths have never returned, and how many sacrifices have not left their names. History cannot be forgotten, and only then can the motherland be forever young.
END