A two-hour action packed film with an abundance of fighting, gunfight and explosives. This is what Gao Qunshu's Wind Blast proposes to its viewers. But even though Wind Blast seems to have everything in store for the keen eye – tension, drama, romance, mountains and bad boys, the film is too far behind on delivering a viable story and although the pace never slows down, the interest quickly dies out.
Based on a true story, Wind Blast is the story of four detectives who capture a murderer and his girlfriend and try to bring him to justice. However, the blue forces are not the only ones after the suspect – two professional killers have been hired to track down the person who snapped a photo of the person who ordered the killing.
Wind Blast's characters are people just thrown in the mix of the story with no background and no development throughout. They are one-dimensional and the audience is not delivered anything to build upon and decide whether to side with them or oppose them. The hints of personal relationships and stories become annoying when no explanation is given and they seem out of place just mentioned in the story. There are no reasons given as to why anyone really does anything and no character is further explored or developed – they all remain strangers to the audience with nothing to relate to.
Despite the epic shots and endless landscapes and the beauty of the Gobi desert setting, the viewer has no orientation point and it is difficult to position the characters, thus taking away from the attempt to dramatise in that scenery. Despite the abundance of action, the film does not provide a consistent flow of events and between the landscapes and explosives, time stands still.
All that being said, Wind Blast is an obvious Western homage that is overflown with bullets, blood, car crashes and explosives. The fighting scenes are impressively well-choreographed and the cat and mouse games with vehicles are original. The scenes are shot in an interesting disrupted style, where no frame ends completely but cuts to another one, thus giving more speed to the events. But beyond a Western homage that replaces horses with cars and is overpacked with gunfights and chases, the film fails to deliver any tangible story and a substantial memory of it would hardly remain in the audience.Labels: research |
