To say that the favorite Korean male star of Chinese netizens in the past two years, "One Punch Man" Ma Dongxi must be on the list.
This muscular strong man, while pumping a big competition in the play, and on the other hand, frequently selling cuteness outside the play, who can not love this terrible contrast?
This past weekend, Uncle Ma Dongxi's new action film "Wilderness" (originally titled "Land of the Nothing") was launched.
In this post-apocalyptic zombie film produced by Netflix, although the routine/big data-style post-apocalyptic setting and no new plot are still a major shortcoming, for Ma Dongxi, who has been deeply bound by the "Crime City" series in recent years, it is a rare change and "upgrade" that jumps out of a single mode.
The worldview of "Wilderness" follows the disaster film "Concrete Utopia" (starring Lee Byung-hun), which was selected for the Oscar by South Korea last year.
In "Concrete Utopia", a major earthquake strikes South Korea, the whole country is in ruins, and only one apartment called "Imperial Palace" survives with one building, so the apartment residents and outsiders are in constant conflict, and the struggle for resources and power intensifies.
In essence, "Concrete Utopia" is a disaster film with serious social issues, focusing on the exploration of the dark side of human nature.
"Wilderness" follows this worldview, and the surviving building is also the main scene in this one, but the actor is replaced by Ma Dongxi, and the highlight naturally becomes the continuous decompression action scenes and Ma Dongxi's unique contrasting comedy style.
"Wilderness" is set three years after the earthquake, the surviving building is ruled by the mad doctor Yang Ki-so (played by Lee Hee-joon) and the army, who constantly catches teenagers to do experiments, trying to transform humans into zombie-like undead monsters, in order to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment where resources are sharply scarce.
Coincidentally, a girl who has been taking care of the former underworld boss Nanshan (played by Ma Dongxi) after the disaster was also captured, in order to save the girl, Nanshan and two other partners broke into the apartment, and had a hard-fought life-and-death battle with the strange doctor and the "zombie army" he transformed.
At the beginning of the movie, the apocalyptic background and Ma Dongxi's personal character are highlighted.
Nanshan, played by Ma Dongxi, dragged the big crocodile's tail with one hand, the knife fell in his hand, and the head of the beast was in a different place, and he casually said "Wow, it looks so delicious!".
As soon as the lines come out, you know that in addition to hearty fights in this movie, there must be many humorous scenes tailored for Ma Dongxi.
If I remember correctly, the last time Ma Dong-seok faced zombies was in his popular work "Train to Busan" 7 years ago, at that time, due to the limitations of the scene, Ma Dong-seok could only use a baseball bat and his fist.
"To Busan", 2016
This time it is set as a post-apocalyptic theme, the scene is a closed building, and the opponents are all immortal (the setting in the film is that you will die only if you cut off your head), Ma Dong-seok can finally use submachine guns, machetes and other weapons this time, plus the iconic fierce fists and feet, it is simply another version of the wilder "Train to Busan 2".
"Wilderness" can create a dazzling Ma Dongxi, thanks to director Xu Mingxing.
Xu Mingxing is a well-known action stunt and martial arts instructor in the Korean film industry, entered the industry in 1999 "Life and Death", and has served as an action stunt film for nearly 80 films, including Korean violent aesthetic classics "Seeing the Devil", "Yellow Sea", "New World", as well as "Berlin", "Extreme Occupation", "Agent" and other successful commercial films.
Ma Dong-seok is the actor he has worked with the most, such as "Train to Busan", "Bad Guys", "Crime City", etc., "Wilderness" is the 15th time the two have collaborated, and they are too much like twins!
So Xu Mingxing became a director for the first time, and naturally wanted to make an action movie with the action actor he was most familiar with.
At the moment when the "Crime City" series exploded and Ma Dongxi was increasingly stereotyped as a "one-punch man", Xu Mingxing let Ma Dongxi jump out of the realistic police and bandit theme.
He specially designed several action scenes for Ma Dongxi with alternating hot and cold weapons, equal strength of the positive and negative characters, and full of tension, and for the first time with a large-scale R-rated painting style, which made the action scenes of "Wilderness" full of surprises.
Especially in the second half of the movie, after Ma Dongxi broke into the apartment, Xu Mingxing designed two highlight action scenes with the zombie army for him.
One is a shootout, with shotguns, submachine guns, gunshots in the head at close range;
One is a machete scene, the long-handled knife, the short-handled knife, the knife is deadly, and the plasma explodes all over the limbs, far exceeding the scale of "Crime City", which can be regarded as an addiction to Ma Dongxi.
In the behind-the-scenes interview, Ma Dongxi also said that he was most satisfied with the machete scene in the basement corridor, the overall arrangement of this scene was coherent and the editing was sharp, and Xiao Wan enjoyed watching it very much.
Audiences who are familiar with Korean movies can also intuitively feel that the director is using this scene to pay tribute to Choi Min-sik's classic corridor hammer battle in "Old Boy".
And in the final boss battle, Ma Dongxi faced a soldier who was injected with medicine, and this time Ma Dongxi, who couldn't knock down the enemy with one punch, had a hard hand-to-hand grappling with the opponent that set skills such as qualified fighting, boxing, and wrestling.
Thinking about it, this must be a long-lost heartiness for Ma Dongxi, who was born as an athlete and used to be a personal trainer for professional wrestlers.
In order to become an actor, Ma Dongxi, who immigrated to the United States in his early years, returned to South Korea and was 34 years old when his debut "Heavenly Army" was released.
Later, because of his sturdy body and good skills, he began to work as a thug for various bosses in various movies, acting as the strongest one among the minions.
Thinking back to 14 years ago, Ma Dongxi did not have the size and coffee position he has now, and he once played the actor Huang Zhengmin in "Improper Deal", and he didn't dare to squeak when Huang Zhengmin slapped his mouth.
It's really thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi, who would have thought that ten years later, this brother would become a full-time "superman" who smokes people's faces?
In 2012's "War with Crime", he was slapped by Choi Min-sik on his head and face, and was also knocked on the head by Kim Sung-jun (yes, it is the dog Huan's father in "Please Answer 1988") with a wine bottle.
A still from "The War on Crime".
It can be said that at the beginning, Ma Dongxi's status in Han Ying was a thug, a triad and a punching bag for his superiors.
The real start of crushing beating people is from the 2012 thriller "Neighbors", and the interesting thing is that this time Ma Dongxi, who plays the underworld, beats up the perverted murderer played by Kim Sung-jun, who knocked him with a wine bottle last time (this damn fate).
Counting the past works, the name of "One Punch Man" began in 2014 in the 19 forbidden crime drama "Bad Guys", in which he played the role of the underworld boss (similar to "The Legend of the Wicked"), who was summoned by the criminal police to fight evil with evil, and his appearance made the little minions tremble.
Of course, Ma Dongxi's most influential masterpiece has to be the "Crime City" series.
His classic big bidou and "Fist for Insomnia" are all from here, and "Crime City 2" and "Crime City 3" during the epidemic have become the leader of Korean local films in the past two years with their addictive and stress-relieving action scenes.
Among the 2023 movie actors released by Gallup Korea at the end of last year, he beat Lee Byung-hun , Song Kang-ho , and Hwang Jung-min to win the top spot.
In such a position and timing, the investment from Netflix and the appearance of action stunt director Xu Mingxing once again brought Ma Dongxi new possibilities.
From this point of view, Xiao Wan feels that "Wilderness" is to Ma Dongxi what the 2020 "Shocking Rescue" is to Chris Hemsworth.
After becoming Thor, Chris has become accustomed to fighting in a "fairy" way, and his muscles can only "show off his body", until stuntman Sam Hargrave's "Shocking Rescue", he proved his ability in action scenes with an 11-minute one-shot fight scene, showing a real tough guy charm.
So, is it possible that Ma Dongxi's several wonderfully choreographed and smooth action scenes in "Wilderness" will also become a turning point in his new career?
Let's look forward to what kind of freshness the next "Crime City 4" (which will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in May this year) with Xu Mingxing will bring to the whole series and Ma Dongxi.
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