Saving Mr Wu

In recent years, the movies produced from China have become more and more ridiculous and shallow, the screenplays were either ridiculous or stupid, the acting of all the characters were more pretentious and exaggerated. Lot of profiting Chinese on-line media companies also jumped on the money train to produce more and more superfluous and hollow films targeting the teenagers or low level TV viewers. Strong influence from Korea also polluted the self-respect and self-dignified of the younger generations in China, more young men looked more feminine and more look-alike the Korean young men, with forehead fully covered; young female actors(if we could tolerate their poor acting talent)look more and more like women in escort business. Pointless wedding scenes became the main course, love scenes, lovers' quarrels or misunderstanding scenes became the main scenarios and the plots. Shooting locations must be either Italy or France with lot of unrealistic story lines portrayed Chinese young men, especially young women living abroad. More and more scenes of passenger airplanes taking off or landing, so the airport terminal departure and arrival scenes also became part of these movies. Then night time party scenes also a must have, scenes of the Chinese young and old characters, male or female binged imported Italian or French wines also became must-have scene. Every female characters, heroines or supporting all looked like models, wearing expensive clothes, driving expensive imported foreign cars.....on and on, endless repeated again and again formulaic scenes, plots and scenarios, same crap, different titles. Then another genre mainly targeting the shallow Chinese viewers I.Q. and logic also polluted the Chinese copycatting movie industries: 99.999% pure ridiculous, clueless, pointless, stupid farce-like movies started to pest the Chinese screens. They completely misunderstood the definitions of "Comedy", they thought by throwing in all the ridiculous scenarios and plots, by allowing the actors doing the stupid exaggerated acting were the indispensable and must-have in their so-called "Comedy". And these above-mentioned stuff have become the total ingredients of the Chinese movie and TV industries.

Another part of the Chinese media industries also become the mouthpiece of the totalitarian Chinese Communist Party. They rewrote the historical record and document, invented so many unorthodox and untrue incidents to praise and kiss the Party, changed the Chinese history to brain wash their younger generations, injected falsified and blind patriotism, national hatred to the Japanese and dislike of the totaled Nationalist Party.

While these are the factual outcome of 95% of the Chinese movie and TV productions. There almost nothing worth watching enough, the tiny 5% portion of them are trying their best to do the good and doing their might to maintain the sanity of the Chinese. And "Saving Mr. Wu" is rightly among the small 5% rare species.

This movie at large is good and serious, but the randomly edited and patched time sequence of the story line, scenarios and the plots suffered huge set back. The formulaic but randomly linked and arranged time frames were like a drunken frog jumping around with no logical sequence.

The leader of the kidnappers also fell into the formulaic type of a farce-like comedian character. By acted and performed like that kind of criminal attitude, there was no way that he could become an Alpha dog but more like a typical American stand-up comedian with gifted and crafty wisecracking dialog. A criminal imprisoned for 10 years with teeth so clinically white was a terrible overlook by the actor and the production part.

Luckily, Andy Lau and those guys who played the police force have not been ruined by the partly unconvincing formula, they were serious, and Andy Lau was more serious in his sincere and complete believable performance as the victim of the kidnap case.

But the self-thought-to-be-correct and self-righteous directing and the editing had jeopardized this film to reach being a premium drama. The poorly assembled time sequence, the hourly patched scenes, the dragging stupid last rescue plan and the unbelievably ridiculous last seconds rescue were simply naively stupid and shallow.

Those overly dramatized scenes, the randomly poor patched jump-around hour this hour that sequences, and the unconvincingly exaggerated comedian-like acting and the overdone smart dialog of the criminal leader inevitably downgraded this film to a just OK thriller. And the curly hairdo of the criminal leader, then suddenly became regular straight prison shortcut hairstyle was another careless poof of this at least still quite watchable 90% serious Chinese film.

A huge movie star gets kidnapped for ransom and the police must find him before time is up.

At first I though the movie was going to be similar JCVD, and it does have elements of that in the movie, with Andy Lau playing a actor who could have easily gotten himself out of the situation he was in if he was one of the characters he plays, but instead he's stuck in a house with a series of men who, though love him as an actor, seriously mean business.

I loved the relationship Lau has with a fellow kidnapper. As Mr. Wu, he attempts to keep up his Star power persona to make him more claim. It was brilliantly done.

For the most part, the movie was about the crime unit assigned to find Mr. Wu with the missing person's clock ticking. The guy who they got to play the leader of the kidnappers really took over the screen. it was all about him, and he made an impressive villain to watch.

Overall, I have to recommend this police drama. Impressively done.

The bandits are brilliant, the others are ordinary. There are loopholes in the plot from the beginning. But the timeline and the plot are all right. It doesn't look messy and boring.

Saving Mr. Wu is a suspenseful drama inspired by real events. It tells the story of a movie star named Wu who gets kidnapped by criminals pretending to be police officers. The kidnappers then force him to ask a friend to pay a ransom for him or else he would die after twenty-four hours. In order to survive and give another kidnapped man some hope, Wu uses his wits to get to know more about his kidnappers, put himself in their shoes and find a way out. Meanwhile, the police is tracking down the leader of the gang as time is about to run out.

The most interesting element about the movie are the conversations between Wu, the victim, and Zhang, the leader of the kidnappers. The two empathize with each other to a certain degree and develop a certain type of code of honor, based upon honesty and respect. The film also has a quite sinister atmosphere as it mostly takes place at night and in small rooms. An interesting sidenote is that the man who was actually kidnapped in real life has a supporting role in this movie which makes this movie quite authentic.

On the other side, the movie fails to truly stand out and leave a mark despite the interesting characters. The film sometimes loses itself in lengthy and repetitive conversations instead of adding some pace and urgency. The way the story is told doesn't help either since the movie starts with a sequence that actually takes place towards the middle of the film, therefore spoiling half of it and making the whole plot quite predictable.

To keep it short, Saving Mr. Wu isn't a bad movie and worth your attention if you like tense dramas with profound antagonists and protagonists. The story is too predictable though and the filmmaking sometimes tedious. Watching this movie once is an overall entertaining experience but it simply isn't memorable and I wouldn't recommend purchasing it.

"Ding sets the sights on rendering the film a cinema vérité patina with frenetic editing, veridical setting and whip-panning immediacy, but the police procedural seems sloppy and too efficient, though Liu Ye is laudable as a diligent police vice captain who knows his stuff. Hemmed in by a noble fidelity to the facts, the game of cops and robbers is one-sidedly expedited, the thrill of the chase is deficient, and suffixing a fictive eleventh's hour rescue can only do a disservice to the dictates of fidelity, we all know the denouement, why bother?"

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.