Wen 丨 Wu Zeyuan
1
How can an action movie be special?
For the newly released "Little People", the casting alone has put it one step ahead of the starting line.
The Little Man (2021)
Viewers with a little common sense will probably wonder why the bad guys will provoke Liam Neeson, who is 1.93 meters tall, and Keanu Reeves, who has saved the world more than once, and they don't have long eyes. Don't they know that these guys are not only undead, but they will easily beat them to death?
But it makes a lot more sense if the same group of bad guys provoked Bob Odenkirk. No one would take this dry, cramped-looking middle-aged man seriously. In fact, at the beginning of "Little People", even his wife and son do not pay attention to him, because when their family encounters two small thieves who rob him, the titular head of the family does not dare to return his hand.
Hutch, the male protagonist played by Odenkirk, immediately established his own nest image in the film. He committed himself to working as an accountant in the factory opened by his father-in-law, his wife's career was several times more successful than his, his son thought he was cowardly, his father-in-law and brother-in-law often sneered at him, and even his neighbors praised him: "Your choice of not fighting back is correct, but if I were replaced, I would certainly not be so rational... They should have robbed my house!"
In addition, the unchanging middle-aged life is also devouring Hutch. Running, breakfast, going to work, leaving work, and finally returning to bed where his wife had drawn a midline with a pillow. The fate of Hutch for the rest of his life can be seen at a glance. The director uses a highly designed composition to show Hutch's state of mind squeezed and imprisoned by daily life.
But since the role is played by Audenkirk, it is doomed that he is not idle: after all, Audenkirk is the harsh-talking Saul Goodman in "Breaking Bad" and "The Wind lawyer". So when Hedge revealed his identity as a former CIA contract killer and began to kill the street bullies he was not accustomed to, everyone was not surprised.
In addition to the two extremes of the nest and the explosion, Oldenkirk also used delicate acting skills to create a rich layer of characters. Huffle is not a traditional action hero, and his size and temperament determine this. But Audenkirk turned these restrictions into resources that could be used: Hutch, because of his limited stature and fed up with his pockets, was even less out of line in action scenes, only causing actual damage to his opponents as his sole purpose.
At the same time, Oldenkirk also poured into Hudge, pouring out a small person who was always looked down upon and eager to prove his anxiety and vulnerability. It is these qualities that distinguish Hurch from the protagonists of "Rush" and "Hurricane Rescue", gain a unique soul, and make him more able to get the empathy of ordinary people.
2
"Little People" is a cool film that can catch the audience's hilarity. The film's writers and producers are derek Costa and David Rick, the souls behind the Rush Series. And they know too well how to mobilize the audience's adrenaline in a simple and rough way.
The Rush (2014)
Old-school action movies like Die Hard, The Terminator, and Mad Max still need to provide some excuse for the action itself: heroes either fight for justice and freedom, fight for their families and loved ones, and most badly for survival. Although everyone knows that the audience enters the theater to watch the fight and kill, but the human condition and morality of the jianghu, everyone still has to argue clearly before the fight.
Die Hard (1988)
But in the "Fast And Furious" series, the creators didn't even bother to provide excuses. The dog given to him by his dead ex-wife was killed by the bad guy, which seemed to be just an excuse, and everyone could see from Keanu Reeves's angry eyes that his hands were itchy after many years of rest, and he had long been expecting the bad guy who didn't have long eyes to give him a reason to kill him.
In "Little People", this itchy hand mechanism is more directly expressed. In order to make the protagonist run away, it is not even necessary to kill a living creature, but only to let the protagonist's daughter's beloved cat pattern bracelet disappear, which is enough.
Hutch looks forward to returning to the world of violence. When he saw a group of goons walking up to the bus to harass female passengers, what came to his face was the expression of an alcoholic who smelled alcohol again after years of abstinence. After killing the brother of the big brother of the Russian gangster, Hutch, who knew that he would inevitably have a war, simply burned the fund that the big brother kept for the entire "society", and before leaving, he did not forget to say to the big brother: "I gave you a golden basin to wash your hands, you should cherish it." It was almost forcing the eldest brother to fight him to the death.
What makes Little People special about other regular action movies is this carnival-style anarchist attitude. Both Hudge and his father, who worked for the F.B.I., made no secret of their belligerence, expecting others to provoke them so they could exterminate them.
Interestingly, the film's director, Ilya Naschuler, is a pure-blooded Russian, and the bad guys Huffle killed in the film are most likely members of the Russian gang. As for whether this arrangement is the director's surrender to Hollywood, a ridicule of his own culture, or a secret poke and irony of the American spirit, only he himself knows.
3
The shortcomings of "Little People" are also obvious. On the one hand, its fight scenes don't bring too much tension, because Huffle's protagonist aura is so dazzling that the audience is not too worried about him and his family from beginning to end.
On the other hand, these fight scenes at least didn't give me much catharsis. Because the villains in the film are as two-dimensional as paper pieces, doing bad things is like the villains in thousands of second-rate action films before, lacking personality and soul, and people can't hate it.
And the supporting characters in the film do not add too much points to the whole movie, although the film's supporting cast is actually quite strong (Connie Nelson of "Wonder Woman" plays Hedge's wife, and Christopher Lloyd of "Back to the Future" plays Hurch's father), but they have nothing to do in the film except pose and make a few harsh words; Hedge's son and daughter, after witnessing their father's mighty and completing the mission of the tool man, immediately disappeared from the plot.
Perhaps these are the characteristics of Hollywood's new action movies: shooting literary dramas and family dramas slows down the pace, and flashbacks are used to narrate the background story of the characters, which seems too old-fashioned. So, perhaps the best solution is to ditch these parts and be cool.
But even so, I still suspect that a little more effort to portray supporting characters and villains will make the audience more engaged in an action movie. Storytelling is something that never goes out of style.