Throughout the movie "The Eighth Suspect", after watching the movie, most of the audience felt an indescribable blandness, as if it was far from meeting people's expectations to some extent. However, this blandness does not come from the actor's performance, but from a helplessness and loss brought about by the way the plot is presented.
The first half of the film is obviously much more wonderful than the second half, but as the film comes to an end, many viewers may share my sense of abandonment by the drama: Is this the end?
The whole movie can be described in four words: tiger head and snake tail. The whole story has no climax and so little suspense that the audience will feel as if they are watching a documentary rather than a great movie.
It is precisely because of this that although the box office of "The Eighth Suspect" exceeded 100 million on the first day and reached 146 million on the second day, the box office declined significantly, which undoubtedly reflects the film's shortcomings in quality.
If it weren't for the fact that Sun Yang and Zhang Songwen had already won the enthusiastic attention of the audience before the film's release, it would be almost impossible to reach the billion-level box office from the perspective of the quality of the film itself.
After watching the entire film, I have to admit that there is nothing to fault with the actors' performances, and the fundamental problem is that the choreographer failed to tell the story. The film tries to present multiple emotional threads, including brotherhood (played by Dapeng and Sun Yang), comradeship (played by Lin Jiadong and Zhang Songwen), husband and wife (played by Chen Xinwen and Yang Fang), and father-son love (played by Chen Xinwen and his father), and the choreographer seems to want to show them all, but fails to portray them deeply.
Perhaps the choreographer tried to use a simple approach when dealing with these emotional cues, but it is clear that they have failed to strike the balance. In addition to the father-son relationship line is relatively touching (which is also attributed to Dapeng's excellent acting skills), the other emotional lines are slightly inadequate.
The early emotional processing of Dapeng's characters is okay, but when the story goes to the escape of the brothers, the plot is too simplistic, and the self-surrender plot at the end is also rushed. At the end of the movie, Wang Jie's "A Game One Dream" was also played, is this to express Qi Xi's feelings for Chen Xinwen, or to emphasize that Chen Xinwen's life is just a game and a dream? In short, the audience will feel a tasteless emotion after watching it.
The camaraderie between the two policemen lacks sufficient plot support; The love between Chen Xinwen and Yang Fang is too bland and lacks deep emotions, so that in the end, Yang Fang knows that Chen Xinwen is a robber and murderer and still chooses to live and die with him, which is a bit abrupt. As for the brotherhood between Chen Xinwen and Chen Xinnian, although there are some highlights that explore human nature in the second half of the film, how Chen Xinnian was crippled and how the two brothers eventually returned to China have not been clearly explained, which makes the film appear boring in the second half and loses the highlights that attract the audience.
Perhaps in order to highly restore the real case, the film avoids the exaggerated adaptation of commercial elements, but this is not a reasonable excuse for the film to be bland and boring. The choreographer is obviously short in refining the storyline, which makes a movie that originally has the potential to become a wonderful police film into mediocrity.
The actors are all satisfied, the problem really comes at the level of choreographers, they fail to tell the story well. If I were to rate this movie, I would only give it a 6.
As a film to look forward to, especially because of Sun Yang and Zhang Songwen, it has attracted much attention, but the disappointment of the plot makes the audience feel the reality that is far from what they expected to watch the movie.