When it comes to Brother Hammer, all that everyone can think of is definitely only one word: handsome.
In "Reunion", he played the god of thunder that often descended from the sky to save other superheroes who had been beaten to pieces.
Even in the tragedy of last year's "Avengers 3", Brother Hammer was a being who saved the world, and almost sent Thanos to meet Camora with an axe.
However, there is a big-name film in which Brother Hammer (Chris Hemsworth) appears in a posture he has never had before.
Boom to explosion!
Without further ado, let's take a look at —"
Murder at the Royal Hotel
It is not an exaggeration to say that it is full of big names.
Director and screenwriter Drew Gundam has an amazing brain hole and a variety of anti-routine plot setting ability. Before becoming a director, his best-known job was screenwriting.
The brain-burning drama "Lost", the superhero drama "Daredevil", and the Oscar-nominated hard science fiction "The Martian" are all from his hands.
And, his first work as a director, I'm sure most audiences who know horror well will not be unfamiliar with it – Cabin in the Woods.
It is worth mentioning that the star of "Cabin in the Woods" is also Brother Hammer...
Among the actors, in addition to the hammer brother passerby is well known, the heroine is not to mention more. Many netizens said that they came to see this film, not because of Brother Hammer.
Why? Because of her, the shy and brash heroine Dakota Johnson in "Fifty Shades of Grey", Chinese audiences used to call her Damei.
However, in this movie, she changed the style of her previous painting and played a hardcore hot girl.
Other actors are also well-known movie stars, including Oscar-winning Jeff Bridges, Golden Globe Award -- "Mad Men" Joe Hamm, Broadway singer Cynthia Erivo and so on.
The film tells a story full of suspense and reversals that takes place in the United States in the 1960s.
At the climax of the opening scene, a mysteriously dressed man booked a house in a hotel and then sneakily pulled the curtains.
He painstakingly lifted the carpet and buried a bag of something.
Then it was shot by an acquaintance who knocked on the door.
For the whole movie, this murder is just a dessert before dinner.
After the murder, the story of the film has just begun.
In 1969, there was a hotel called the "Royal Hotel" on the border between California and Nevada, and the biggest feature of this hotel was that it spanned the state line between the two states.
In the United States, this is not a gimmick, because federal law and state law are parallel, so on one side of the hotel, you can enjoy the beautiful and prosperous California policy, and on the other side of Nevada, gambling and prostitution are legal.
Its position determines its extraordinary, and then strange things begin to happen one by one.
With the advent of the sixties, the hotel has long ceased to prosper, not even a proper waiter, and the entire hotel is managed and served by a waiter named Mills (Lewis Pullman).
On this day, the Royal Hotel in Menkolo welcomed seven guests from each pregnant fetus in succession, and they stayed in different rooms.
The first to arrive at the hotel was the black singer Darlene (Cynthia Erivo), who had to carry large bags of luggage and even bed sheets and quilts on every trip, because at that time, racial discrimination was still very serious in the United States.
She was accommodated in Room Five.
Next to her, in Room Four, she is a professional pretender, a forgetful old priest Flynn (Jeff Bridges).
This person looked at Cimei and kind eyes, but in fact, he was not a kind of good, and when asked why he came here to live, his mouth was——
Show not show!
It is worth mentioning that the waiter Mills warned the priest that it was best not to live here, but the old priest was very stubborn and asked for the house next to the female singer.
In room one lives Larry (Joe Ham), an electrical appliance salesman.
He is funny and humorous, coupled with many years of professionalism, he is familiar with his appearance, and always takes the initiative to find various people to talk to.
Finally, there is the seventh room of the hotel, the occupant is our sister, who comes with BGM and is crazy and cool.
The waiter asked her to sign the key, and she wrote F**k You on the signature book.
After moving in, strange things began to happen.
Larry of Room One became serious and cautious as soon as he entered the door, and the suitcase he carried with him had a compartment in which various portable tools were hidden.
He could pretend to be easy to call his family to report that he was safe, and at the same time, he dismantled the telephone with the tools at hand and very skillfully removed two eavesdropping devices from it.
The operation of turning over boxes and cabinets is a psychic operation, and there are dozens of bugging devices in this room.
What the hell is going on with this hotel? Why are there so many bugging devices in rooms that belong to guests' private spaces?
Is it a little chilly in the back? Don't worry, the eavesdropping is still small.
With some kind of professional sense of smell, Larry quietly opens a secret door while the waiter is taking drugs.
This secret door is not a secret room, but a passage.
Standing in the aisle, you can monitor every move in the room through the double-sided mirror in the hotel room and the bugging device in the room, and even a camera to record in real time.
In the passage, Larry found that the occupants of each room did not seem simple except for himself.
The old priest flynn in room four, as soon as he entered the door, he opened the floor and dug something, as if looking for the object buried by the dead man in the opening scene.
But in the end, he seemed to have found nothing.
Darlene in Room Five was practicing songs with deep affection, and it was not difficult to see her predicament and sadness from her expression.
The most terrible room seven, Da Mei, as soon as she entered the door, she took a little girl out of the trunk of her car and tied her to a stool.
Larry is in a hurry, he wants to save the little girl, and finally reveals his identity - an FBI agent.
But his superiors asked him not to meddle, but also not to let anyone in the hotel go.
A sense of justice prompted Larry to save the people, and he smashed them open, knocked out Damei, and untied the hostages.
However, it is ignored that Da Mei has weapons...
This shot not only killed Larry, but also shattered the double-sided glass, and Damei also knew the existence of the secret passage.
However, at the moment of shooting, the old priest Flynn and the waiter Mills were just behind the mirror of the secret passage.
Because of dinner time, Flynn wants to ask the female singer Darlene to have dinner with him, but he tries to drug her wine, and is knocked down by a bottle.
It was Mills who discovered him, and they went to the secret passage together and witnessed Larry's murder.
A well-mannered priest, a government agent in disguise, a frustrated black female singer, an vengeful sister flower, and an addicted waiter are all independent but inextricably linked.
Just when things were about to turn out of control, Brother Hammer, who played the cult leader Billy, finally appeared.
He walked slowly toward the Royal Hotel in the rain, behind him a neon-stretched back of the hotel.
Long wet hair, wet chest muscles, is simply a live-action version of the wet temptation.
Close your eyes, breathe, and say two more words in your mouth, the evil charm is crazy, and the commotion is compelling.
Not only that, in the whole movie, Brother Hammer is so naked, is this cult brainwashed by muscle beauty?
From time to time, there is also a dance to show the dance posture.
However, with a kind of believer, the hammer brother Tianshen became the discoverer and clarifier of all events and truths, and it was under his threat that he uncovered the most painful memories in everyone's heart.
The god reversal of the ending, I will leave you with suspense.
"Murder at the Royal Hotel" itself is full of retro texture, whether it is lighting, composition, or photography, are extremely outstanding, in order to restore this general feeling of oil painting, the director always insisted on using a 35mm film camera to shoot, and strive to restore the unique atmosphere of the 60s with the lens.
Such a temperament also adds a lot to the suspense thriller genre elements of the movie.
At the same time, Gundam exerted all his talents for storytelling, using the story deconstruction technique of non-linear multi-line narrative of the chapter body, so that several story lines crossed and parallel at the same time, and perfectly integrated together, scattered and not scattered, and some flashbacks interspersed with explanations are also extremely appropriate, not at all prominent.
However, the biggest charm of the movie is not its temperament, nor is it the aura of the actors such as Hammer Brother and Damei.
But in this tiny hotel, we see an era cross-section of American society throughout the '60s.
The 60s in the United States can be called the "worst" era in American history.
Outside there are the shadow of the Soviet Union Cold War and the quagmire of the Vietnam War, and inside there is the white-hot racial struggle and the prevalence of feminism - many young people have begun to lose confidence in society and the government because of the war and race, addicted to drug addiction and rock music, credulous cults, and the domestic society has also set off an anti-war movement boom.
And "Murder at the Royal Hotel" happened in this context.
Director Drew Gundam once said:
Murder at the Royal Hotel is a love letter to the crime noir films of the 60s.
It is not difficult to find that behind each character, there are endless metaphors and hints.
The grandeur of the hotel itself and the dilapidation of the business status quo, like the United States at the time, seemed to be brewing earth-shattering changes.
The solitary priest symbolizes the disintegration and collapse of faith, especially in the film, when the priest was once a robber, which undoubtedly deepens this meaning.
Frustrated female singer Darlene alludes to the rampant racial discrimination, the seemingly open America has never been truly equal, especially Darlene has to endure the unbridled rules of white bosses.
Government agent Larry, a metaphor for the FBI under Hoover's iron fist at the time, the various surveillance of hotels mercilessly mocked the government's trampling on the human rights of the people.
Hotel waiter Mills participated in the Vietnam War, in which he killed 123 people, suffering from post-war traumatic sequelae, he repented all the time, he was a symbol of drugs and anti-war.
In particular, after Mills' first appearance, President Nixon's speech about the "Vietnam War" appears in the film.
Damei, who fled with a live gun, reflects the feminism under the influence of sexual liberation in the 60s; the credulous cult sister kidnapped by her is the embodiment of the young man's mental confusion.
Throughout the film, there is a video of sex recorded by a camera.
This film, involving a "big man," led the FBI to kill everyone over destroy it.
The film also gives a hint, the photos on the hotel wall are full of Marilyn Monroe,
Film is undoubtedly an allusion to the scandal between President Kennedy and Monroe in the 60s.
However, if you think of the character in the film saying that the "big man" is dead, it may also be the sex scandal of Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968.
No matter which big man it is, the scandal in the film is the scandal of the entire American society in the 60s, and it is the dark history that the United States is least willing to mention.
Can hide the story of an era to a few people in a closed hotel, "Murder in the Royal Hotel" is actually not simple.
Its value is its true restoration of those historical figures who have long been buried in the torrent of time.
Its depth is its sober reflection on the era that people are reluctant to mention.
Each of us is a member of the times, the founders and constituents of the times.
Although time is far away and the years have passed, those traces left behind, no matter when they are mentioned, are wonderful stories, aren't they?
(Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Board: Yang Yang)