2024 New Year's Eve Recently, with the 2024 New Year's Day schedule in full swing, the competition between major films in terms of audience, market, box office, and word-of-mouth has also continued to show white heat.
This year's New Year's Day file can be said to be Andy Lau definitely a hot character and topic center, in the released film, he starred in two high-profile works "Sneaking" and "Goldfinger", and soon after the Spring Festival, Andy Lau also has a new film "Mr. Red Carpet" with high expectations.
Among the three films, Andy Lau, the latest film to meet the audience "Sneaking", is not only the core starring but also the producer of the film, and the dual identity also shows Andy Lau's attention and concern for this film in a sense.
The story structure of "Stealth" is not complicated, it can be said that it is full of Hong Kong style elements, and it still follows the traditional Hong Kong police and bandit theme, and keeps pace with the times in the development of the story and adds fresh elements of the "dark web", and Andy Lau's appearance as the biggest villain this time has brought another layer of freshness to the audience.
The core point of the film is to combat drug crimes, and the "Lin Zhen'an" who is a lawyer in the film is gentle and elegant and righteous on the surface, but in fact he is a "two-faced person" who uses the dark web to conduct live drug trafficking and uses his own legal knowledge advantages to evade the crackdown.
As the saying goes, if you do too much injustice, you will kill yourself, as the first evildoer, "Lin Zhen'an" can't avoid the pursuit of ** after all, as well as the pursuit of the enemy.
In the gap between the two forces of good and evil, "Lin Zhen'an" had to face the accidental death of his brother and wife, and with the collapse of faith, his character became more and more extreme and crazy, and in the ultimate confrontation, he finally paid the due price for the mistakes he made and the sins he stove.
In terms of casting, "Sneaking" still chooses a Hong Kong star team mainly built by Andy Lau , Lin Jiadong , Ren Dahua , Lin Xue , etc., in order to balance the needs of the role, Peng Yuyan and young female characters Liu Yase who have entered the role of tough guys have been added.
At present, the box office performance of the film has successfully exceeded the 100 million yuan mark, and the growth momentum in the later period is relatively optimistic, but judging from the overall market feedback, it is also difficult for "Sneak" to go further, or to create a dark horse effect.
For example, for "Stealth", some people complained that the story logic of the film was confusing and distorted, and some people criticized the story line of the film for being too simplistic, and lacking the ups and downs of the plot development.
Some viewers questioned the oversimplification and even emotionalism of the image of the core protagonist "Lin Zhen'an", and some viewers felt unnatural about Andy Lau and Liu Yase playing husband and wife because of the excessive age difference, and so on.
At a deeper level, judging from a number of Hong Kong-style works that have been launched one after another recently, such as "Angry Tide" and "Goldfinger", which focus on police and bandits, although this part of the works has preserved the original flavor of Hong Kong films to the greatest extent, inherited the excellent factors of Hong Kong films, and moderately added new elements.
However, the film as a whole cannot achieve a major breakthrough and innovation, let alone a new transformation like "Infernal Affairs", in foreshadowing, story structure, character building, etc., the future of Hong Kong films "Where is the road" is still a profound examination question in front of the creator.
Of course, as a very mature model in the field of commercial films, Hong Kong films will continue to be an indispensable and important force in the film market for a period of time in the future, and will also profoundly affect the entire film market.
But I still hope that Hong Kong films, or Hong Kong films, can do a good job in cultivating new artists, polishing scripts and stories, expanding the subject area, and focusing on the lives of ordinary people who are more closely connected with the audience, and meeting the new audience with more works full of fireworks to meet the escalating needs of new audiences.