Ice and snow bury loyal bones, and the cold shines on iron clothes

Changjin Lake and Changjin Lake are two different things.

One is the war between ice and fire that actually happened in the mountains of the Korean Peninsula more than 70 years ago;

The other is the war that happened on the big screen in 2021. The most anticipated domestic war movie;

If it weren’t for this desperate fight that would still haunt both sides of the war more than half a century later, there would naturally not be the reality of the subsequent movie. Historical basis, so what kind of bloody battle was this that makes people so fond of it?

The story takes place from November to December 1950, belonging to the Eastern Front of the Second Battle. The two sides are the Ninth Corps of the Chinese People's Volunteers and the U.S. Tenth Army. The Volunteer Army has the 20th Army, the 26th Army, and the 27th Army, with a total of 150,000 people. The U.S. Army has about 100,000 people, mainly on land. 1st Division, Army 3rd Division, 7th Division. These two troops were the elite divisions of the main armies of both sides at that time, so this battle was like Mars hitting the earth, ace versus ace.

The Ninth Corps led by the founding general Song Shilun was originally the main force in the cross-sea battle to liberate Taiwan, and had been preparing for war on the southeastern front. Unexpectedly, the Korean War broke out, and they were ordered to move north quickly and rush to the front line of the second battle day and night. This was a very fast soldier, but at the same time, there was a hidden danger of a serious shortage of logistical supplies, especially the cold-weather clothing necessary for fighting in alpine areas. Unfortunately, they later encountered the coldest winter in northern Korea, so the Ninth Corps of the Volunteer Army had two enemies at that time, the Americans and the weather. If the former one could be fought with fearless morale, the latter one would undoubtedly be more cruel. many.

The 1st Marine Division, the main force of the US Marine Corps opposite, also made great achievements in World War II, especially in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which withstood the Japanese troops marching south and counterattacked to win. His reputation was so great that he could have "GUADALCANAL" embroidered on his armband, and his popularity was unparalleled. The American drama "The Pacific" produced by HBO in 2010 is based on their war history. The U.S. military at that time was well-equipped and had high morale. If there was any flaw, it was the overt and covert struggle between Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of the United Nations forces, Almond, commander of the Tenth Army, and Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division, which also became the One of the hands that determines the final outcome of the second battle.

Since it is a war, there is always a winner or loser. Who loses and who wins?

Strategically speaking, the victory of the Volunteer Army not only shattered MacArthur’s boasted Christmas offensive, and also launched a counterattack, pushing the entire front line southward, approaching the 38th Parallel, and regained Pyongyang. The US military's more artistic saying is "we change the direction and continue to move forward. But whether it is the winner or the loser, this is a This battle was soaked in blood and claimed countless lives. From a tactical point of view, it can be said that there is a lot worth pondering and worthy of being savored by future generations.

Changjin. The Battle of the Lake set a record in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea when the Volunteer Army annihilated an entire regiment of the U.S. Army. The flag of the 31st Regiment "Polar Bear Regiment" of the 7th Division of the U.S. Army that was completely wiped out is still preserved in the Military Museum in Beijing, forcing the U.S. Army to The ace force, the 1st Marine Division, experienced the "longest retreat" in history. It can be said that in this battle, the volunteers demonstrated their military prowess, their national prestige, and their reputation as "the strongest light infantry in mankind."

At the same time, the harsh weather caused unexpected and heavy damage to the poorly prepared volunteers. In this battle, the Ninth Corps suffered 19,202 casualties, and 32,954 people died from frostbite. The ratio is 1:1.6, and the combined loss of the two forces exceeds one-third of the entire army's strength, which can be said to be a serious injury. In fact, after this battle, the Ninth Corps was forced to withdraw from the battle sequence and return home to rest and recover until He only re-entered the DPRK to participate in the battle during the fifth battle. The cruelty of this battle can be seen.

This was a truly tragic victory.

In addition to the objective factors such as the strength of the US military and the cold weather, subjective underestimation of the enemy also caused a profound review after the war.

The comparison of enemy and enemy forces on the Western Front is 1:1.5. This is just the number of personnel. If you include the huge differences in weapons, equipment and logistical support between the two sides, there is no air force, no hot meals, and heavy firepower is almost zero. There is basically no mechanization, and the volunteer army is actually at an absolute disadvantage. Under such a basic premise, it is undoubtedly unrealistic to set the campaign goal to completely annihilate the US military.

When the battle started, the Volunteer Army discovered that even if a division surrounded a US Army regiment, the opponent could still rely on its ferocious firepower reserve to shrink its defense line and wait for backup. No matter how the Volunteer Army penetrated and penetrated, close combat and night combat took turns, Even in the human wave offensive, there is nothing you can do against the hedgehogs balled up into a ball, and you can only watch helplessly as the enemy stumbles through the encirclement and retreats.

The most obvious battle is the Watergate Bridge. This bridge, which is stuck on the road that the US military must pass through to break out and retreat, was blown up three times by the volunteers, but each time the US military was able to rely on its strong logistics power The repair was completed in the shortest time, and for the last time, steel beams and iron cables were simply airlifted from the US military base in Japan to the Korean battlefield, and a brand new bridge with a load of more than 50 tons was built, and the passing capacity even exceeded the original bridge. But at this moment, with the insertion in place, the volunteer soldiers who were ambushing on both sides of the US military's retreat road never fired a bullet. The severe cold of minus 40 degrees had taken away their lives, and the unyielding ice sculptures still remained lurking. How unwilling is this to attack the formation?

The troops who entered Korea who had just won the War of Liberation undoubtedly put the genuine U.S. troops armed to the teeth and the Kuomintang troops with only American ordnance as a reference in the early days of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. Misjudgment actually exists in the entire army, and it has become a fatal blind optimism. When the battle started and real swords and guns collided, it was discovered that they were not the same thing at all. For example, during the entire period of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, four division-level commanders of the First Army were dismissed, and two were removed from their posts during the battle of Changjin Lake. Wu Dalin, the commander of the 88th Division, and Gong Jie, the political commissar, were dismissed for delaying fighter planes and ineffective combat. Under military law, the 88th Division was withdrawn and reduced to a regiment. This was an extremely severe and rare punishment in the history of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

So Changjin Lake, a place name hidden in the mountains of northern North Korea, became world-famous because of this war, which is unforgettable for both China and the United States. Frankly speaking, the Battle of Changjin Lake was not the most glorious achievement of the Volunteer Army during the entire Korean War. It has not been the focus of domestic propaganda for a long time. It was not even as good as the Americans who defeated Xingnan Port and gave themselves a shameful title. Hats than the Dunkirk evacuation. The entire second battle was divided into two battles: East and West. The Battle of Songgu Peak, which occurred on the Western Front corresponding to Changjin Lake on the Eastern Front, was written by Wei Wei, a war reporter at the time, in the famous "Who is the Cutest?" "People" was included in Chinese textbooks, and the 38th Army, the main force on the Eastern Front, was even nicknamed the "Long Live Army".

So why would we put such a battle on the big screen today? This is a good question. If you really want to answer it, I’m afraid you have to go back to today’s Sino-US relations seventy years ago and think about it. After all, war, as the most complex top model among all human social activities, has always been for politics. In service.

Having talked so much about Changjin Lake, let’s talk about today’s Changjin Lake.

As a typical high-investment, high-risk, high-return war movie, generally speaking, there are two directions.

One is to shoot bigger, showing the grand scenes of war and classic moments that reflect the great changes in history, such as "The Longest Day", "A Bridge Far Away", "The Armageddon", etc., but If you don't have diamonds, don't do porcelain work. Blockbusters are risky, so you need to be cautious when investing.

One is to shoot smaller, focusing on the joys and sorrows of individuals in the context of war, birth, old age, illness and death. This way the controllable risks are undoubtedly much smaller, and it is easier to arouse screams from the audience, such as "Rescue" Private Ryan", "Platoon", "Assembly" and so on.

The ambition of "Changjin Lake" is undoubtedly much greater. It wants the big one, the small one, both.

It is easy to say, but not so easy to do.

A three-hour movie cost as much as 1.3 billion yuan and took more than 180 days to shoot. The creative team polished the script for five years, with a shooting team of more than 7,000 people and 70,000 people involved. There are more than 40 special effects companies participating in the extras, and the total number of staff exceeds 12,000. No matter from which angle you look at it, it is a rare feat in Chinese films in recent years.

The main creative staff of the so-called Tiantuan Debut is composed of three directors: Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, and Lin Chaoxian. With the business capabilities and past achievements of the three of them, the works produced by any one of them standing alone will be worthy of success. So does one plus one plus one definitely equal three? Hey, this is not necessarily true, maybe less than two, or less than one.

We don’t know exactly how the three directors divide the work. Whether they are allocated according to the work content or according to the main plot of the movie. But for the audience in front of the screen, the biggest problem with "Changjin Lake" is that it loses the sense of balance necessary for an excellent work. There is no so-called ups and downs, ups and downs, everything is flat. It starts with a climax, and the car is racing all the way, and you step on the accelerator to the bottom, whether you feel dizzy or not. It feels like three directors are desperately competing for the audience. Come and see me, come and see me! Come and see what I took! However, time is limited and space is limited. It is difficult for a clever woman to make a meal without rice, so she will try her best to stuff in high-energy stimulation elements, whatever is exciting, whatever is sensational, whatever is short and quick, those who don’t know may think it is Hollywood’s number one terrorist Michael Bay. It's coming.

The whole process is non-stop, boom boom boom, boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom, with BGM that is forced in from time to time, causing more drama, until it comes out. My brain is still hurting in the movie theater. However, the plot can easily go off-line if it moves too fast, and the plot can easily overturn if there is no foreshadowing. Not to mention that sometimes the audience can't even see their faces clearly. The actors seem to have almost forgotten what they actually performed. The tearful scene without any thought becomes more and more cheap and childish.

However, the tearing feeling caused by multiple directors is far less than the damage caused by the five-cent special effects.

Oh, it should be the damage caused by the special effects of 200 million yuan, which is much more powerful than the special effects of 50 cents.

It’s already 2021, and the special effect of muzzle shooting with flames that are more than one meter long is still popular. Are you setting off fireworks?

He actually carried a bazooka rocket launcher to attack a fixed-wing fighter jet flying at subsonic speed. Is this a new technology learned from Bollywood next door?

As soon as the door of the Mercedes-Benz train opened, wow, thousands of miles of beautiful mountains and rivers rushed in front of me, just like the New Year paintings sold at the rural market, full of plastic feel, fifty cents a piece, no more ;

What was supposed to be a brutal encounter on the river beach actually turned out to be a scene of aerial dialogue between US military pilots. It felt like a sense of déjà vu when playing online games;

Driving a small truck, he rushed directly towards the US military convoy, killing whoever he saw, and those who didn't know thought they were possessed by Transformers;

Not to mention the shells that collided in the air, and the fight was endless. Endless bullets, crowded charging formations, explosion scenes that are not as good as station B, and weapons and props that are just like children's play. If you look carefully at American tanks, there is no commander's observation window on them. I don’t know how this tank can be driven, or should I say that the crew looked down on domestic prop factories. As a result, when you turn around, you will find that if you capture a tank at random, you can drive it, put it in reverse, load it, and fire it. Do you know how valuable a tank soldier was to the volunteers at that time?

The roughness, amateurism and carelessness that permeate the entire film are all reminders that the inflation in the Chinese film industry has reached such an outrageous level. It is really scary to think about it.

As for the actors, the one who performed the best in the whole film was Hu Jun. Although the final sacrifice also lacked basic military knowledge, as an actor, he had done his best. Followed by Duan Yihong, he acted everything he was supposed to do. He has no credit, but it can be regarded as hard work.

Yi Yang Qianxi is still stuck in "Young You", but this time he puts on a military uniform. There is no growth or breakthrough, but there is no decline either.

As for Wu Jing, who is in the C position, when will he learn not to show off and be cool in movies, and when will he become a real actor. Actors serve the movie, rather than putting the cart before the horse and letting the whole movie serve you alone. No actor can put himself above the movie work. If you insist on turning a movie into a one-man show, you might as well go to MTV.

As for those lines that are so shocking that they are almost funny, sudden preaching, awe-inspiring posing, the embarrassment of forcibly turning a corner before it’s too late, the same characters, etc., they all seriously damage a movie. The quality, the audience who paid for tickets to watch the movie, and the already difficult situation for Chinese movies in the past two years.

I really want to ask, if the film is made like this and is so shoddy, are you worthy of the heroes who sacrificed their lives in Changjin Lake?

Finally, let’s end with the famous saying of Yang Gensi, the volunteer army’s combat hero

I don’t believe there are tasks that cannot be completed.

I don’t believe there are insurmountable difficulties.

I don’t believe there is an enemy that cannot be defeated.