I don't know when I mentioned Hong Kong movies, and I always had those familiar titles in my mind——
"XX War", "XX Madness", "XX Storm", "XX Empire" .....
The starring actors are also the big heads of those familiar actors.
Headed by Koo Tianle, Zhang Jiahui, Wu Zhenyu, Ren Dahua, Lin Jiadong, Zhang Zhilin as auxiliaries, Andy Lau, Liu Qingyun, Donnie Yen occasionally bubbled.
And the plot is inseparable from the three-board axe:
Cops, undercover, da-da-da.
This year, I finally have a new face, and coming two at a time is a 2x2 quadruple enjoyment.
Tony Leung + Aaron Kwok.
However, it is also inseparable from the fate of Hong Kong films, and as the movies are released one by one, bad reviews also hit wave after wave.
At the beginning of the year, Tony Leung's "Nameless" was shockingly released.
After 5 years of returning to the big screen, but just came out, it encountered a word-of-mouth crisis, polarized evaluations, and because of the public opinion that comes with a certain fresh meat, there are a basket of troubles in and out of the play.
Immediately afterwards, Tony Leung's partner Kwok Fucheng's "When the Wind Rises Again" was released.
Two kings compete for supremacy, which is also the work of Kwok Fucheng after a two-year absence after "The Secret Visitor".
But the movie is still focusing on the old tune of the four detectives, coupled with the literary and artistic treatment of Weng Zi's lightsaber, the movie's word-of-mouth box office has hit the street.
As a movie of Tony Leung + Kwok Fucheng, it only won 48 million box office and ended dismally.
After Tony Leung withdrew, Kwok Fucheng took the baton again.
On March 3, the crime suspense film "Broken Network" starring Kwok Fucheng was released.
For this film, the entire crew did their best, not only to open a roadshow in the country, as a purebred Hong Kong film, "Broken Network" has high hopes for the mainland market, and the release time is even six days earlier than that of Hong Kong.
But mainland audiences apparently didn't buy it.
"Disconnected" only won 12.16 million box office on its premiere day, and on the third day it was overtaken by "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer", which was also a Hong Kong film, which had been in theaters for 10 days at the time.
As of press time, "Disconnected" has been released for 5 days, and the cumulative box office has finally exceeded the 5,000 mark, but the predicted box office is only 75.47 million.
According to Hong Kong media reports, the total investment of "Broken Network" is as high as 250 million, although there is a suspicion of Wang Po selling melons, but the salary of the three major actors plus a large number of special effects design in the movie, at least half, that is, 125 million.
Even if 125 million is used to settle, "Broken Network" predicts that the total box office in the mainland will be 75 million, and the box office will be divided into 36%, that is, 27 million.
This amount of money is not even a fraction, let alone the Hong Kong market.
Therefore, even if the final results of "Disconnected" have not yet been revealed, the argument that "Disconnected" has long surfaced.
It should be known that compared with the previous Hong Kong police and bandit films, "Broken Network" is an innovative focus on "information warfare", breaking out of the shackles of police and bandit routines, and there should be selling points.
But why did you still take the old road of a three-day tour of the theater?
Without further ado, let's talk directly about this "Broken Network".
A Hong Kong-style three-board axe draped in sci-fi skin
Cheuk Ka Chun (played by Kwok Fu Shing) is a network security expert operator who works for the "Tianji" security company.
On this day, Hong Kong's Wansheng Bank was hacked, all equipment crashed, even ATMs became a string of garbled characters, and the entire banking system was completely paralyzed.
Wansheng Bank immediately contacted Tianji Company and released permissions to patch the vulnerability.
After getting the permission, all the employees of Tianji quickly dealt with it.
However, just when they were in a mess, Van der Fud's manager "Huang Debin" who was nesting in the office hid the sky and colluded with hackers to break into the banking system, laundering 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollars.
It turned out that Tianji seemed to be a network security company, but it was actually a tool for laundering money for a certain big man.
The manager stole himself, sent someone to attack the bank with his left hand, and immediately laundered money after the right hand deceived the authority, and when the system was repaired, he flicked his clothes and fought left and right.
However, Vanderford was greedy in the transaction and privately laundered another 500 million.
The 500 million was not in the plan, the big boss was very angry, let the company's CEO "Chen Mingzhi" (Lin Jiadong) design to kill, and immediately targeted the next scapegoat,
Zhuo Jiajun.
Zhuo Jiajun's daughter fell ill and the family was in debt, because he wanted to send her to an aristocratic school, he had to accept 800,000 yuan from the company.
After eating the sugar-coated shells, Zhuo Jiajun discovered that the president Chen Mingzhi was laundering money, and then in order to clear his suspicions, he took the initiative to help the police deal with Chen Mingzhi.
And Chen Mingzhi secretly grabbed Zhuo Jiajun's daughter to blackmail, and the war between the two sides was about to break out...
From the above plot outline, if you shave the keywords "network security", "banking authority", and "hacker money laundering" except -
This is still a mass-produced police and bandit film full of routines.
The company leader secretly laundered money, ordinary employees jumped into the trap for their daughter, and after the conscience found that he broke with the villain, and the police constantly intensified the conflict between the two.
In the end, the villain kidnaps his daughter, and everyone runs to the port Armageddon, crackling and setting off fireworks to end.
I'm about to memorize this plot.
It seems to be a new theme in the online world, but it is still the three-board axe of Hong Kong films, and it still does not break out of the templated plot design.
Every character, every plot, every reversal is familiar, and even at the end when the villain has nothing to do, a sentence immediately pops up in my head:
"It's time for the protagonist's daughter to be kidnapped."
Then, Lin Jiadong, as I instructed, obeyed the order to kidnap Kwok Fucheng's daughter.
It's boring.
In addition to these lackluster plots, the overall logic of "Disconnection" is full of holes, and the motives of each character alone are incomprehensible.
For example, the protagonist Zhuo Jiajun.
It is clear that he is a good person who has changed his heart, and after accepting the gift from the company, he found that his boss had laundered money and immediately turned against him, which I understand.
But when the police find you, you tell the police everything you know, and you're not done with your suspicions?
Why do you have to take the initiative to take down the villain, is it just to make the plot look better?
Also, when Zhuo Jiajun's daughter was kidnapped, he pretended to help the villain, but in fact sneaked into the system to find out his daughter's location and sent the location to his wife.
At this time, Zhuo Jiajun has already found his daughter, and his wife is obviously in danger to rescue alone, shouldn't he sneak away immediately to find his daughter?
Why do you want to stick to the end in the company and help the police find evidence of the villain's crime?
Is it just to make the plot look better?
Then there is the policeman played by Ren Dahua.
This is really the most useless and instrumental cop role I've seen in recent years!
In the opening scene, the bank was attacked for 5 minutes, and then the manager Van der Fook was killed, and then Cheuk Ka Chun personally called the villain to launder money, and then got off the Trojan horse and cracked the system, and finally the whole of Hong Kong was disconnected.
This group of police officers only drinks coffee in the office??!!
Either check the account of the deceased, or check the relatives of the deceased, just after checking the deceased, receive a box lunch, and then check the next person.
I looked around and didn't do anything.
In the first 2/3 of the entire movie, they were just sitting in the office, crackling in front of the camera and not knowing what to press, and there was no plot advancement at all.
One moment said that Zhuo Jiajun's crime was unforgivable, and he wanted to inform the whole Hong Kong to arrest him, and the next time he asked for help in private, and Brother Jia Jun can't do it without you.
There is no logic at all!
I don't understand any technology, I can't get into any system, and I have to help Zhuo Jiajun even put a positioning, and finally I simply hold up the phone and wait for Zhuo Jiajun to instruct.
Big brother, are the Internet police in Hong Kong so idle?
No wonder it's all dealers dealing cards online.
"Broken Network" Douban 5.2 points
"Disconnected" only has 5.2 points, which is still the result of just 5 days of release, if nothing else, the chance of falling to 4 points in the future is very large.
Of course, the reason why people are confused is probably related to the shelving of these two years.
"Disconnection", formerly known as "24 Hours of Disconnection", was started as early as June 2020, finished four months later, and got the dragon mark in 2021, and now it has been shelved for 3 years before it is released.
Obviously, the film has undergone a lot of changes, even to the point where the logic is inconsistent.
The protagonist, Zhuo Jiajun, must have some more serious reasons, which led to him having to be used by the police, even if he fought against the entire company, he also had to help the police get the criminal evidence of the villain.
After all, Cheuk Ka Chun has paved a layer of criminal experience in terms of character shaping, which will inevitably be infinitely amplified for efficient Hong Kong screenwriters, so as to realize the sinking and redemption of the character, and can also echo the "dark web" part at the end.
Of course, it is not that "Disconnection" is useless, and after making psychological preparations for an "ordinary Hong Kong film", the viewing process is still acceptable.
In addition, the movie uses a large number of special effects to visualize the hacking scene, personifying every system, every operation, and even every string of data.
Let people who do not know computers fully understand, which can also be regarded as an innovation in Chinese films.
But then again, although this is an innovation in Chinese films, the operation of "information warfare embodiment" is not uncommon in the entire film industry.
The 2014 German film "Who I Am: There Is No Absolutely Secure System" has long been shown, and "Ready Player One" simply filmed the concept of "meta-universe" in advance.
Now to use this as a selling point, it is inevitably too pediatric.
It's not that Kwok Fucheng can't bring the box office, but Hong Kong movies haven't come out yet
Kwok Fucheng was 55 years old when he made this movie, as a half-hundred-year-old man, in addition to contributing absolutely online acting skills, Kwok Fucheng also challenged a large number of action scenes.
In addition to the regular car chase and gunfight scenes, Kwok Fucheng also has an action scene focused on an art building in the square.
The building is made of steel pipes, and Kwok Fucheng climbs up and down, flashes and moves under the blow of two people, not only in direct physical conflicts, but also in falling from heights, coupled with fragile glass, which is very dangerous.
After filming this scene, Kwok Fucheng said that he needed to carry his thighs when he got into the car.
Kwok Fucheng's previous "Secret Visitor" and "Journey to the West Series" have both had good box office, not to mention that "Chill" and "Matchless" have broken many records in the mainland.
Aaron Kwok did his best.
It's not that Kwok Fucheng can't bring the box office, but Hong Kong movies haven't come out yet.
In recent years, a strange phenomenon has occurred in Korean movies.
A large number of top stars are reluctant to shoot in their home countries, preferring to develop overseas.
Taking Netflix as an example, they prefer to go to Netflix to participate in online dramas than shooting big movies in their home countries.
A large number of resources were siphoned off, which made it difficult for local films.
Director Yoon Ji-kyun, who once made "International Market", said that South Korean films have reached a dead end, and film company investors will only take 20%-30% of the investment, and the rest is composed of crowdfunding.
There was no one and no money, which led to slow film projects and the collapse of the industrial system overnight.
Last year, the entire Korean film market made a profit of only 8 films.
"The Crisis of the Demise of the Korean Shadow" - the media wrote.
Korean movies have come to this point because of "pandering output".
In recent years, Han Ying seems to have developed rapidly, and works such as "Squid Game" and "Parasite" have fully blossomed, completely opening up the national market, but behind it is full of devastation.
Because of excessive catering to the tastes of Westerners, Korean movies are now almost all non-nutrient plasma films such as "witch", "torture", and "shootout", while keywords such as ethics, revenge, and era trauma that were previously only understood by Easterners have disappeared.
Korean films, seemingly going to the world, were actually completely kidnapped by the false prosperity of the West, and their aesthetics were completely locked.
A rotten steamed bun has completely crushed the foundation of Korean films for decades.
And the same "pandering output" is also on Hong Kong.
After 2000, Hong Kong films relied on the mainland market, and after several rounds of experiments, they slowly explored several keywords:
Cops, undercover, brothers, shootouts, big bangs ....
Jackie Chan once said: Hong Kong filmmakers are eager to achieve quick results, and they will rush to shoot whatever is popular. And this is also intuitively reflected in the current Hong Kong films.
Open the Hong Kong movies in recent years, except for undercover agents are spies, in addition to police and bandits are brothers, almost every movie has to break up brothers, almost every movie has to go to Thailand to buy powder....
The same plot, coupled with several resident actors, many times after watching it will produce memory disorders -
Have I seen it? I've seen it, right? Eh, how is this plot so familiar.
Now the impression of Hong Kong movies to me is like throwing all the materials and actors into a box, catching as many as they get, and then arranging and combining them according to keywords and actors, and shooting in a few months.
Take the name XX War, XX Empire, XX Walker, XX Storm.....
Of course, I miss the lost struggle of "Infernal Affairs", the deceit of "Chill", and the shocking reversal of "Matchless".
But what I miss more is the era when "everything went overboard, all madness" was overboard.
A script sells tens of millions in a few minutes, and a movie opens an era, which is not only the richness of the market, but also the surging originality of the creator.
And what we really like is that no matter how difficult the environment, they can always shoot new tricks.
But now, I can't find it anymore.
Fortunately, recently Huang Zihua's "Dinner Play Attacks the Heart" broke the world with a sitcom to open the market, and "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer" broke 100 million box office.
Hong Kong movies, come back quickly!
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