In recent years, in the film and television dramas in Taiwan, the crime genre has attracted special attention.
2019's "The Distance We Have From Evil", 2020's "Who Is the Victim", and the earlier "Witness Pursuit" are all masterpieces of this genre.
Coincidentally, the "Mist Theater" launched by iQiyi on the mainland last year has received a lot of praise with two topical works, "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth".
Therefore, the crime suspense drama "Reverse Game", which was launched in September this year, has also attracted considerable attention.
Poster of "Reverse Game"
The drama was invested and filmed by iQIYI, and the script was adapted from the novel "The Pursuer" written by mainland writer Senyu Castle, while the production team and cast were from Taiwan.
It can be said that in the field of domestic crime dramas, "Reverse Situation" is the most in-depth cooperation between the mainland and Taiwan in recent years.
The drama has a douban rating of 8.7, and many netizens even regard it as the first Chinese crime drama of the year.
In addition to Zhou Yumin's appearance is eye-catching, what killer skills are hidden in "Reverse Game"?
1
Suspenseful crime stories
At the beginning of "Reverse Game", it tore open the entire story with a tense and exciting "corpse fishing" bridge section.
Regardless of the danger to his life, the rookie criminal police officer Ren Fei jumped from the bridge across the river in an attempt to fish a pack of corpses floating on the surface of the water.
Stills from "Against the Odds"
The unfortunate victim was a woman, and in the blurred flesh and blood of the corpse, only the head and lower abdomen were missing.
The same carnage murders had occurred three times before that.
In the eyes of the police, the murderer behind these four serial corpse splitting cases should be a psychopathic male. But in the eyes of another person, the real murderer is most likely a woman who has miscarried.
Because the four women were all pregnant and planned to have abortions, and all of them lost their lower abdomen, indicating that the murderer wanted to cover up the secret of the victim's womb.
This person with dissenting views is the lawyer Liang Yandong, played by Zhou Yumin.
Liang Yandong, who was also a criminal police officer, was deeply disappointed in the police system and became a litigation lawyer, and the cases he defended were almost never lost.
But just a year ago, Liang Yandong was deeply involved in a sexual assault and murder case.
Because he happened to appear at the scene of the crime and there was no lack of "motive for the crime", he was charged with imprisonment by the police.
Although Liang Yandong racked his brains to overturn the case, due to the sudden disappearance of the most critical witness, he could only stay in prison to recuperate.
The serial body splitting case that made the police anxious just happened to be an opportunity for Liang Yandong to overturn the case.
He plans to reach an agreement with Ren Fei that as long as the police help him find out the truth and clear up his grievances, he will help the police crack the serial body splitting case.
In addition to these two cases, Liang Yandong and Ren Fei also had their roots in an indiscriminate shooting case twelve years ago. In that shooting, Liang Yandong's girlfriend and Ren Fei's mother were all tragically killed.
"Reverse Game" continues to promote the plot through the clever narration of these three cases.
Who is the real culprit behind the serial corpse splitting case? Who is the black hand that framed Liang Yandong for murder and imprisonment? Was the shooting that led to the loss of a loved one and a loved one 12 years ago an accident?
All the mysteries seem to be unrelated, but as the plot continues to develop, all the isolated events gradually become a whole, and the black hands behind the scenes gradually surface.
2
Dual spaces and multiple levels of nesting
If the suspense in "Reverse Game" is the stimulant that arouses the fans of the drama to constantly chase the drama, then the narrative means of weaving these suspense are the characteristics that distinguish it from the general crime suspense drama.
Directors Zhuang Xuanwei and Chen Guanzhong first put enough effort into the narrative space, and the two male protagonists, Liang Yandong and Ren Fei, actually represent two different spaces: inside the prison and outside the prison.
Inside the prison, there are strict rules of the cell. Above, there is the management level composed of deputy directors, directors and ordinary prison guards; below, there is the rank of prisoners composed of prison bullies, prison bullies' younger brothers and bullied prisoners.
Prison character relationship diagram of "Reverse Game"
On a visual level, there is almost no day-to-night distinction in prisons.
The dim yellow light and the interweaving beam of black and white made Liang Yandong always in a depressed atmosphere, as if he could fall into the intertwined zone between good and evil at any time.
In addition, Liang Yandong is always facing the threat to his life and is deeply disturbed by the mysterious murders.
Outside of prison, Ren Fei's environment is the same.
Although he and his colleagues had occasional frictions, there was almost no hierarchical oppression; investigating crimes was occasionally dangerous, but the vision was full of light.
The most important thing is that Ren Fei is not in constant danger of being murdered.
Interestingly, although Ren Fei is outside the prison, he has no way to deal with the case; although Liang Yandong is in prison, he can always understand the core of the case.
Through the layered contrast of these two spaces, "Reverse Game" switches back and forth between tension and relaxation, darkness and brightness, danger and thoughtfulness, and the drama is also enriched.
Another narrative feature that the series has to mention is that it can always form a nested relationship between different cases.
In the past domestic crime suspense dramas, there are generally two narrative modes:
One is a concatenated detective, that is, to let the same group of investigators solve one tricky case after another, such as "Young Bao Qingtian" and "Detective Di Renjie";
The other is a single-case detective, which mostly wins by shaping the character of the character.
In "Reverse Game", the serial corpse splitting case investigated by Ren Fei and the sexual assault and murder case that Liang Yandong fell into are always inextricably linked.
Therefore, whenever Ren Fei or Liang Yandong solves a problem of the other party, they actually inadvertently solve their respective puzzles.
Narrative techniques that make multiple cases interconnected and nested with each other are not uncommon in mainland crime dramas in the past two years.
Last year's "The Silent Truth" represents three different cases in three time and space through the three characters of Yan Liang, Jiang Yang and Hou Guiping, but they are nested in each other.
Stills from The Silent Truth
The crimes of the old time and space are often the key to deciphering the crimes of the new time and space.
The not-so-recently concluded Northeast-themed crime drama "Double Detective" also adopts a similar narrative technique.
The two different cases investigated by Li Huiyan and Zhou You are skillfully stitched together through the character of Bai Shizhou, and even traced back to a massacre more than a decade ago.
Stills from "Double Detective"
It is not difficult to find that the nested detective method used in "Reverse Game" has a more dense amount of information than the original single case detective method.
When multiple protagonists carry out wonderful time-space linkage through different cases, the suspense texture and reasoning intensity of the series have a wonderful taste of one plus one is greater than two.
3
The people around the crime
A high-minded crime movie or series often does not stop at narrative tricks, but spends a lot of effort on the "people around the crime", thus showing the multi-faceted prism of human nature, and even peeking into the unfathomable darkness of human nature.
Jonathan Dymi's "The Silence of the Lambs," David Finch's "Seven Deadly Sins," and the American drama "Breaking Bad" are all masterpieces of this kind.
Stills from Breaking Bad
In the Taiwan drama, it is "The Distance Between Us and Evil" that makes this effort.
Through an indiscriminate homicide case two years ago, the play looks at the emotional attitudes of various groups, including the families of the victims, the families of the perpetrators, the perpetrators' defense lawyers, and the onlookers.
By showing the respective moral positions of the "people around the crime", the play draws a profound truth that "our distance from evil depends on the distance between us".
Although "Reverse Game" is more of a local reasoning crime drama and spends a lot of ingenuity in the laying of suspense, it still tries to interrogate the hearts of "people around the crime".
Here, the audience sees the indifference of the police and prison authorities who look down on the crime, the interference of the media people who look down on the crime, and the helplessness of the criminal murderer who looks up to the crime.
The sub-chief of the police station and the deputy director of the prison represent the corruption of the bureaucracy. They don't care who is the real culprit or whether they've been wronged.
Whether or not you can keep your official position is the way to survive for such corpse vegetarians.
This is what Liang Yandong said: "The vast majority of police are thinking about how to catch bad people, but over time, a small number of them are thinking about how to create criminals." ”
For media people who make a living by making gimmicks, it does not matter whether the case can be solved and whether the real culprit can be arrested.
In the play, the reporter of "Feng Weekly" did not hesitate to publicize the core case of the police in order to gain fame, resulting in Ren Fei and others always being passive, and even almost causing a female policewoman to encounter an accident.
As for those who commit murder, it is not black and white in the play.
Tian Yongqiang, who has killed multiple rapists in prison in a row, and Cao Wannian, an accomplice, are not born bad people. It was only the tragedy they experienced and the injustice of the judicial system that made them choose to become such a murderous maniac.
In addition to these "people around the crime", "Reverse Game" also portrays vested interests who use powerful power to satisfy selfish desires.
This reminds one of "The Silent Truth" again. In the play, the group of black-hearted entrepreneurs killed Hou Guiping for their shameless desires, turning Jiang Yang's life into a tragedy.
Similarly, the Spanish crime drama "The Best of Innocence" produced by Netflix in the first half of this year also targeted the elites of the upper class, exposing their evil tentacles to the ugly faces of women.
In this way, it is not difficult to understand that "Reverse Game" can get such a reputation.
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