"Crazy Stone" by China's talented director Ning Hao

Before talking about Ning Hao's film "Crazy Stone", one person must be mentioned, that is Madonna's director husband Guy Ritchie. And famous, his cult classic film is sought after all over the world. In the film, Guy Ritchie seems to have created a brand-new film language. " was also a great success, attracting countless young audiences with its simple and pure entertainment. However, a few years later, he took a sharp turn for the worse. First, he smashed the film "Treading the Boundary", and then returned to the old way to launch the gangster film "Revolver", which still received a flood of bad reviews. Guy Ritchie's failure was largely due to the fact that he began to care about the thinking of his works. When he introduced philosophical thinking into the original complex film, the original fun film began to become jerky and incomprehensible, thus losing his original The simplicity and purity of the work.

If it is said that Guy Ritchie is losing what he used to succeed, Ning Hao, a young Chinese director, picked up what Guy Ritchie lost, and transformed it into Chinese local culture. Use it, and use it very well. The story of the film "Crazy Stone" was placed in the mountain city of Chongqing by director Ning Hao, and combined with a large number of local Chongqing dialect slang, the whole film is not only full of local flavor, but also full of fun. Some familiar music is slightly processed as the background, and unexpected results have been achieved, and the film has a very creative pleasure in the rapid cuts and scene transitions. There are quite a lot of characters in the film, and they are intertwined with each other. They are often followed by the mantis catching the cicada and the oriole, interlocking each other, making the plot always change incredible, allowing the audience to focus on the film for a long time, accompanied by non-stop laughter.

"Crazy Stone" is a purely entertainment commercial film, it does not want to express any overly profound themes, just to simply entertain the audience. In contrast, Chinese films have been quite lacking in interest for a long time, and most filmmakers rest on their laurels. Over the years, only one Chinese film, Feng Xiaogang, has been able to release a film that suits the audience's taste in a timely manner, in exchange for a large profit with a low cost. Facts have proved that China has no shortage of talents who can shoot high-quality art films, but what is lacking is the ability to grasp the market context to shoot. The talent of a successful commercial film. Don't think that commercial films are better than literary films. It's easy to make a junk commercial film, but it's not that easy to make a commercial film that the audience likes.

Although the film "Crazy Stone" uses exaggerated methods to create jokes, you must not ignore the strict logic of this film. The success of many jokes in the film lies in the pre-planted foreshadowing. For example, there is a bridge in the film. The international thief imitated the falling and stealing treasure in "Spy: Impossible", but the rope was not long enough. The thief was so angry that he scolded "profiteers". If the audience watched carefully, they would think of the merchant selling 10 meters of rope to the thief in the first half of the film. lens. In addition, there is another episode. Director Xie ignored his son's call for help several times. The reason for this humor is that at the beginning of the film, Xie Xiaomeng was found by Director Xie in the toilet to teach people to kidnap his father. This joke can be described as a double hit. There are many such ingenious layouts and connections, although exaggerated but very convincing, enough for the audience to use their brains to think. Because there are too many dramatic coincidences in the film, too many preset humorous burdens, and too many connections between characters, the story is prone to mistakes under such a huge amount of information. But in the end, Ning Hao and his screenwriting team did a very good job, and the whole story was told very closely, so that there were no obvious loopholes from the beginning to the end of the film. Such a commercial film definitely needs to be carefully and repeatedly scrutinized, not something that can be done by playing tricks.

Judging from the return of the film "Crazy Stone" on the market, the film really shows the potential of a dark horse. In fact, judging from the schedule and screening time of many theaters, this film is actually crowded out by blockbusters. Corner, its success depends on the audience's word of mouth and the praise of the media. Because it is a low-cost film, there is not much promotion in the film, and the film's cast lacks big names, and the director Ning Hao is unknown. All this determines that the film does not have any other selling point, only the film itself. This film reminds me of another film "Waiting Alone" last year, but compared to that low-budget film, director Ning Hao is not as famous as Wu Renxian, and starring Guo Tao is not as famous as Xia Yu. Although I have always felt that the performances of mainland Chinese actors are too positive, the actors in "Crazy Stone" did surprise me. The key to how scalable the actors' performances are depends on how the play is written and directed. Ning Hao has directed two art films before, but judging from his current performance, he does not specialize in entertainment films. There is no shortage of art film directors in Chinese films, but there is no shortage of entertainment film directors like Ning Hao and Wu Renxian.

Some people think that Ning Hao imitated Guy Ritchie's "Two Old Smoking Guns". In fact, I personally think that this film is by no means a simple imitation, because the story concept of the film "Crazy Stone" is completely new. The design of the plot is based on its own culture, and it can only be said that this is a reference. This kind of reference has always been the best skill of Korean filmmakers. They pursue the principle of borrowing, and absorb and digest the essence of foreign films to develop their own films. Therefore, the Korean films we see now are not only exquisite but also diversified. In the young director Ning Hao, I saw the learning spirit of Korean filmmakers. He knows how to absorb foreign culture for my use and make entertainment films with his own characteristics. Small-budget entertainment films such as "Crazy Stone" are the direction that Chinese films can strive to develop at present. Such films are very suitable for the current national conditions of Chinese films. After all, they can attract huge sums of money to shoot blockbusters like Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang There are only a handful of directors. Moreover, even if Chinese films are cast in large-scale productions, it is difficult for Hollywood to compete, and the Chinese film market is far less than that of the North American market.