Speaking of "The Pursuer", most people think not of Cao Baoping, the director who made "The Burning Heart of the Sun", nor liu Ye, the male protagonist who won the film emperor with the role of Song Lao'er, but Zhang Yi, who contributed god-level acting skills in the movie, and the highly controversial rooftop scene.
For Zhang Yi, a low-key powerful actor, his performance in "The Pursuer" is really surprising. The "five-star killer" Dong Xiaofeng, played by him, is a rare embarrassing, humble and self-respecting killer image on the domestic screen, Zhang Yi's excellent acting skills make this role deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and his style in "The Pursuer" even overshadows the protagonist Liu Ye.
Regarding the highly controversial rooftop scene, its role in the movie was jokingly called "the place where the whole movie can best be worth the ticket price".
This is obviously not normal for Cao Baoping, who has made films with great depth and sincerity such as "Burning Heart of the Sun" and "Dog Thirteen". "The Pursuer" Douban 7.8 points for the average director, although it is a good result, but for Cao Baoping, this level does not meet everyone's expectations for him.
In "The Pursuer", we can see Cao Baoping's ambition: he wants to wrap a black comedy in the guise of a crime film, and has ulterior motives to disrupt the timeline of the story, completely break up the whole story and re-stitch it into five chapters, and carry out a multi-perspective narrative according to the chapter, hiding the story clues in each chapter little by little.
Therefore, in the style of the movie "The Pursuer", many people have seen the shadow of movies such as "Labyrinth of Hearts" and "Crazy Stone", and the first three chapters of the movie also show the types of suspense, crime and black humor in the movie. So, this is a real genre mashup.
Although in "The Pursuer", Cao Baoping's grasp of the character shaping, the actor's tuning and the real texture of the film is still full of sincerity and even quite a surprise, but the mixed genre makes the style of the film and the plot, structure and theme of the film inevitably lose one or the other.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > plot and style: superfluous plot and unfinished plot</h1>
First of all, the plot.
To some extent, the plot of the movie is very good in terms of the breadth of content and the depth of the main idea. "The Pursuer" rarely focuses the film lens on the marginal characters in the marginal area of Yunnan, involving the contradiction between individual demands and collective interests, involving the collusion between officials and businessmen, and involving the issues of profiteers and integrity.
However, all the problems are due to the excessive pursuit of stylistic diversity and deliberate techniques in the film, which makes the plot of the film appear in many places the controversy of excess and unfinished drama.
Extra scenes
The most discussed is the scene on the rooftop of Wang Ziwen and Duan Bowen, and there is even a topic on Douban: Is the rooftop drama necessary?
"The character played by Prince Wen is a small-town young woman, if you think of a waiter, emotional communication with her boyfriend, without intimate body language, then how much space do I have to spend to explain their previous 'hot love'." 」
This is the answer given by director Cao Baoping, in Cao Baoping's view, the second chapter of the film story is to supplement the clues and details of this "pursuit" scene by creating Wang Youquan's upright image full of anger, honesty and feelings.
Full of rage, he can show that He can come to the roller skating rink through Wang Youquan stealing cars, hiding suits, and single-handedly; speaking of honesty is reflected in never revealing where the suit is even in the face of Dong Xiaofeng's life-threatening threat, because he promised Song Lao'er.
As for the emotional character image, Cao Baoping chose a simple and rough passion play to express. Because Wang Youquan loves Yang Shuhua deeply, there will be a later plot development.
But this reason does not explain the doubts in the audience's mind. One is whether it is necessary to show the fiery love between the two through such a large-scale scene, and the other is whether the bond between the two is the only choice for the plot of the movie to advance.
Director Cao Baoping obviously did not give a reasonable explanation for these two points, no matter from what point of view, this scene is particularly abrupt in this mixed crime, suspense and noir style film, there is a sense of discomfort with a sudden change in style.
In the end, the role of the scene in the movie is only to forcibly pull Yang Shuhua, played by Wang Ziwen, into this "pursuit" and forcibly expand the story line to increase the complexity of the three-line narrative structure and pursue structural neatness.
Unfinished drama
The most obvious thing is that the ending came too suddenly. It is reflected in two aspects: the sudden death of Dong Xiaofeng, and the sudden death of only Dong Xiaofeng.
As mentioned earlier, in the first half of the movie, "The Pursuer" buries a lot of foreshadowing and explains a lot of clues through the chapter stories of Song Lao'er, Wang Youquan and Dong Xiaofeng.
The most important thing is that when all the stories and clues come together, the official and businessmen who slowly surface to the surface collude with this line.
But just when everyone was curious about the final outcome of this line, first arranged for the connector Qian Guixing to be inexplicably killed by Dong Xiaofeng in the yin and yang mistakes, and then Song Lao'er was very far-fetched to escape from the pursuit and killing of the "five-star killer" Dong Xiaofeng, and finally Dong Xiaofeng suddenly appeared under The floor of Sister Ping and was surrounded by a group of policemen who fell from the sky, and was suddenly killed without pulling out the murder weapon.
Then the movie ended in the reunion of Song Lao'er and the pigs, and the bosses who bought the land seemed to disappear out of thin air, and the story line that had been buried for a long time in the movie was not even counted as a tiger's head and tail, because it did not have a "tail".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > structure and style: an attempt to wrap a black comedy in the shell of a real-life crime film</h1>
I have to say that there are too many places worth seeing in "The Pursuer", and there are too many characteristics that Cao Baoping is accustomed to.
For example, the performance with a high degree of reduction, not only the protagonists who are praised by everyone, but also the roles in the movie play a stronger character emotion on the basis of authenticity and credibility; more importantly, in the main group scenes in the movie, the group performances in the corners and corners of the camera are also very outstanding.
The most impressive thing was the cat brother who died for the death and the master of mo who looked confused. They are the portraits of all the group actors in "The Pursuer", indicating that every actor is in the state he should be in, in his place.
However, although the film is sincere enough, it still makes the mistake of losing one structure and style to the other.
The film attempts to provide the perspective of the three protagonists through the three chapters of Bao Bao, Little, and Dirt Thief, taking turns to tell three different sides of the same event. Trying to cut the clues of the case, little by little hidden in three chapters, as the plot of the movie progresses, it is spread out in front of the audience little by little, in order to create a sense of suspense and drama of the story.
In fact, in the first two chapters of the film, it does play this effect, and because of this narrative structure, there is also a criminal suspense factor that the film wants to have.
But as soon as the film enters the third chapter and begins to add the element of black humor to the film, it breaks the only suspense and the biggest suspense of the case.
If you look at this chapter alone, this kind of excellent movie that throws the murderer to the audience from the beginning also exists, and the problem is not big. But if you look at this chapter together with the first two chapters, you will form a contradiction that does not match.
Because of the multi-line and multi-perspective structure of the whole story, it was intended to establish a criminal suspense tone for the film in the first two films, and this tone was destroyed in the middle of the movie, and it was turned into a black comedy.
It can be seen that the film style under such a structure is originally intended to hope that the intersection of criminal elements and comedy elements can achieve a relaxed rhythmic effect.
However, too much pursuit of structural sophistication and narrative skills, so that the final effect of the film is that the first half of the film is shooting crime films, the second half is shooting comedies, and the beginning and end of the film are inconsistent. The crime suspense didn't end in one fell swoop, and the black comedy wasn't enough.
The narrative structure of multi-line narrative is generally considered to be excellent, such as "Labyrinth of Hearts", "Rashomon" and other movies, as well as domestic "Crazy Stone". Taking "Labyrinth of Hearts" as an example, under the structure of multi-line narrative, the story clues are accurately buried in the multiple story lines of the film, and the suspense is reborn and the details are full.
The most intriguing question in the story of "Who is the charred corpse?" has always appealed to everyone who watches Labyrinth of Hearts.
The excellent use of the multi-perspective narrative structure of "Labyrinth of Hearts" lies in the fact that the film looks at the same event from different angles, and the angles are different, and the sides seen are different. Each additional side is not reducing the suspense of the story, not reducing the fog covered by the story, but through the clues that continue to emerge, leading to greater suspense, the fog of the story is getting thicker and thicker.
It is not until all the story lines overlap and all the clues are gathered that the suspense is solved, which is also the most exciting sense that this multi-line narrative brings to the audience - until the last moment, the truth will never come out.
Unfortunately, "The Pursuer" abandoned in this style halfway, excessively pursuing the diversity of styles, so that the structure of the film did not integrate well with the style. In this case, the so-called multi-line narrative is nothing more than a repetition of the story, no matter which line, you see, it is the same thing.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > theme and style: "Who is the Pursuer" chasing</h1>?
The story of "The Pursuer" is taken from the "Six Panshui Five Brothers Ten Thousand Miles Pursuit Incident", and when the script reached Cao Baoping's hands, it had already undergone 26 drafts of revisions.
However, after Cao Baoping got the script, he still made a drastic adaptation of the story, and finally only left the plot of Mo's driver, Brother Cat, who was intercepted and killed.
That's why we have the story of "The Pursuer" that we see now. The adapted script is no longer so penetrating, and Cao Baoping tries to increase the level of the story through the exquisite narrative structure in order to offset the disadvantage of the story's weaker impact.
Under this structure, we see the living conditions of a group of marginal characters in this marginal town, and those small people who wander at the bottom of society do indeed give fertile soil for the black crime suspense stories in the movie.
Song Lao'er in the movie is a car repairman who lost his wife and raised his son Tao Ge alone, he insisted that the ancestral tomb could not be relocated, insisted that Tao Ge could be admitted to a good high school, and also insisted on pursuing the murderer all the way for the sake of Tao Ge's reputation.
The little bastard Wang Youquan, very Geng Zhizhong second, unreliable but honest, full of anger.
"Five-star killer" Dong Xiaofeng, with strong self-esteem and obsessed with the prestige of the past, his image is the 100 push-ups he has never completed in the movie - the kung fu and luck that are always a foot away. All his life, he was pit by the profiteer and hated the merchant, how powerful he was in the past, how depressed he is now.
Successful characterization and fertile film soil cannot hide the fact that the film is greedy for perfection and mixes multiple styles, and many of the issues involved in the story are scratched away from this defect.
"The Pursuer" has a chance to go deeper.
For example, Song Lao'er's refusal to move the grave; for example, why Qian Guixing has a photo of Wang Youquan and his girlfriend in his hand; for example, after Song Lao'er tracked down Brother Cat's car, the first choice was not to call the police, but to contact his friends to call people; for example, in the village, the village chief could quickly pull up a group of people to fight with the enemy, and in the city, when Dong Xiaofeng sneaked up on Wang Youquan, all the passers-by just stood indifferently on the side...
At this time, the movie "The Pursuer" chased not only Dong Xiaofeng.
At the same time as the lack of depth of the film, there is also a far-fetched situation in the adapted script, and the motivations of the characters are also far-fetched. What is more typical is why Song Lao'er had to single-handedly match the pursuit of the murderer, his original intention was for the reputation and future of his son Tao Ge, but the state of single-handedness also made him and Tao Ge in danger many times.
Moreover, for Song Lao'er, who raised his son alone, he put down the only car repair he could make a living in his hands and did not do it, and disregarded his livelihood and life for the sake of that illusory reputation, his motives were doubtful.
In addition, all of Dong Xiaofeng's behavioral motives, whether it was the pit of robbing the gold chain at the beginning, or the pit of buying a house later, was only a sentence of "the most hated in my life is the adulterer", and the final result was to be headshot in front of the woman he loved deeply.
"I can't make a movie with all the audiences as the level of Douban netizens, and more people still hope that I will tell the story more bluntly."
But under the gorgeous narrative structure and mixed style, the problem with the film is not too blunt, but deep and absurd and not powerful enough.
The success of "Burning Heart" has made many people have high expectations for Cao Baoping, because all along, serious crime drama films have always been tepid and rare masterpieces in the domestic market, and the emergence of Cao Baoping has made many people see the hope of such domestic dramas, so the "Pursuer" released in this case has borne many expectations that the film itself should not have.
Although "The Pursuer" is not as solid and powerful as everyone expects, slightly frivolous, "The Pursuer" is still a work worth remembering.
It's just that for Cao Baoping, he needs to work harder to meet everyone's expectations of him.