The front foot of "Sweeping The Black Storm" just left, and the back foot of "Double Detective" came.
Like "Sweeping The Black Storm", "Double Detective" was also full of expectations when it first started:
Let's look at the front of the curtain:
Duan Yihong starred and produced as a producer, summoning the original team members of the "Regiment Leader Gang" Zhang Guoqiang, Xing Jiadong, Liu Weiwei, Gao Feng...
The other two leading actors are Dapeng and Golden Horse Film Queen Zeng Meihuizi.
Feelings + strength, the cast is right.
Look behind the scenes:
Directing, production, cinematography, art, modeling, sound, almost all come from the field of film.
Directors Fei Yuzhu and Chen Zhoufei, one is a newcomer director shortlisted for the First Film Festival, and the other is the cinematographer of "On the Cliff", "Shadow" and "Li Mi's Conjecture";
Art director Lü Dong has served as the art director of films such as "Long Days on Earth", "Lost Alone", "Coco Xili" and so on...
Excellent film actors and behind-the-scenes personnel are in place, and the film sense of "Double Detective" is self-evident:
Exquisite composition;
Exquisite lighting;
Fierce action.
The audiovisual language is so exquisite, which is undoubtedly a great temptation for lovers of crime dramas.
But after watching a few episodes, I always felt that something was wrong.
This drama can be watched, but it always feels that something is missing.
Thinking about it again, the original overwhelming publicity about the sense of cinema seems to be missing something.
After scouring the cast, I found that people selectively ignored the screenwriter of the show.
Why?
Because there's really nothing to blow.
Just like this drama, you can blow anything, but you can't blow the plot.
A suspenseful criminal investigation drama, the pace is slow, and the mystery of suspense is not hidden deeply, is it not looking?
Not really.
There is also a way to use a few unsolved cases to lead to the local social feelings of the crime, to expose a certain social atmosphere, or the various life dilemmas faced by the people involved. Some time ago, the American drama "East Side Nightmare" and the "True Detective" mentioned by many netizens are the leaders of this genre.
"Double Detective" obviously wants to take this road, but unfortunately, the screenwriter's pen power is too shallow to pry the frozen snow of the twin towers.
[The following contains serious spoilers (although there is no suspense), mind caution.] 】
01
Good bottle of old terrier
"Double Detective" has two parallel story lines, both originating in Beijing, but the clues point to the Twin Towers of Jilin Province.
The first line is the abduction of Fan Xiaoyuan, a fifteen-year-old girl in Beijing.
It just so happens that Fan Xiaoyuan's good friend's father is a policeman from this film, named Li Huiyan (Duan Yihong).
Li Huiyan lives in the second ring hutong, his wife is gone, he is alone with his son, and his life is tight.
On the road, he encountered bandits, and he rode the two-eight bars for a long time, but still let the criminals run. So the whole city was blocked, and as a result, the criminals still hid the sky and fled from Beijing with the little girl.
Li Huiyan and his colleagues tracked all the way and found that the group came from the Twin Towers of Jilin And rushed to the Twin Towers.
The protagonist of the other line is Zhou You (Dapeng), a mortician in Beijing.
Zhou You's father was murdered at home and his tongue was brutally cut off.
Zhou You personally collected his father's body and found that there was an inscription rubbing on his own photo in the family.
Du Niang told him that the stele came from the Twin Towers.
Coincidentally, the Twin Towers are also the home of travel.
When his father was going to Beijing for further study, he left the Twin Towers with his young age.
The early death of his mother and the father's constant preoccupation led to a disharmonious relationship between Zhou You and his father.
He was originally a student at a medical university, but later he left the doctors alone and started the job of putting makeup on the dead.
It seems that everything originated from the twin towers, and Zhou You decided to go back to the twin towers to find out.
As the plot deepens, Li Huiyan and Zhou You, who each carry a task, meet in the Twin Towers, and the audience will slowly find that these two seemingly unrelated clues are gradually entangled.
Coming to the Twin Towers, the painting style suddenly changed, from the city well of Beijing's hutongs to the rough and rough original ecology.
I have to say that the live-action shooting of the crew has greatly improved the texture of the entire drama screen.
For example, the part where Li Huiyan sees a bear in the snow, the snow ballast on Duan Yihong's face alone is enough to make people feel a bone-chilling chill;
The heat that comes out anytime, anywhere;
The actor staggers in the snow and stumbles from time to time;
Frequently seen stoves, small suns, and small details surrounding the heating design;
The occasional snowy empty mirror, the twin tower urban areas such as the Saibo street scene of the Hong Kong-style street...
We can see the sincerity of the creator:
They want to tell a crime story that really happened in the snowy plains of Northeast China, so that the audience can watch it, first physically feel cold, and then feel cold psychologically. In this way, when justice finally comes, the human heart is the warmest.
Watching the interview, Duan Yihong not only "tortured" himself, but also "tortured" the actors of the whole crew.
He shoots a scene of chasing a murderer in the snow, and he wants to stick his head directly into the snow;
Generally, actors shoot in the snow, they stay in a warm place first, and then come out after their own scenes. But when you first come from a warm place to a cold place, the whole person's state is not right, unlike the way it has been frozen for a long time in the ice and snow.
So the actors in the play all really stayed outside for more than ten or twenty hours, and the physiological reactions given were the most real.
The aesthetics of art and photography have always been online, and many emotions and character backgrounds are transmitted through the lens picture.
For example, the first few appearances of the big boss Wu Deshui have a deep meaning.
The shot of the butcher, with a different sense of ritual in the blood, implies that this is a person who is fierce in means but adheres to certain principles.
These are undoubtedly all places worthy of praise.
This is probably the reason why "Double Detective" has been hovering around 7.9 points and once scored 8 points.
In terms of hardware conditions, this drama is qualified.
But at the core of the story, the show is so old that I suspect that the brothers in the Greater Bay Area next door have played out such a plot decades ago.
But anyone who has seen a few crime movies, or who don't have to watch a few, as long as they have watched "Sweeping The Black Storm", can easily guess the cause and effect of the line of the father who traveled in the first few episodes.
It is a group of interest groups that commit murders in order to prevent someone's whistle-blowing, and then go their separate ways, and more than a decade later, the survivors of that year come to investigate the truth or take revenge, pulling out a series of old stories.
Although I also don't like strong plots that are reversed for the sake of reversal, the more I look at it, the more I find that the truth is really as everyone guesses, and I am still somewhat disappointed.
As for the girl kidnapping incident, Wu Deshui directly said that the girl was a "blood bag", and the plot could not be more obvious, and the police did not find out until episode 14 (a total of 16 episodes).
Not only does the weak sense of suspense affect the perception, but the details on the script that cannot withstand in-depth investigation are also a big grasp.
The most criticized by netizens is the strong sense of dislocation of the years:
In 2017, the courtyard of the Beijing policeman's house could not even afford to use a private toilet, and had to manage people everywhere to borrow money;
Beijing's police still work in the courtyard, dressed as if they were stuck in the 1990s;
In this era, Li Huiyan also rode around the hutong with two or eight bars...
However, many Beijing netizens have refuted these, only to blame the majority of netizens for not living in the second ring road of Beijing and have no chance to see;
But there are some places where it can't be said.
For example, the recurring white rabbit milk candy.
I understand that the screenwriter wants to use sugar as a metaphor, but putting it on a 15-year-old girl in 2017 is very contrary.
For example, in 2017, Beijing had already completed the Tianyan Project, and it was difficult for suspects to escape from Beijing city when the license plate number was exposed, so the screenwriter arranged for them to steal someone else's truck.
But did the truck driver not call the police after being stolen?
Just stare at someone else snatch the car away?
If the truck driver calls the police, the police call out the monitoring, find that the car is dropped, stop the vehicle in time or control the vehicle along the way, it should be achievable.
But nothing happened.
Because the screenwriter may not be able to think of a good way to let the kidnappers escape.
For another example, Fan Xiaoyuan was rescued by a butcher, placed a street away from the entrance of the police station, and then met by criminals and kidnapped again.
This kind of plot is not too bad, in addition to making people short of breath.
And the little girl in the car did not know how to suddenly have the strength to break free of the rope, and ran into the snowy mountain of minus tens of degrees with a cigarette, even if she only wore the school uniform pants, she could not freeze to death, and she did not get lost.
If the police in the play can have half of the little girl's combat value, it will not be that the case has not been solved in the finale.
The screenwriter's behavior of having to fool around in order to round the story is really an old double standard.
After all, when showing some plots that can be written only by accumulating a little life experience, the screenwriter spares no effort to show the so-called "sense of reality" (as we said earlier).
Those life stream clips that are praised by netizens, such as two old criminal policemen chatting about life while roasting a fire, or the bridge section of people in the play who eat and gag, are very good.
But these can only be counted as melon seeds and peanuts on the banquet, and no matter how fragrant they are, they can't be the main dish.
When you get to the main plot, you forget to be true?
I have to say that today's domestic dramas that are praised as "real" and "large-scale" have this problem.
Pick it out, it seems that I am mean; do not pick it out, and it is like a fish in the throat.
Nowadays, whether it is an audience member or writing a drama review, it is embarrassing enough.
02
There is no in-depth topic
Speaking of which, there may be viewers who can't sit still:
I just have fun, those coincidences should be the victim's bad luck, the kidnapper is luckier, can't it?
You are idle all day, how difficult is it for people to make a drama, you can make progress every day by looking for a domestic drama?
Coincidentally, a few days ago, when promoting the film, Chen Shu also stressed that it is not easy for the main creator to make a movie, and called on everyone to be more tolerant.
After listening to her speech, I felt that the "intolerance" of the audience was more important.
Take "Double Detective", such a luxurious, high-configuration lineup, why find a screenwriter who has almost no successful works?
It turns out that the biggest flaw of the show is the screenwriter.
The details I picked out above are only the obvious problems of the script, and the greater regrets of this play are still deeper.
First, the show has no character development to speak of. Obviously, there are a few people who have a lot of tension, but the real performance in the plot is empty.
Li Huiyan, let's not say.
In addition to repairing the toilet at the beginning, having a few words of poverty with a few colleagues, occasionally nagging Zhang Guoqiang about the family, and the persistence and seriousness of handling the case, one of the "double detectives" has no story and no dilemma.
The second tour of the "double detective" is a person with a story, father and son are incompatible, self-destructive, and when he returns to his hometown, he is not only pursuing the truth, but also trying to reconcile with his dead father to make up for the huge rift in the family relationship over the years.
He must have complained about his father, but his refusal to go home indirectly led to his father's death, and his heart was full of guilt. After returning to the Twin Towers, he vaguely felt that his father's past was not glorious, so he did not tell Li Huiyan the truth.
He craves the truth and finds it difficult to accept it.
This kind of character entanglement psychology, the screenwriter did not dig deeper.
As a result, the protagonists of the play, the characters of the two detectives, all collapsed.
Second, the successful two-line juxtaposition and double-male mode must make two clues and two characters have a chemical reaction at the thematic level, rather than simply connecting the two plot lines.
Since "Double Detective" has taken the two protagonists as the title of the play, it is reasonable to elevate the theme to the interaction of the spiritual level of the characters.
But what we see is that until the 14 episodes, the relationship between the two is still at the level of case solving, and Li Huiyan has not participated in the dilemma of Zhou You's life at all.
That being the case, what is the meaning of the existence of the two male protagonists?
Finally, I believe that the audience who has a certain amount of domestic crime films has a sense of déjà vu about the overall temperament of the show.
Many places in "Double Detective" exude the characteristics of the "Northeast Narrative" in recent years.
The snow-capped environment, the remote towns full of evil, the declining state-owned enterprises and factories, the people who adhere to morality...
The crime stories that have taken place in the Northeast over the years have all been a tune.déjà vu.
It can be seen that the screenwriter tried to outline the social ecology of the remote town of the Twin Towers in the urbanization reform through two crimes.
For example, the idea of the forest keeper Unaji is to guard the land where her parents are buried, so that the bears who also have no parents can live with her in health and safety.
Unfortunately, the strength of one person cannot resist the tide of reform.
The watchtower was demolished, Unagi's ideals shattered, and his hometown was lost. She may have to go to the city to learn some crafts, forced to become a wandering foreigner, unable to find her spiritual home between the city and the countryside.
In fact, Zhou You is another Unagi.
When he returned to the Twin Towers this time, he was looking for roots, looking for the root that changed his father and thus changed his life, so as to find the direction of the future of life.
These line writers are obviously hidden at the beginning, but it is written that there are more and more branches, and the tasks carried by the protagonists have long been thrown out of the clouds.
Do you think that even the protagonist can't write it, and you still want to write a group portrait of a small town?
Wu Deshui, who has a strange disease, Ice Sister, who is serious about righteousness, and Lei Gong, who does not talk much, are all on the surface.
If it weren't for the fact that a bunch of actors had excellent acting skills and the photographic art was so good, adding a little ornamentation, it would have been nothing at all.
Therefore, the very important theme of this play - the discussion of the social ecology of the northeast town and the mental state of the residents - has always been hidden.
Back to the question of whether the audience should be tolerant just now.
In the face of a drama like "Double Detective", the audience's "tolerance" is meaningless.
It is precisely because I believe that the creators are sincere, and I believe that they have spent a lot of effort to make this drama, that they must be "intolerant" to them.
A project, it is difficult to invite so many excellent and reliable people to help, but because of the laxity of the screenwriting link, it affects the overall situation.
Is this a waste of resources?
Anyway, I can't see this kind of waste, and I hope that this waste will be less and less.
Only the audience's intolerance can force these creators to grind the script like they are looking for actors and photography and art.
Only if there are more picks and thorns, domestic dramas are always thunder and rain and small problems can be improved.
Otherwise, it will always be an awkward blow at the beginning of the broadcast, and the plot will be scattered as soon as it goes deeper.
Creator and audience, who can fall well?