Andy Lau starred in the inspirational film "Blood Choir", originally the most talked about this weekend’s new film, the first day of release on Friday accounted for 20.6% of the top, but only got 6.94 million yuan at the box office. On the second day of release, the single-day box office quickly fell to fifth place, Douban only 4.8 points, the row fell sharply, and Andy Lau could not save its box office and word-of-mouth.
This film is produced and starring Andy Lau, and starring two famous musicians, Lu Guanting and Lei Songde, with the help of Li Lizhen, Xie Junhao, Guan Lijie and many other old Hong Kong actors. The cast and story synopsis sound good, but the market performance is so bad, it is surprising: what is the problem?
"Hot Blood Choir" tells the story of Yan Zilang, a Chinese-American conductor played by Andy Lau, who accepts the invitation of his mentor played by Lu Guanting to return to China, participates in the "Hot Blood Choir Experimental Program" aimed at educating and saving poor students, and acts as the conductor of the Hot Blood Choir. He leads a group of students who are considered useless in the eyes, overcomes various difficulties and setbacks, heals each other, and finally achieves good results in the chorus competition and finds the value of life.
This kind of story framework suddenly reminds people of the French classic film "Spring in the Cattle Herding Class". Since it stands on the shoulders of the classic, as long as the screenwriter puts more effort into the script and the director shoots better, it will be a warm and touching film even if it does not reach the classic level.
However, the director and screenwriter have the enthusiasm to express the educational concept of "education without discrimination", but they do not have the ability to tell a good story. As a result, the entire plot is almost only a conceptual skeleton and didactic slogans, and lacks the support of real and credible flesh and detail. It is like stretching a 5-minute MV short film to 97 minutes, but there are still only MV-style thin stories and pale characters. What should be explained to the audience is not explained clearly, but a lot is said in various ways.
For example, the film is too unclear about the reasons and specific implementation plan for the formation of the hot-blooded choir played by the principal played by Lu Guanting. It is not enough to just tell the audience that this is a "teaching without discrimination" teaching experimental plan. Other teaching methods can also reflect the educational concept of "teaching without discrimination". Why is it necessary to establish a choir?
Moreover, these "bad" students in the eyes of the people were selected from several ordinary schools. The students should still be in their respective schools, and they don’t have much time to learn to sing in the choir. Why is there almost no expression of these students’ usual school life in the film?
The film begins with a chorus of champions at a major middle school practicing singing under the arrogant spectacle conductor played by Ray Songde, and a skirmish with the "useless" students of the hot-blooded choir. It was expected that the two conductors and the two student choirs with very different identities would have a more intense dramatic conflict in the later story, but this story line did not come to an end, which is a pity.
The biggest problem with the film is the paleness and thinness of the characters, and there is hardly a character that can stand up.
Although there are many scenes of Yan Zilang, the conductor played by Andy Lau, there is very little account of his personality description and character background, so much so that at the end he suddenly confessed to the students that he came to Hong Kong after a hit-and-run in the United States, which is very surprising. It also does not match the image of his upright and instructive character in the whole film. It seems to be a deliberate plot added in order to achieve the theme of mutual healing and redemption between teachers and students under the cultivation of music.
In contrast, it is also a portrayal of frustrated teachers and students, "Spring in the Cattle Cattle Class" is much more clever and natural, especially the shaping of several key students, which is more similar to "Hot Blood Choir".
"Hot Blood Choir" focuses on three problem students such as Feng Xinxi and a rich second-generation student who volunteers to join the choir. Among them, there are teenagers who become impulsive and fight because their bastard father (played by Guan Lijie) often beats their mother (played by Li Lizhen). There are girls who yearn to be cared for because their father loves alcoholism and always urges her to work and earn money. There are single-parent children who develop the habit of theft due to poor family…
However, the director and screenwriter’s description of each student and their family is like a MV, and more importantly, there is a lack of preparation for the sudden change of their parents, and the ending forcibly makes them move for their children, forcibly sensational, and unreasonable, resulting in the lack of room for outstanding actors such as Xie Junhao, Guan Lijie, and Li Lizhen to create characters and become symbolic characters in the film.
The child in the film who loved to play the harmonica, who had a habit of stealing, later went to return the stolen goods and bought them at double the price. Why did Wu Dairong, the exclusive director of the Hot Blood Choir, insist on using Plan B regardless of Yan Zilang’s pleading, and also fire Yan Zilang, who was pleading in the rain? At the end, inexplicably, the children of the Hot Blood Choir were allowed to perform on stage.
At the end, the hot-blooded choir performed a climax play, and all the actors were very involved. Andy Lau’s play directed by the mobile phone screen was impressive, but such forceful sensationalization was more about touching themselves, because it was difficult to resonate with the audience due to the lack of true and credible stories and characters.
The biggest highlight of "Hot Blood Choir" is the beautiful song at the end of the film. When I went home and checked the Internet, I found that the name of the song was "Who Can Understand Me", written by Zheng Guojiang, composed by Lin Zixiang, and sung by Andy Lau.