With the arrival of the new coronavirus, the films of the Spring Festival file were collectively withdrawn on the big screen of the theater. Xu Zheng's "囧Mom", on the other hand, relies on the Internet platform and insists on celebrating the New Year for the audience on the first day of the New Year. Such a move has made "囧Mom" a hot topic of discussion among fans recently.
In this "囧Mom", Xu Zheng continues the characteristics of the "囧" series of "road comedies". "Tai 囧" is to go to Thailand, "Hong Kong 囧" is to go to Hong Kong, and this time "囧Mom" is also set in Russia. However, compared with the previous two works, in this "囧Mom", Xu Zheng also made new attempts and breakthroughs.
Compared with "Tai 囧" and "Hong Kong 囧", this "囧Mom" pays more attention to the shaping of characters and the portrayal of emotions, which is why the film is named "囧Mom" instead of "Russian 囧".
In this "囧Mom", the excellent special effects technology and the exotic scenery of Russia have brought many surprises to the audience, and the "Moscow Train Robbery" mentioned by Huang Meiying, the "囧Mom" in the film, has also aroused the curiosity of many fans - what kind of story is the "Moscow Train Robbery"?
In May 1993, the K3 international train from Beijing to Moscow was robbed by three gangs of gunmen. This "train robbery" that shocked China and foreign countries was brought to the big screen in 1995 by the two brothers of Hong Kong realistic crime film director Ma Dangxiong and Ma Dangjie. This film is well-made, but because of the specific era background, it has become a pearl in the long river of Chinese films. Today we will talk about the "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" filmed by the Mai brothers according to the "Moscow Train Robbery".
In 1989, former Soviet leader Sergei Gorbachev (also known as Sergeyevich Gorbachev) visited China and resumed trade with China. In order to promote economic development, an international train has also been opened between Beijing and Moscow. In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the commodity trade in Russia, Ukraine and other places also became the focus of attention of many Chinese businessmen. Frequent commodity trade also laid the groundwork for the subsequent "train robbery".
It is worth mentioning that it was precisely because of Sergei Gorbachev's visit to China that there was this international train from Beijing to Moscow in 6 days and 6 nights. In this year's New Year film "囧Mom", director Xu Zheng also made a joke about the name "Sergey".
With the deepening of Sino-Russian trade, in the early 1990s, this international train from Beijing to Moscow became a link connecting China and Russia's import and export trade. Most of the passengers on the train were merchants who traded between China and Russia. This K3 international train in the early 90s, can be described as a veritable "rich train".
On 26 May 1993, three groups of armed bandits robbed the train. After the "Moscow Train Robbery", the two brothers, Madon-hsiung and Madon-Jay, who are good at shooting realistic crime works based on real events, came up with the idea of putting this story on the big screen.
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In the early years, the two brothers, Ma Dangxiong and Ma Dangjie, attracted much attention in the Chinese film industry with their works such as "Provincial Hong Kong Flag Soldier", "Three Wolves Strange Case", "Lame Hao", and "Shanghai Emperor". In 1994, under the mediation of Jiahe Film, the Mai brothers reached a cooperation with the "Emei Film Studio" in the mainland to jointly create this "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" in the form of a co-production.
This "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" was directed by Ma Dangjie, with Mai Dangxiong as the screenwriter and producer, while Jiahe Film and Emei Film Studio jointly produced and distributed the film.
"The Great Robbery of the Sino-Russian Train" maintains the usual realistic style of the Mai brothers, and the excellent portrayal of the living environment of people in the mainland in the film makes the film appear infectious. The first half of the film focuses on restoring the scene when the robbery occurred, and the second half focuses on the police's detection of the case.
Lu Liangwei, who cooperated with the Mai brothers in "Lame Hao" and "The Emperor of Shanghai", played the male protagonist "Director Xiang" in the film and presented many wonderful performances. And Zhou Jie, who was not popular in the early years because of the role of "Erkang" in "Huan Zhu Gege", also played the role of the robber "Li Qiang" in the film.
This "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" is well-made, and the film is also very good in the restoration of the story and the shaping of the characters. However, the effect after the release was very bleak.
In 1995, this "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" was released in Hong Kong and the mainland at the same time. In the mid-1990s, Stephen Chow's nonsense comedies and Jackie Chan's bloody action films have always been the mainstream of the box office in the Hong Kong film market. Above the Hong Kong film market, this "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" failed to be loved by Hong Kong audiences because of its too realistic style, and finally only got a box office result of 1.57 million Hong Kong dollars.
On the mainland big screen, because of the "robbery" process in the first half of "The Great Robbery of the Sino-Russian Train", the filming was too dark and depressing, in order to take care of the viewing experience of mainland audiences, Emei Film Studio deleted some of the gray and dark scenes in the film, the Cantonese version of the film has 92 minutes, while the Chinese version is only 83 minutes. A full 9 minutes of footage were cut, resulting in the incoherence of the plot of the Chinese version. The flaws in the plot, coupled with the downturn in the early mainland film market, also led to the film's coldness in the mainland.
Under the dual factors of the environment of the times and the deletion of film dealers, this "Sino-Russian Train Robbery" was finally buried in the torrent of the times and became a pearl in the long river of Chinese films.
The dismal box office results not only buried "The Great Robbery of the Sino-Russian Train" in the torrent of the times, but also put the film career of the Mai brothers into a bottleneck. After the box office failure of "The Great Robbery of the Sino-Russian Train" in 1995, Ma Dangxiong and Madon-Jay joined forces to create "Black Gold" in 1997.
However, after the release of "Black Gold", it suffered the same box office setback as "The Great Robbery of the Sino-Russian Train". The film road of the Mai brothers has also come to an end in the successive setbacks of "The Great Robbery of the Sino-Russian Train" and "Black Gold".