This may be the type that Chinese audiences most want to see during the festival.
Spring Festival Film Review Series 5 "This Killer Is Not Calm"
Even if there is a box office miracle created by "Hello, Li Huanying" last year, this year's Spring Festival comedies are still rare, and only "This Killer Is Not Calm" in the 8 new films can be regarded as comedies, and it is not surprising that the "box office counterattack" was achieved on the second day of the Chinese New Year, which may be the type that Chinese audiences most want to see during the festival.
An attempt to localize Magic Hour
Unlike films with comedic elements such as "Four Seas" and "Miracle Stupid Child", "This Killer Is Not Calm" is a "real comedy". Although the title of the film is still the usual "harmonic terrier" of happy twist, in fact, from the whole idea to the way of performance, the relationship between the characters and the dramatic conflict, the film is built on the most classic comedy design "identity dislocation", rather than the way of laughing that only relies on the creaking of the paragraph.
Of course, most of this credit belongs to the original film, Japanese director Yuki Mitani's masterpiece "Magic Moment", its core "dragon set actors play the top killer" setting is completely inherited, as the "energy source" of comedy, at any time with the performer's virtual reality intertextual, forming one after another size climax.
The main creative team has also done enough localization for Chinese audiences, weakening the black humor in the original version and the tribute scene involving early Japanese films, and excavating more original elements from gangster genre films and male protagonists themselves to enrich "Wei Chenggong", a "male number one" that integrates comedy and tragedy, which is in addition to classical comedy skills, there is more sadness and sympathy for the pursuit of "movie dreams".
In a studio-like "thirties" town, find a dragon set actor to play "Killer Carl" and scare gangster Harvey, which is the "magic trick" of actress Milan and director Miller. However, this lucky (and unfortunate) teacher Wei Chenggong is a veritable "drama idiot", seizing an opportunity to add drama to himself, and from time to time to come to a "inner monologue", this tireless "actor's self-cultivation", people can't help but think of Zhou Xingchi's "King of Comedy".
From meeting Harvey to negotiations with the Italian gangsters, and then to the café rehearsals and gambling table assassinations, the characters are born in the constant "drama" and "into the play", and the harmonic sounds of "Karl" and "Cut" are also cleverly used in the plot connection, and there are several scenes that are brought out separately, which is also a good stage sketch. The audience's interest is to watch the characters fall into this predicament without knowing it, seeing that they are about to wear help, but they can turn the peak circuit into a dangerous disaster.
The simple teacher Wei is like a "fool", addicted to his own stage world, completely unaware that he is "fake drama really doing"; and Harvey, Jimmy and the helpers are in a confused "real drama fake", only the Mi family brothers and sisters desperately cover him up, round the field, the embarrassment, it is unbearable. The multiple rounds of nesting outside the play in this kind of play are indeed very "magical", and if the scheduling and clues are not well operated, it will appear chaotic, fortunately, Mitani Yuki's script is solid enough, and it does not lose its direction because of Wei Xiang's antics, and the round table play translating Italian is handled quite wonderfully, quite a bit of Quentin Tarantino's flavor.
Wei Xiang's success and Ma Li's sluggishness
In the words of the current fashion, "This Killer Is Not Calm" is also a deconstruction of the "meta-movie", starting from the first miniature model-like panorama to the blue screen after the finale of the last "play within a play", and the whole movie does not deny its own "stage". In the overhead dream factory of this era, instead of pursuing the realism of life, but deliberately retaining the kind of "fake" on the set, whether it is a room, a street or the entire peninsula is like a set, but Wei Chenggong does not care at all, he seamlessly stitches into his own improvisation, and makes classic bridges such as "The Godfather" and "Song in the Rain" into it, which is inevitably embarrassing to rest on others, but placed on his body... Who's going to fight a fool?
And Wei Xiang's own real experience coincided with this "first time as a male protagonist" Teacher Wei, seeing that he finally held a flower in the Easter egg, incoherent, it is inevitable that he will have more feelings about the sentence "there are no small actors, only small roles".
However, compared with Wei Xiang's excellent personal play and details speculation, Ma Li's performance is somewhat sluggish and instrumental, and the emotional scene of "seeing her parents", although designed to highlight the change in her understanding of Wei Chenggong, is somewhat blunt and abrupt in rhythm and expression, and the appearance of the two parents is also incompatible with the background of the entire film "DreamWorks".
However, Zhou Dayong, who plays Jimmy, makes people's eyes light up, interpreting a treacherous and cunning, but also intelligent online "two bosses" into three points, it is precisely because he halfway through Ma Li's "brilliant plan" that this farce seems less childish, and finally the climactic scene in the church and the dock can return to the "functionality" of the movie, which can also be regarded as an idealized tribute to this ancient art by the fan generation.
The overall score of this journal: ★★★