Will Jackie Chan’s latest masterpiece be the next "Taking Tiger Mountain"?

Poster


The sun in the west is about to set.
It was quiet on Weishan Lake.
Play my beloved earth lute,
Sing that moving song…

– "Play My Beloved Earth Pipa"

    1905 movie network feature This song sung all over the country for decades of the theme song once again in the cinema, from the mouth of the railway guerrillas to every Chinese heart, through the whole of Jackie Chan’s new "Railway Flying Tiger".

    As the poster above presents the beauty of the wind, several protagonists in the film "Railway Flying Tiger" appear in the frozen frame of the superheroes in the comics, from Jackie Chan’s role as the captain of the railway guerrillas Ma Yuan, to Huang Zitao’s role as the little tailor Hai Hai, to Wang Kai’s role as the sharpshooter Fan Chuan, and Wang Continental’s role as the Eighth Route Army Renguo, as well as the hidden protagonist Rui Ge, etc. In addition to giving a strong visual impact, it makes people feel vaguely: these ordinary little people may be the superheroes of China.

Jackie Chan, Huang Zitao, Wang Kai, Wang Continental’s comic poster

    This visual style ranges from the Flying Tigers’ windproof glasses, gloves, berets, armed belts, and other accessories, to clothing colors such as red, yellow, and blue, and then to the influence of train styling and station design. Compared with previous anti-Japanese dramas and anti-Japanese war films, it is more in line with modern aesthetics, providing more possibilities for red classic films.

    When it comes to red classics, the Tsui Hark version released on the same day two years ago was a great success, and its flashbacks echoed at the beginning and end were also borrowed from "Flying Tiger of Railway", showing the inheritance of the spirit of "Flying Tiger" and bringing out the latter’s biggest easter egg.

    Compared with the unique skills of the Eight King Kong of Tiger Mountain, the railway guerrillas also have their own strengths, and they all seem to be able to find corresponding characters in the American superheroes – the calm command of the guerrilla leader Jackie Chan, which corresponds to Captain America in the Reunion; the scissors stabbing of the little tailor Huang Zidao, which corresponds to the assassin Black Widow in the Reunion; the sharpshooter Wang Kai’s Hundred Steps Through the Yang, which corresponds to the eagle’s eye in the Reunion; the power of Sangping, which corresponds to the Hulk in the Reunion; and the hidden protagonist "Wang Sledgehammer", who is proficient in machinery and hammer dancing, which corresponds to the Iron Man in the Reunion…

    Therefore, our familiar red classics became the Chinese folk superhero anti-Japanese legend – fortunately not the anti-Japanese drama that tore the crotch of the devil to hide thunder, but the convincing setting that just fits the character image, so their housekeeping skills are not as against the sky as the Reunion, which allows them to face the well-organized and fierce Japanese army with just a few people. They still need to be constantly smart and strengthen the team to complete the ultimate task of destroying the Japanese railway transportation step by step.

    Since it is the ultimate mission, it cannot be achieved overnight. The film is divided into five interlocking and reversing chapters – train hijacking, rescuing the wounded, making explosives, jacking prison carts and blowing up bridges. It transforms the entire theater into a speeding train on the plains, transporting the audience to the days full of war and feelings.

    Next, let’s talk about the outstanding stars – Jackie Chan’s big brother is more simple and honest in the portrayal of characters, which is more in line with the image of Shandong Han, and his signature of kung fu comedy naturally makes this film a constant laughing stock –

    Huang Zitao, who made his screen debut, almost acted as a tailor-made literary and passionate young man, with an unexpectedly natural performance and smooth movements –

    The heroic Wang Kai can be called a representative of the guerrilla’s appearance and arrogance. Every appearance is worth the ticket price of the female audience, especially the scene of riding a horse and chasing a car to save people, which reminds people of the hero Zorro –

    Although the special actor Wang Continental has the shortcoming of Mandarin, the scene of charging with the Eighth Route Army at the last moment is really exciting –

    As for Ikeuchi Hiroyuki and Zhang Lanxin, who play the villain chief of the Japanese military police, they also vividly and naturally interpret the wretched and arrogant respectively, and there is no sense of discord in the comedy section –

    And from then to then, Ding Qian’s works have always been hard-core and humorous with a gloomy and a sigh, until this sunny and romantic "Flying Tiger on Railways" makes Ding Sheng also complete a "clearing the clouds and seeing the sun" in art.

    In fact, this is the third collaboration between Ding Sheng and Jackie Chan. Among the many roles Jackie Chan plays, the most similar in spirit to Ma Yuan, the guerrilla leader in "Flying Tiger", is Liang Dabing in 2010’s "Little Soldier" – both low-level little people have plain pastoral dreams, both have hesitations that they will regret if they don’t do big things, and both have the responsibility of "the world rises and falls, and everyone is responsible".

Jackie Chan in "Young Soldier"

    Even in the "Flying Tiger" movie, Jackie Chan sang the song from "Young Soldier" directly after singing the verse part of "Play My Beloved Earth Pipa" with everyone –

A big road leads to my house,

My family lives at the foot of Yoliang Yaliang Mountain.

At the foot of the mountain, there are five acres of fertile land,

Five acres of fertile land, what to plant…

    Indeed, the same story that happened in Shandong makes this chaotic entry feel incongruous.

    Therefore, we should rejoice that today, with the decline of individual heroism, we have finally come to this "Hero Song" that has crossed the millennium and echoed in Liangshanbo and Weishan Lake.

    We should be grateful that two years after Xu Hark led the Northeast bandit suppression heroes to outsmart Tiger Mountain, we finally came to this song of praise for the children of Shandong heroes who dedicated their actions to their mothers.

    We should be grateful that at the moment when the anti-Japanese drama was dragged into the water by the anti-Japanese drama, we have finally waited for such a masterpiece worth going to the cinema to enjoy and enjoy together.

    We should be grateful that in the era of imaginative American superheroes on the big screen, we can finally see in the cinema the little people from China who have written history and belong to our big heroes.