Why is it still difficult to break through the box office curse in the "Moscow Action" with a large amount of action?

Wen | Zero One
Most of the National Day films didn’t perform as expected, and Operation Moscow was a particularly regrettable one.
As of October 5th, The Moscow Action was released for 7 days, with a total score of 374 million yuan, ranking fourth in the schedule. Although the attendance rate has been slightly ahead for several days, the total box office is still behind Rock-solid, Previous 4 and Volunteers: Attack by Soldiers. Word-of-mouth is obviously higher and lower. The score of "Moscow Action" reaches 7.3, which is the first in the same period, but after a few days, the score of Douban has dropped to 6.8, which is higher than that of films in the same period.

Operation Moscow is the fourth film released by director Qiu Litao during the year, and the first three films all failed in word-of-mouth box office. The box office of Assassination Storm, Pursuit of the Jedi was only tens of millions, and that of Anti-drug 3: Man in the End of the World was only 284 million, which was 1 billion+less than the second film in the same series. The three consecutive box office attacks almost offset the historical achievements of commercial films accumulated by director Qiu Litao in Shock Wave 2’s Anti-drug 2.
The reason why the box office performance of this film is "regrettable" is mainly because "Moscow Action" has been the most neat "action" directed by Qiu Litao this year, and it is a good quality finished product of this high-yield director, and it also has some merits in the film’s personal style and aesthetics. And "Moscow Action" is different from the first three films in 2023. This film is starring and supervised by Andy Lau, which is closer to the lineup of two 1 billion+films directed by Qiu Litao in Shock Wave 2’s "Anti-Drug 2" and has more topical themes. Therefore, it is still considered promising to reach the box office range of more than 900 million before the release. However, with the overall decline of the box office, the lighthouse AI of "Moscow Action" predicts that the box office has reached 599 million, and the cat’s eye predicts 6.

The box office performance of this film is still mediocre. Perhaps the style of classic Hong Kong films has really lost its surprise and charm, or perhaps mainland audiences have lost sympathy for this kind of shooting technique represented by Qiu Litao.
Operation Moscow is based on the first real case of cross-border pursuit in China. In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Russian economy was close to collapse. A large number of China profiteers took the K3 Beijing-Moscow international train to resell China’s goods to Russia to obtain sky-high profits. The bandit group headed by Huang Xuan as Miao Qingshan looted the K3 train, and then the police team led by Zhang Hanyu disguised as businessmen and went deep into Moscow to arrest them.

Generally speaking, "Moscow Action" is still too formal, and it still belongs to the kind of film that is relatively rough in many details. There are not many unexpected things, and the action drama is full and the characterization is weak. It seems that the common success of Shock Wave 2’s literary drama and action drama is only a flash in the pan.
Compared with Hong Kong film assembly line style Assassination Storm and Anti-drug 3, the first highlight of Operation Moscow is the sense of the times. The film begins with Black Panther band’s "Ashamed", and with a nostalgic lens with vague visual texture, the music and visual symbolism quickly pull the audience into that changing restless era.
The biggest attraction and selling point of "Moscow Action" is all kinds of online explosion scenes and action scenes. From the first act, it has created a crazy and fast overall rhythm, and the action scenes of the whole movie are full. The robbery on the train highlights the gangsters’ sense of madness and terror, and then the street car chase, the sewer motorcycle chase, the airport gun battle, the jeep blocking the fighter plane, and the last train track change battle are definitely called "a lot of action scenes", and each scene and action scheduling are not difficult.

In a general crime movie, it is likely that the action drama will end in the motorcycle chase in the sewer, but Qiu Litao is obviously not satisfied with this. He used his own good way one after another to fill almost all the movie time with action dramas with sufficient weight, excitement and excitement.
However, this practice also brings two problems: First, the over-saturated gunfight and explosive action scenes create too chaotic impressions, and the battle often begins and ends in a sudden outburst and indiscriminate bombing, making it difficult for the audience to even distinguish the war situation; Secondly, there is not enough ample space for characterization, which leads to the weakness and failure of the main characters of the pros and cons.
The problem of action drama can be said to be the director’s personal preference and the defects of scheduling and lens. Qiu Litao’s several action dramas are exciting enough for a large number of people, but after careful study, there are holes in the plot to be filled. It is hard to say whether it is a scene for the sake of the scene and an explosion for the sake of the explosion.
However, the problem of characterization is more due to the roughness caused by the shooting concept. According to common sense, the justice team represented by Zhang Hanyu has little space, but Miao Qingshan, the perverted villain played by Huang Xuan, and Vasily, the gray centrist played by Andy Lau, have great space to play. However, the film is still presented in a stereotyped and monotonous characterization way, which eventually leads to the lack of prominent characters and memory points.

For example, Miao Qingshan is an antisocial pervert who loves classical music, and Vasily is "for his daughter" all the time. The characters have a heavy sense of labels, but at the same time they lack bedding and multi-faceted shaping, which makes the characters "instrumental" too strong. Miao Qingshan actually has great potential to shine, and Huang Xuan’s performance can actually be called in place, but it is difficult to leave a strong shock like those successful contrast abnormal villains in the film history, mainly because the whole film does not pay attention to the narrative perspective and focus of this character.
In the first half of the film, Miao Qingshan was as bad as the "clown" in the Batman movie for no reason, and as a cruel villain who loved classical music as Gary Oldman in The Killer is Not Too Cold and Lei Yaoyang in the gangster. However, these settings did not become the starting point for the progressive plot of the film, and the low correlation between the characters and the plot led to too many "abandoned plays". In the end, after being caught eating jiaozi, Huang Xuan, who was crazy for a whole game, suddenly revealed his true feelings to express his childhood misfortune, which was extremely abrupt, mediocre and lacked bedding, and failed to form a colorful figure facade.

It should be noted that Miao Qingshan is already the character with the most ink and the strongest drama conflict in Moscow Action, and the characterization effect of Miao Qingshan is so general, which shows that the characters in the whole movie are weak and rough. Vasily played by Andy Lau is a vulgar parent-child drama, which only has a certain interpretation space in the final blind plot, far less than Shock Wave 2; What is even more unacceptable to the female audience is that the female characters in the whole movie are either cut by QJ or throat, all of which are vague, and almost no female characters have inner drama presentation and expression.
But in any case, "Moscow Action" is still one of the best action films and gunfight films in the cinema market in 2023, and it is full of directors’ expertise. Even if the score drops to 6.8, Action in Moscow is still the highest-rated new film directed by Qiu Litao in 2023. This film is definitely not a bad film. Compared with Assassination Storm and Anti-drug 3, which work for old faces such as Liu Qingyun and Louis Koo, Action in Moscow has more personalized expressions, but it continues to carry forward the crazy and destructive temperament of Qiu Litao action movies. The overall impression is that

The overall temperament of Operation Moscow is a typical cast style of Hong Kong films in the golden age, which is in the same strain as Shock Wave 2’s Anger and Serious Crime and Detective Wars in recent years.
However, it is worth mentioning that since 2023, almost all films of the same type have declared box office failure in Chinese mainland cinema market, and the "guaranteed effect" of familiar faces such as Louis Koo, Liu Qingyun, Aaron Kwok and Andy Lau is getting lower and lower.
Only a few years ago, Hong Kong-style action films such as Anti-Drug 2 and Shock Wave 2’s Anger and Serious Crime were able to win 1 billion+box office. Last year, the film market was in a downturn, but there were 712 million Detective Wars, 679 million Tomorrow’s War and 481 million Anti-Corruption Storm 5 in Hong Kong films. Since 2023, Action in Moscow has been the highest box office of Hong Kong films with cast style. The mainland market of Bitter Counsel, which broke the local box office record in Hong Kong, is only 187 million, and a large number of films gathered by Hong Kong stars, such as When the Wind Comes Again, Assassination Storm and Don’t Call me Gambling God, have not broken 100 million. It can be seen that it is increasingly difficult for both emerging Hong Kong films and "ancient" Hong Kong flavor to become the mainland film market.
At the beginning of the year, when The Wind Comes Again failed at the box office, Reading Entertainment commented that "Hong Kong films are unlikely to return to the cultural influence that swept across East Asia and even the world in the golden age, but this does not mean the demise of the Hong Kong film market, but the creators need to see the needs of the target audience more clearly-those who have feelings for traditional Hong Kong films and those who are filled with imported visual blockbusters, what they want to see may not be the same, and practitioners must find this focus from the beginning.
But now it seems that the change is more rapid than expected. For example, in Qiu Litao’s films this year, Jedi Pursuit and Moscow Action are both blockbuster films in his personal career, but it seems that the market no longer catches a cold for this abundant and vigorous style. On the other hand, the summer file has created a new height of short video film marketing, but the National Day file with a lot of theme lineups has failed to achieve a replica of the market effect, which shows that the uncertainty of the current film market trend is extremely high.
The main products of Anti-drug 3 are Yingming Culture, Universal Entertainment, Lianrui Film, etc., Assassination Storm is Yindu Institution, Upgraded Media, Taobao Film, etc., Jedi Pursuit is iQiyi Film, and Moscow Action is Chinese Film, Gravitational Film, Shangshi Culture, etc. Although the output is more, the production companies that directed films in Qiu Litao have been diversified since 2023, which shows that their capabilities in the industry have been more extensive. At present, there are still many films being made or finished in Qiu Litao, and it is still his normal state to have assembly-line production and occasional excellent works. However, since 2023, his box office performance has been really bleak. If it is difficult to make achievements again, the follow-up film and television companies may not be so enthusiastic about it.
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