Yesterday, the spy drama "Odds" starring Liu Yunlong was finally broadcast, as a TV series with a backlog of five years, it still brought such a high degree of popularity before it was broadcast, which also shows the love of audience friends for Liu Yunlong and his works. After the first episode was broadcast, many friends brought comments, whether they were supportive or somewhat disappointed, in fact, it was out of concern for the show, which I think is a very normal phenomenon. Everyone calms down, continue to watch may have a comprehensive view, just like today to take this opportunity to introduce to the audience friends this early work of Liu Yunlong, its background is somewhat similar to "Odds of Victory", the same are spy war themes, and it is also not the work of Liu Yunlong himself, and now our judgment of it will be more objective. It is the spy drama "Meritorious Service" co-starring Liu Yunlong and Li Xiaoran.
At the beginning of 1945, the Second World War was coming to an end, the overall situation of the European battlefield had been decided, and the Asian battlefield had become the key to determining the direction of the war. In order to deliver a fatal blow to the Japanese invaders, the Soviet Union turned its gun and formulated a top-secret "avalanche plan." The premise of this plan is to obtain all relevant military information as soon as possible, such as the deployment of the Japanese "Maruichi Cannon" and the combat effectiveness and quantity of the Kwantung Army. At this critical moment, an important person was arrested. His name is Hiroshi Takahashi (Ryu Yun-ryu) and he is a high-ranking spy who has infiltrated the Soviet Union for many years along with his father, Toshio Takahashi. Another identity was Liao Fei, a reconnaissance staff officer of the Chinese Anti-Japanese Coalition Army. At a banquet, Takahashi was captured by the Soviets. Upon learning of this news, Kazuo Sakagaki (Kazuo Hakata) is the head of the Kwantung Army Intelligence Department, who rushes to the rescue. In the darkness of the night, the murderous spy war begins...
In the play, Liu Yunlong plays two roles and has three identities——— Japanese spy Takahashi Hiroshi and Liao Fei, a Communist agent who looks exactly like him. How two identical-looking spy officers stealth and go deeper into each other's teams, especially in the most challenging spy teams, is one of the biggest highlights of the show. Compared with An Zaitian in "Dark Calculation", Liu Yunlong in "Meritorious Service" is more changeable. In the play, not only does he have a rival scene with himself, Liao Fei also breaks into the Japanese army as Takahashi Hiroshi, in addition to having to deal with the enemy in a dangerous environment, emotionally struggling between Excellence and Takahashi Hiroshi's lover and Itagaki's daughter, which is not small in performance. Liao Fei's girlfriend, Played by Li Xiaoran, is also an underground member of the Communist Party. Commissioned by the Soviet Union to puppet Manchukuo, her important mission was to steal the defensive map of the Japanese Kwantung Army and destroy the Donglin Fortress, a major Japanese garrison on the front line. She disguises herself as a Japanese female translator, Yoko Matsuzaka. He was finally killed while blowing up a Japanese cannon. Although Li Xiaoran played a spy for the first time in this play, his performance was very good, his grasp of the role was just right, and the performance was very infectious.
As a spy drama set in the Soviet Far East, "Meritorious Service" used a number of Russian people's actors (equivalent to China's first-class actors), and the japanese senior general Itagaki invited the famous Japanese actor Hato Jiangqing to star, in order to restore history and most truly show the scene at that time, and the crew used more than 3,000 Russian actors. "Meritorious Service" does its best to restore the historical reality of the time to the greatest extent. The choice of Harbin is because Harbin is known as the "Moscow of the East", with a strong Far Eastern style; the clothing is also specially purchased from Japan books and materials, completely in accordance with the historical records of the Soviet and Japanese military uniforms and civilian clothes of the "World War II" period. At this point, the TV series "Meritorious Service" is many times stronger than the so-called "spy drama" of Korean fashion, popular hairstyles, and overhead history that are full of korean fashion on the screen today!
In order to restore the war scenes at that time, after consulting a large number of historical materials and conducting field investigations between China and Russia, the crew built the "Donglin Fortress" and the "Maruichi Giant Cannon", which is known as the first in Asia, to truly restore the Donglin Fortress in the northeast region at that time, and the scene of "Maruyi Giant Cannon" alone cost 300,000 yuan. The miniature cameras, transmitters and special knives used in espionage activities are real instruments. In addition to the excellence in war scenes and props, "Meritorious Service" also specially invited the "Mission Impossible" stunt production team, directed "Bloody Double Heroes", "Police Story 3" and other films of the famous Hong Kong stunt director Luo Lixian to be the commander. Luo Lixian is a world-renowned stunt director, and in 2014, he was selected by the famous American media Variety as one of the "50 Most Influential Film Behind-the-Scenes Elites" in the world. He has participated in the action design of many Jackie Chan works, and his stunts are mainly based on explosions and speeding cars, and all the flying car shots in the Indonesian action film "Raid 2" are completed by his stunt team.
For the evaluation of this play, whether it is the thoughtfulness of the production, the strict control of the details, or the acting skills of all the actors online, especially Liu Yunlong, who plays two roles, he still performs in place, showing his profound performance skills, and the performance of Japanese actors in the play can also be remarkable, vivid image, which has been recognized and affirmed by the audience. But the only thing that makes the audience complain is the editing of the show's writer and director. First of all, the audience thinks that the screenwriter is too bad, and there are many loopholes in the development of the plot: secondly, the director's editing of the entire TV series is interspersed with too much repetitive content, which disrupts the rhythm that should be good. Therefore, as a work that is not directed by Liu Yunlong himself, the audience friends are also mixed reputations. And exactly similarly, the "Odds of Winning" that is being broadcast is also in this situation, so this must be a test of the director's skill! Do you say yes or no?