Stills from Detective Chinatown 2
I believe that many people, like me, are chasing this series of movies with the amazing expectations of "Detective Chinatown". I still remember that when I watched the first Detective Chinatown two years ago, I unconsciously remembered the evaluation of The Coach played by Yuan Lang in "Soldier Assault" on The Chengcai played by Chen Sicheng at the end of the play: "Your road is much longer than Xu Sanduo. ”
"Becoming a talent" has finally become a talent. Although as early as 2012, in the self-written and self-directed TV series "Beijing Love Story", Chen Sicheng has shown his talent as a screenwriter and director outside of acting, it is in "Detective Chinatown" that Chen Sicheng began to establish his position as a film director. The combination of "Chinatown Detective" composed of Qin Feng, a good-looking detective wizard, and Tang Ren, who is obscene and funny and obsessed with Chinese feng shui, is full of tension and full of laughter. On the one hand, it is the display of Thai exoticism, on the other hand, the "secret room murder case" unfolded under strict logical reasoning, coupled with the Hitchcock-style plot reversal at the end of the film and the eerie and eerie laughter of Sino played by Zhang Zifeng, which is surprising.
Detective Chinatown 1
Perhaps because of the relatively high expectations of the vision, "Detective Chinatown 2" did not bring me too many surprises, and I was embarrassed to say that I almost slept twice in the crowded theater in the small county town of my hometown. In contrast to One, Two's story is set in New York, and the case is upgraded from a murder in a chamber of secrets to a combination of serial murder and case-within-case. The trip to New York, which begins with a champagne beauty in a luxury car, and the gimmick of the detective master gathered on the detective app of Crimemaster, the whole film seems to remind me of the rhythm of the bounty contest in the Hong Kong film "King of Killers".
However, Chen Sicheng's bottom card was not revealed so early, as he said in an interview, the creation is a process of fighting wits with the audience, the purpose is to prevent them from guessing who the murderer is too early. Therefore, in the game between Qin Feng and his detective colleagues who are both competitors and partners, when the suspect points to Song Yi, played by Xiao Yang, the plot has reversed several times, to some extent, it is Song Yi and the Chinatown Detective duo that push the progress of the story. Although it seems somewhat deliberate, the director is still successful at this point, that is, when he sees half of the film, he still maintains the suspense and tension of the detective story, whether it is Lu Guofu, the son of Uncle Seven, or Song Yi, or a white doctor, who has always maintained a close connection with the case.
However, when the murderer white doctor gradually surfaced under Song Yi's arrangement, I felt some disappointment. The connection point of the serial murder case is a mysterious painting symbol that appears from the feng shui book in the library, and what drives the progress of the story is Tang Ren's killing place and method arranged according to the "gold, wood, water, fire and earth", and the painting style instantly returns to the blood altar in "Young Bao Qingtian", is there any? Then, when I saw that the white doctor's motive for killing people actually wanted to become immortals in the form of blood sacrifice: "I trust God, my wife is dead, I believe in science, I am going to die, so I convert to Taoism and cultivate into immortals", I was completely confused. The core of this story, compared with the strict chain of reasoning pursued by Chen Sicheng, is simply ironic, just like you keep opening layers of matryoshka dolls with the curiosity of discovery and find that it is a rotten apple inside.
In order to increase the complexity of the case, Chen Sicheng added the case within case on the line of Song Yi. Song Yi's sister Song Qian was sold in the snakehead business run by Lu Guofu, and at the behest of Q, the number one in the crime master, he killed people by hitchhiking, killing Lu Guofu as the fourth sacrificer. Here, Chen Sicheng obviously laid a foreshadowing for "Detective Chinatown 3", and never explained where the mysterious q is sacred.
In fact, from the beginning of "Detective Chinatown 1", we can see the ambition of director Chen Sicheng. From the opening quote from the "I Ching" that "one yin and one yang is the Tao, followed by the good, and the nature of the person who becomes", to the calm heart behind the innocence of Xiao Sinuo in the film, Qin Feng's irrepressible hope to complete a perfect crime paradox when applying for the Criminal Investigation College, Chen Sicheng repeatedly told the audience: There is no such thing as absolute good and evil.
In "Detective Chinatown 2", Chen Sicheng quotes a sentence from the "Tao Te Ching" at the beginning of the film: "Dao Sheng One, Life Two, Two Birth Three, Three Lives All Things", and in the dialogue between Qin Feng and Song Yi at the end of the film, he constantly explores the two sides of animal nature and divinity presented in the human body at the same time. When Song Yi pulled up Qin Feng, who was about to fall from the building, Qin Feng thought that he had finally exposed the left-handed habit of deliberate hiding, to which Song Yi told him: "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss is also staring at you." It's okay to look, but don't look too long. "The bottomless abyss is the evil of human nature, and the gaze for righteous purposes is sometimes inevitably deceived and alienated by it. The light that hits Qin Feng at the end of the film makes him half in the light and half in the shadows, which also arouses the audience's speculation about its blackening in subsequent development.
Chen Sicheng's ambition is also reflected in his exploration of comedy detective films, confident that he has long narrative ability, when he began filming "Detective Chinatown 1", he had already made plans to create a local comedy detective IP and "Tang Detective" world. As he later said in an interview, "Our generation of filmmakers has a very important responsibility, which is how to get more Chinese audiences to watch our Chinese movies, rather than just Hollywood movies." "In terms of my limited experience in watching movies, this kind of comedy detective film in China has probably become absolutely popular since 1976 when Xu Guanwen directed films such as "Half a Pound, Eight Twos". Chen Sicheng's "Tang Detective" series is also more worth looking forward to.
As a New Year film, "Detective Chinatown 2" not only maintains the comedic color of the previous work, but also adds some interesting and keen careful thoughts, such as the film's mockery of Trump's "racial discrimination", the sightseeing car full of Chinese tourists holding selfie artifacts on the streets of New York, the overturned car full of Putian brand bags, and Master Wang Baoqiang, who loves to watch beautiful women live, and so on. Slightly embarrassing is Wang Baoqiang's exaggerated comedy performance style although it has converged.
In addition, as already mentioned, compared with Chen Sicheng's ambitions, the story core of "Detective Chinatown 2" is also fragile and awkward. Obviously, when Chen Sicheng shoots these speculative detective films with exotic backgrounds, he still does not forget to continue China's traditional cultural resources and the atmosphere of the times, but tradition is not just some symbols or concepts, but should be rooted in a deeper emotional structure and real life.
(Image from the Internet)
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