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Since March 26, 2015, an international coalition of Saudi Arabia and Gulf states including Egypt, Jordan and Sudan has launched a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen, and the situation on the ground has suddenly become tense. On March 29, the Chinese Navy escort frigate Linyi arrived at the port of Aden, Yemen. With the active cooperation of the Chinese Consulate General in Aden, the Linyi ship evacuated the first batch of 122 Chinese citizens in Yemen, including 7 women and 1 child. In addition, 2 foreign experts hired by Chinese companies from Egypt and Romania were evacuated with the ship. After nearly 8 hours of high-speed ferrying, the Linyi ship crossed the Gulf of Aden and successfully arrived at the port of Djibouti in the Republic of Djibouti in eastern Africa, and 124 people were properly resettled by the Chinese Embassy in Djibouti.
On March 30, a second group of more than 400 people left the port of Hodeida in Yemen aboard the Chinese Navy's Weifang warship. At this point, all the Chinese personnel who need to be evacuated have withdrawn from Yemen.
"Operation Red Sea" is not only a "blockbuster" that debuted strongly in the Spring Festival file in 2018, but also another gorgeous bloom of Chinese military-themed films after "Wolf Warrior II" (2017). The film grossed more than 3.6 billion yuan, is extremely mature in commercial operation, and has received many praises. Chinese audiences no longer have to worship Hollywood films of the same type such as "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) and "Black Hawk Down" (2001), but can face each other's length and feel proud, realizing that China can also create exciting scenes, realistic special effects, compact plots, suspenseful, and touching themes. In this sense, "Operation Red Sea" not only proves the ability of Chinese films to create and produce, but also becomes a representative work of Chinese war films around the world.
The narrative line of "Operation Red Sea" is clear and unambiguous, and the biggest challenge of the film is how to set up various gripping "obstacles" for the evacuation process of the commandos, so that the task of evacuating overseas Chinese becomes thrilling, giving the audience a strong audiovisual stimulation and emotional shock. The film is "full of weight" in terms of the setting of "obstacles", and a series of questions ensued, creating a tense suspense and a suffocating atmosphere for the audience.
Obviously, in this narrative chain with action as the main line, there is little room for private feelings and private motivations to play. In order to avoid the tendency of the characters to be "hollowed out", the Dragon Commando team is limited to 8 people, and strives to make the audience remember the duties, division of labor, names and personalities of the 8 people. Of course, with about 100 minutes of the film's 138 minutes at war, it's impossible for viewers to know every character, or even the name. This may be a universal challenge to the group portrait narrative in war movies: in order to show the fierce battle scenes, it generally needs a certain number of people, and the number of people is large, which is bound to increase the number of literary dramas accordingly, which will cause problems such as narrative delay, blurred character images, and weak ornamentation.
Operation Red Sea responded by focusing on portraying their fighting qualities, their wisdom and courage in the test of blood and fire, and the spirit of mutual cooperation and sacrifice. At the same time, the film also makes the characters face multiple dilemmas in the process of fighting, which is not only a weapon for portraying the characters, but also a necessary condition for the film to be touching. Because, the audience doesn't want to see every choice of the characters made easy, without thinking. Allowing commandos to face life and death choices, moral dilemmas, and the collision between responsibility and emotion is an excellent choice to show the character's personality, and it is also a smooth way for the audience to enter the character's heart.
The Jiaolong Commando team led by Captain Yang Rui, if it is only to complete the task of evacuating overseas Chinese, then the film can end in about 1 hour. In order to mobilize the audience's adrenaline with intensive bombing and fierce gun battles, the film not only needs to extend the story, but also needs to continuously increase the target of the protagonist. After successfully completing the task of evacuating overseas Chinese, Yang Rui received another task: another Chinese citizen, Deng Mei, was kidnapped by terrorists and must be rescued. In order to save a person, after many hardships and hardships to brave the terrorist base camp, so that the film not only has action, gun battles, explosions, but also emotional temperature.
After Yang Rui and his party arrived in the town where Deng Mei was imprisoned, they faced a dilemma, whether to rescue Deng Mei only or to rescue all the hostages by the way? You know, they are facing an 8-man battle against 150 people, not only have no chance of winning, but they are not their mission goals. After Xia Nan poured out her hatred for terrorists, Yang Rui faced a contradiction between reason and emotion. In the film, Chinese soldiers not only have an iron will and excellent combat ability, but also have a deep sense of humanity and broad humanitarian feelings.
After rescuing all the hostages but being ambushed by terrorists, Yang Rui and the three commandos with full combat capability once again faced a dilemma: After the task assigned by their superiors had been completed, should they continue to track down the whereabouts of the nuclear materials that could make "dirty bombs"? When the four men decided to take the risk of pursuing with fearless spirit and magnificent spirit of responsibility, they further demonstrated the bravery and fearlessness of the Chinese soldiers, who could win the battle and were full of humanity.
Operation Red Sea begins with a difficult evacuation mission, but the film continues to extend beyond this original goal. The reason why the film can make this process natural and smooth, not only because the film uses nearly 100 minutes of action and explosion scenes to support the plot line, but also because the film constantly sets dilemmas and emotional stimulation points for the characters, so that the choice of characters has a more convincing emotional logic.
In addition, "Operation Red Sea" also arranges humane character interaction between battles or during battles, which effectively adjusts the rhythm and atmosphere of the film, while making the characters more recognizable. For example, Yang Rui and Xia Nan went from being estranged from each other to mutual understanding, and even had a vague affection; between Tong Li and Shi Li from subtle ambiguity to emotional bursts; between Li Zhi and Gu Shun from estrangement to mutual appreciation... This is the so-called character "arc" in the film screenwriter, that is, the change that occurs in the character. The plot development of the film is accompanied by the changes in the psychological activities of the characters, so as to better reflect the movement characteristics of the film and increase the emotional identity of the audience. When the audience and the characters have an emotional overlap, the emotions of the characters can touch the audience's emotional strings, and the choices of the characters can resonate with the audience.
"Red Sea Action" stirs up the masculine atmosphere of blood, and its group portrait narrative makes the narrative logic more solid, and the scene and detail processing are more impactful. It enables the audience to truly witness the profound humanitarian feelings and tenacious will to fight in the baptism of blood and fire, the contest of courage and wisdom.
The ultimate purpose of war films is not to make people yearn for war, let alone to romanticize war, but to make the audience yearn for peace after realizing the cruelty of war, and to be deeply inspired by the heroes in war and their touching behavior. In Operation Red Sea, although the Dragon Commandos are extremely brave and invincible, they are not omnipotent, they will also encounter desperate situations, and they will suffer wounds and deaths in war. Therefore, although the battle in the film is wonderful, it will never make people yearn for war, on the contrary, we will condemn the madness and cruelty of terrorists, and at the same time be moved by the protection of the Chinese soldiers for the people, the defense of national dignity, and the protection of world peace.
As an important genre of Chinese films, war films are not only witnesses and witnesses to the development of Chinese films, but also promoters and changers of the development of Chinese films. In the future, the combination of art and commerce provides an important direction for the development of Chinese war films, and this "cinematization" does not refer to the blind pursuit of special effects, but to the essence of film, the return to the creation law of film screenwriters, and the pursuit of artistic appeal. In this sense, "Operation Red Sea" is a well-deserved leader in Chinese war films.
In order to greet the centennial birthday of the Party, the Shanghai International Film Festival officially launched the special plan of "Paying Tribute to the Centenary - Telling the History of the Party with Movies and Recalling 1921", taking the time clue as the main context, selecting 21 main theme films that can reflect the major events, important achievements and key historical scenes in the history of the Party in the past century, and reliving the glorious history created by the CPC leading the masses of the people from 1921 to the present through film criticism and guided tours, showing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. "Tribute to the Centenary - Using Film to Tell the History of the Party and Reminiscing about 1921" is jointly planned by the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Film Art Research Center of the Shanghai Theater Academy, and specially invited to write by the Film Art Research Center of Fudan University.