Last month, director Zhang Yimou turned 71 years old.
Over the years, Lao Mouzi has constantly tried to take off the label of "director of literary and art films". "On the Cliff" is his first spy war movie, released for ten days, the current total box office has reached 65 million, the film focuses on spy war actions, but in the play, the ice and snow in the northeast, Xiao Kill solemn, this is still very Zhang Yimou.
As China's "fifth generation director", Zhang Yimou may have a hard time becoming someone like Christopher Nolan, but —
Your uncle or your uncle.
12 years ago, Zhang Yimou's other "first" was released, which was the first Chinese New Year comedy he directed, which, in his words, should be called "comedy farce".
"Three Guns Shooting Surprise" has a movie poster with a "net big" texture, colorful costumes and film composition, starring the popular "two-person turn" actor, adapted from the Coen brothers' 1984 "Blood Labyrinth".
It can be said that "Three Guns" is a suspense movie cloaked in comedy: Xiao Shenyang, Yan Ni, Sun Honglei, Ni Dahong, and Zhao Benshan, who came to make cameos, such a lineup injects more expectations into the audience.
In fact, when Zhang Yimou bought the copyright of "Blood Labyrinth", he really wanted to make a serious movie, but the producer Zhang Weiping insisted on using Xiao Shenyang, which had just become popular all over the country with "Not Bad Money", and Lao Mozi also understood that if he joined, the tone of the film would definitely have to "deviate".
I always wonder, how do the Coen brothers like me to adapt? Is it faithful to the original or is it completely sea and sky? I think it's the latter. The joining (of Xiao Shenyang and others) completely changed my original thinking, and the sense of alienation and coldness of "Blood Labyrinth" did not need to persist.
Out of this consideration, lao Mozi simply sank to the bottom line, not only boldly used Xiao Shenyang, but also found Zhao Benshan, Cheng Ye, Ya Egg, and even Zhao Benshan's royal screenwriter Xu Zhengchao, and completely played.
After "The City With The Golden Armor" after two years, Zhang Yimou chose to return to the big screen with such a position, which is called a riot.
But in the end, the "three guns" were exchanged for "vulgarity", "boring", "extended version of the sketch", and a bad review of 4.7 points, reduced to "bad film".
"Three Guns" is adapted from "Blood Labyrinth".
The story structure of "Blood Labyrinth" is simple, with its black tone and steady narrative skills, which has become the unique video style of the Coen brothers. The downside is that the black and cold tone that now seems to be full of forced is slightly dull for audiences in the 1980s.
In contrast, Zhang Yimou's secondary creation is indeed a complete subversion.
Let's start with The Labyrinth of Blood.
It tells the story of a bar lady who cheats and hires a private investigator to kill the man and woman. After the incident, the detective returned to the bar to find the boss to get money, but unexpectedly, the detective shot the boss to death, which triggered a series of absurd events.
The film opens in a dark way. A man and a woman talk in the carriage at night, and the woman keeps complaining about how bad her husband is; the man drives while acting as a "talk therapist" and listening to the woman's complaints. The car drove to the motel, and at dawn, I saw two people sleeping in the same bed.
At the beginning of the film, two scenes and dialogue are used to bring out the relationship between the characters.
In "The Surprise of the Three Guns Shooting", it is used as a Persian businessman playing a big knife as the opening scene, and then through the dialogue between Li Si and the boss lady played by Xiao Shenyang, and several scenes such as Zhao Benshan's live "catching adultery", the underground love between Li Si and the boss lady is confirmed. During this period, buying guns, awkward dances, firing cannons, and the characters' straight-forward dialogue have gradually made the audience better.
"Blood Labyrinth" then goes to the bar, where the detective brings the "ironclad evidence" of the boss lady's cheating, and the boss knows it. The next day, the boss suddenly appeared at the man's house, violently abused his wife, but ate the other party's "root leg" and fled.
The lover was not involved in the whole process, and after the conflict was over, he appeared very manly, showing his love in a high profile, as if he was declaring territory, as if the one who had just been beaten away was "Little Three".
In the "three guns", it was Zhang San, a patrol member played by Sun Honglei, who took the boss to the hillside to personally catch the adulteress, and the boss lady was also beaten, the difference is that in the end, the boss was scared away by the gun. In the process, Li Si did not shoot, but after the boss was scared away and the boss lady suspected him of being a nest, Li Si symbolically scolded the street at the boss's back and forcibly set up a person.
In "Blood Labyrinth", the boss is angry and finds a detective, pays him to kill his mouth, and wants to "deal with it".
The next day, the detective returns to the bar and still uses the photo to prove to the boss that the mission has been completed, but the photo is processed to convince the boss that the man and woman have really been killed. After the reward arrived, the detective suddenly raised his hand and shot, and the boss did not even have a chance to struggle.
The detective just left on the front foot, and the man came to the bar on the back foot, trying to communicate with the boss about the emotional problem, but unexpectedly found that the other party was cold. In the spirit of his promise to take his lover away and fly away, the man cleaned up the scene, put the pistol that the detective left at the scene into the boss's pocket, and then carried his body to the car and pulled it to the field to be buried. Who knew that the boss was not dead, squirming in the pit to survive, and took out the pistol from his pocket.
Unfortunately, there were no bullets in the gun.
The man withdrew the gun from his boss and began to shovel the soil like crazy. The buried body became buried alive, the dirt slowly became thick, and the boss who was dying made a desperate cry in the soil, but it was soon covered by the dirt.
In this scene, the seemingly stable and powerful man is gradually crushed by the psychological burden; the process of burying the body is even more frightening.
The "Three Guns" handled this scene much more frantically, and Li Si showed the timidity and fear of the characters. In the scene where the body is buried, the gun in the hands of the boss of "Blood Labyrinth" has no bullets, but in Li Si's hands, it fires the second shot of "three shots" and completely sends the boss away.
In general, the story of "Blood Labyrinth" is simple, the atmosphere is cold, and the characters are deep; and the story of "Three Guns Shooting Surprise" draws on the traditional drama "Three Forks", condenses the dramatic conflict into the noodle restaurant, and repositions the plot structure, using actors such as Xiao Shenyang, Cheng Ye and Ya Egg, which make the film have joy and drama on the basis of suspense, not to mention Zhang Yimou's always favorite visual characteristics, using many large panoramas to show the bright Danxia landform.
Tasting, the multi-element "Three Guns Shooting Surprise" is still watchable, at least it is not as dull as "Blood Labyrinth", but the disadvantage is that Sun Honglei's character is paralyzed and not slippery enough.