"Crazy", the birth of the domestic godfather?

At the beginning of 2023, the global TV and movie industry has a strong resurgence. Netflix released "Dark Glory" in the cross-Chinese New Year's Eve, and HBO's opening drama is "The Last of the Survivors". It can be seen that the global TV drama market is still hot.

The gratifying Chinese film and television start is also quite prosperous, including Tony Leung's "Nameless", the second part of China's first sci-fi film "The Wandering Earth", and "Manjiang Hong" led by Lao Mozi;

TV series have the weight return of "Three-Body Problem", which national and even global audiences are waiting for, and "Crazy", which everyone knows and is hot to explode.

In the world of ancient dolls, fairy tales, youth sweet dramas, or all romantic dramas, this "Crazy" is really a "crazy rush" from all aspects - the madness of service and lighting, the fury of character and shape, the madness of plot and scale, and most importantly - the acting skills of all acting schools.

Throughout the New Year, the popularity of "Crazy" in the first place in the hot search drama has not gone down, and now, at the end of "Crazy", we are still deeply trapped in the concern and complex and deep emotions of that meal that spans twenty years of Chinese New Year's Eve, and we can't come out for a long time. The editor feels that it is necessary to revisit the incomparable and wonderful points in "Crazy" with everyone.

An Xin, a front-line criminal police officer in Beijing Maritime Affairs, has been constantly hit by the umbrella in the fight against criminal and evil forces, and has never been able to bring criminals to justice. After the education and rectification of the national political and legal contingent was launched, the Linjiang Provincial Elimination Guidance Group moved to Jinghai and, together with various departments of the Public Prosecution and Legal Department, eliminated corrupt elements within the political and legal contingent, whitewashed the protective umbrella of criminal and evil forces, and eradicated in one fell swoop the powerful clique that had been entrenched in Jinghai for many years.

From the beginning of 2010, basically in the police dramas we watched in the past decade, there were very few to shape the growth and development of villains. "The Silent Truth", "Ice Rain and Fire", "In the Name of the People" and "Operation Red Sea" did not create villains, and "Crazy" is the scene of two male protagonists! The villain is still played by the literary god Zhang Songwen, and the person that director Lou Ye fancy will never go wrong.

The editor thinks that the first episode of "Crazy" is the best episode of the entire show, the poor bullied, curly hair, tattered clothes, and beaten in the Chinese New Year's Eve with a bloody nose and swollen face, although in the later stage became a gangster who covered the sky with one hand. But Zhang Songwen's wonderful interpretation in the first episode even makes people hate this criminal villain, every time I think of it, a sense of fate, irresistible fate, "life is only like the first sight", Gao Qiqiang's strong drama, humanity and tragedy surged in his heart.

In domestic dramas, we have always lacked a "godfather"-style role, he is also black and white, to achieve this high position, naturally carrying crime, human life, dishonor, cruelty and violence; However, he is not a completely evil person, and in many places, he still maintains a kind of human light, humor, kindness, and nostalgia.

We will think of the classic Corleone family, the cool and distressing old white in "Breaking Bad"; Finally, we also have our Chinese godfather, Cuong.

Scalding a roll that was popular in the 70s and 80s, fleshy and flesh, walking with a scrambling, worn-out leather coat, and a pair of sleeves, always slumping on his back, accompanied by a smiling face, selling fish at a dirty fishy fish stall. On the one hand, the arrogant and uneducated hooligans asked for living expenses, and they also had to squeeze out the money earned from selling fish to support their younger siblings.

This humble, down-to-earth, aggrieved bottom-level fish vendor is 100% restored in appearance. Cuong's acting skills also reveal a distressing sense of reality from the details everywhere: washing hands in the fish tank, including the fatalistic Chinese New Year's Eve interrogation scene:

Cuong, who has a bandage on the bridge of his nose, blood-stained toilet paper stuffed in his nose, and his hands are handcuffed, has grievances, anger, regret and unwillingness on his face. The dog's eyes that droop down, no longer young faces, but the eyes are full of clarity; Don't look at your avatar and cry unconvinced, "That TV is mine!" ”

When An Xin showed him the lunch box and told him that his younger siblings were also eating next door, he cried and ate dumplings, sad and moved;

Put your crumpled collar up, then raise your crumpled paper cup and toast, "Officer An, Happy New Year!" "A thousand words come together into one sentence, at that moment, we are crazy with Cuong in the first stage, how can we act so pitiful? Probably we are An Xin and Li Xiang, and we will all want to desperately protect this poor and aggrieved fish seller. It is also Zhang Songwen who interprets the grievances and bitterness of Ah Qiang in the first stage, making his transformation and wildness in the second stage, and the poisonous city in the third stage, which becomes a sharp contrast; Even every time we think of Da Chinese New Year's Eve, the poor fish seller in the detention center, the emotions for Cuong are greater than hatred.

I have to say that this is the advanced quality of the actor, so that the audience has a complex and plump emotion like a plump and three-dimensional person he meets in life: not only hatred for the villain, but also sympathy and pity for the bottom Cuong in the early stage; There are cheerful worries and duties to watch him become a gangster step by step; Until twenty years later, when he turned into a big man involved in the black business, we seem to really feel the passage of time in the past twenty years: our feelings for him have changed from sympathy to the cool male protagonist, and finally a sense of distance that is afraid and sighing...

Two trial scenes and handcuffed paper cups toast, the director filmed the sense of fatalism and the checks and balances of all parties in society, the helplessness of life (one wrong step and wrong step) (met in micro-time and finally parted ways) to shoot the ultimate sense, and thanks to Zhang Songwen, we harvested the gangster godfather in the domestic drama in the early spring of 2023.

Although the plot is inevitably rotten, it cannot be said that the end is rotten, and the ending is naturally difficult to satisfy. But the crew of "Crazy" is remarkable in many details. For example, the lens sense design when the sister-in-law appeared has the taste of a movie, the camera is shot from the bottom up, the backlit elevation angle lens is cleaned, and the short curly hair and red lips reveal a beautiful and shrewd and hidden taste. Several shots of the sister-in-law's appearance are from high heels to calves to shirts to trench coats and cheeks, and the camera is very well shot. A flaming red-lipped gangster sister-in-law jumped on camera.

We often say that Korean actors perform very well when eating, and the ramen sucked in Song Kang-ho's "The Defender", the white rice and instant noodles in "Han River Monster" are all exquisite interpretations of life.

And the many meals and dinner scenes in "Crazy" are also very interesting, when people are low, they eat and swallow dates for a stomach, and in the first episode, dumplings are fed directly into their mouths and eaten; And the last scene with his younger brother Asheng eating pig's foot noodles is also very in place: even if the brothers already have a large group, they eat chopsticks, suck noodle soup and eat like a grab, which still reveals the background of their bottom origin.

In the third stage, Gao Qiqiang has completely blackened into the terrifying existence of a hypocritical boss, without his sister-in-law and Xiao Sheng, he no longer needs a suit trench coat and a Chinese silk scarf to highlight his arrogance and might. Jackets, big backs, old cadre glasses, electric cars, like a retirement atmosphere within the system. However, the more careless and superficially amiable; The more he cares about human life, the more indifferent and cold-blooded.

The hot tea in the tea house, the clashing of soup in the bowl, the oily face when swallowing food, and the ripples of saliva. Cuong's fat sausage is full of brains, which is also a manifestation of externalizing desire into appetite. His greedy character, the experience of never turning back with one wrong step, makes him jealous and resentful that fate took away his lover, one of the few glimmers in his life;

Although the plunder of power and wealth satisfied his arrogance and greed, only hot soup and hot tea could fill the emptiness and madness in his heart.

The Chinese wine bureau culture and appetite as the externalization of desire, including the food culture of Guangdong, have all been reflected in the circulation of dinner tables.

This time, we see that the relationship between police and bandits is no longer a black-and-white stereotype, and the relationship between Cuong and An Xin is full of the complexity of real human emotions: sympathy for each other, rich old love, fireworks and realism of eating together. A sense of closeness in the same fate makes them have a fatalistic involvement.

Twenty years later, Cuong and An Xin looked back at the scene they saw at the dinner table, and tears rolled in the eyes of everyone who watched it:

"That's why you want to eat with me?"

"Do you want to hear the truth?"

"You say!"

"Think!" ，

From Zhang Yi, Zhang Songwen, to all supporting roles: Lao Mo, Xiao Sheng, sister-in-law, and all outstanding supporting roles, thank you for giving us a confidence in the acting school of domestic dramas in early 2023; In this early spring, we finally saw a godfather in Neiyu.