A poor imitation of a Hollywood B-movie - "D-WAR" complete film review

A shot in the arm? A wake-up call!

After watching this film, I felt a huge psychological gap. My consistent impression of Korean blockbusters is that they have exciting stories, delicate emotional expressions, and vivid characterizations. Although the special effects production is not as advanced as Hollywood, the combination of wonderful plots and unique oriental backgrounds has a novel effect. From life and death spies to the JSA, from the flying Taegeuk flag to Silmi Island, from the Korean Peninsula to monsters, one after another, dedicated actors' performances, bold story themes, and novel and realistic special effects have become the invincible weapons of Korean blockbusters.

At the beginning of D-WAR, when I saw a dragon bigger than the American Godzilla hovering in the building, when I heard a slogan that was hotter than Transformers When I realized that this was a work that took six years of hard work by the director, I seemed to see a red sun rising slowly on the horizon, and the passionate red sun clearly reflected the "Asia" The six characters "The Rise of Blockbusters" were so dazzling that they made me forget the cry of "I want gold rather than good people, I want monsters rather than art."

However, the wind and water are turning, and everything is unpredictable. The right way is thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi. If you have too many honors, you will get carried away. If you have too many victories, your mind will be dizzy. The giant dragon He showed up, but received not only flowers and applause, but also questions and ridicule. The reason is simply that it suffers from a common problem of Chinese blockbusters in recent years: wonderful special effects but empty content. This misstep also dealt a powerful blow to the Korean film industry's unprecedented popularity for blockbusters.

The Story of the Dragon

I think the use of ink paintings to tell ancient legends at the beginning is a highlight of the film. It elegantly displays the spirit of Asian culture on the big screen, and also tells the story The classical temperament is naturally conveyed to the audience, which is quite the finishing touch (but unfortunately it is in the wrong place). Although the English narration behind the scenes combined with the pictures sounds a bit nondescript, it is not a big deal on the whole.

Then the story unfolded step by step according to the director's intention. It is said that there are two dragons, good and evil, who are incompatible with each other. The evil dragon sleeps underground and rises every five hundred years, and the righteous dragon practices in heaven. , waiting for the call of humans to fight against the evil dragon. Five hundred years ago, in the ancient Goryeo Kingdom, the Dragon of Justice reincarnated into a beautiful girl and was protected by the world. The Evil Dragon summoned evil forces to slaughter the world in an attempt to kill the girl before the Dragon of Justice awakened. The young and handsome bodyguard GG vowed to protect her sweetheart from falling into the clutches of the devil, but she also didn’t want to see her lover turn into a dinosaur:). After some ideological struggle, the two of them jumped off a cliff to die in love.

Five hundred years later, the people of the world are united, and the two dragons of good and evil have been reincarnated in Los Angeles, the United States (even the gods cannot resist the decadent life of the bourgeoisie!), and have been reincarnated into the handsome boy Ethan and the beautiful girl Sarah. At this time, the evil forces gradually revived, trying to conquer the world by force, and sent various people to hunt down Sara. After nine or ninety-one hardships, Ethan and Sara went through many hardships, from getting to know each other to falling in love. At the same time, with the help of a psychiatrist, they also realized that they were the reincarnations of the pair of fateful mandarin ducks on the other side of the ocean five hundred years ago. shouldering the great mission of saving the common people. Should I sacrifice a happy family for millions of people, or let evil forces wreak havoc in the world? The decision of life and death was once again placed before the two of them.

to be or not to be, its a problem! After a serious ideological struggle, they resolutely gave up their personal happiness and chose justice for themselves, heading towards the road of no return where heroes save beauties and beauties save the world...In the end, after a fierce battle, justice defeated evil and light was eliminated. After the darkness was over, the world returned to peace, and the day when the dragon of justice stood upright was also the time when the two parted ways. Ethan's eyes full of sadness and hope fell on the dragon for a long time and refused to leave, and the dragon was also reluctant to leave. Reluctantly, with the dragon ball in his mouth, he returned to heaven three times with one step, leaving behind only a ray of white light, a touch of sadness, and the words "goodbye jack, Alilang ah ah Alilang"...

Story The plot is roughly like this. As for the causal relationship between past and future lives that was promoted before the film was released, in my opinion, it is all nonsense. It is just to give an explanation to the messy plot. The film has three main lines. One is the line of the male protagonist's various encounters in real life, the other is the line of evil forces chasing the heroine, and the other is the emotional line of the male and female protagonists. The male lead is responsible for involving reality, and NPCs such as the FBI, the army, and Jack all follow him; the female lead is responsible for guiding magic, such as evil dragons, evil armies, and evil leaders following the heroine; and the collision between the male and female protagonists also plays a role. The clarion call for the battle between good and evil has sounded.

This kind of shooting technique of three lines running in parallel and converging at the end is commonplace in Hollywood movies, but in the hands of Lao Shen (Shen Jionglai), I felt as uncomfortable as constipation because of the film's The genre is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but somewhere in between. It is based on realistic science, mixed with oriental magic, and has some shadows of fantasy. This is because of this vague definition, which makes the film always Is looking for self-justifying reasons. It's not perfect after all, and many unreasonable parts of the plot have to be settled intuitively. However, the director forgot that too much is too little, and it may be excusable once or twice. If it is used too much, it is vulgar. First, a lizard skin makes the male and female protagonists The hero's intuition reflected it, and the male protagonist relied on his intuition to insist that this Sara was the person he was looking for among the 2,700 Saras. The CIA agent also relied on his intuition to arrest the person. The two fell in love with their intuition and went to Mexico based on their intuition. After filming like this, I'm afraid the director followed his intuition.

Acting: Not professional enough, I want to be an amateur

The acting in this film is really a big failure. I don’t know if the crew has no money to hire professional actors. It only looks like ancient Korean dramas. It seems to be the same thing, the actors are local actors and their acting is relatively normal. However, all the actors in modern dramas gave me the feeling that they were completely out of shape, or just doing errands, without any organization or discipline. Especially the two actors who played FBI agents had an amateurish spirit to their bones. Maybe it’s because Western actors don’t quite understand the world view setting in the script, and the director can’t explain it clearly (it seems he can’t explain it either). As a result, the actors are obviously outside the plot when performing. Only Brandy, who plays Sarah’s friend The actors feel quite believable, and they capture the characteristics of the urban petty bourgeois girl just right, but the performance is not difficult, so it can only be regarded as quite satisfactory.

Of course, the failure of the performance cannot all be blamed on the actors. After all, a few unfamiliar faces have no ability and strength to save the market. Faced with the implicit emotional interpretation of the Orientals, the actors can't find the answer. It's understandable. The jerky script made the situation worse, and the director's weak control almost gave the film a fatal blow.