竹炉山房

在家看了《英伦对决》（The Foreigner）。

看那适合一帮子底层观众的xx对决之类的老土名字，本以为又是一部成龙式适合男女老少观看的不烧脑爆米花俗套电影，想不到竟然在剧本、画面、叙事、悬念各方面都较为出色，紧紧的抓住了观众的眼球。

个人觉得几个主要亮点是：剧情紧凑、一波三折、贴合时事，要归功于史蒂芬·莱瑟（Stephen Leather）1992年出版的小说《The Chinaman》打的底子好；画面充满英伦风、现代风，这方面新西兰导演马丁·坎贝尔功不可没；打斗出色，特效真实。唯一的缺憾是成龙这条主线较为弱化，戏份太少，在皮尔斯·布鲁斯南的气场下一度成配角。

有意思的几个点：1、当年的小说为了抓人眼球用了侮辱性的Chinaman（中国佬），本次电影虽然对白中大量出现Chinaman，但英译还是用了Foreigner（外国人）这样较中性的词汇，然而却收获意想不到的双关效果：既指中国人又暗喻爱尔兰人。2、片尾曲成龙主唱，竟然毫无违和感，对外国观众来说反而多了一些“异域风情”。3、成龙与几个对手的对打戏非常精彩真实，少了很多早年的花拳绣腿，而成龙在与爱尔兰共和军恐怖分子对决的最后一场战斗中用了咏春，也算是对原著说“接受了美国特战队培训”的嘲讽。4、本片成本只有3500万美元，可以说是小制作的良品。

用IMDB两位外国网友对《The Foreigner》的精彩评论来结束此文吧：

This really isn't the film you expect it to be. Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan in the lead roles points towards an action-packed revenge thriller, but for the first half of the film, it's actually a well- balanced, dark and often dramatically intense film.

Then once you're settled into that, it switches back to the Taken-esque action thriller you were expecting in the first place, providing some good entertainment, but getting a little stuck in developing a genuinely enthralling story.

Let's start with the first, more dramatic half of the story. The film starts off quite literally with a bang thanks to an impressive and memorable terrorist attack sequence, and one that perfectly sets up the story of Jackie Chan's character for the rest of the movie.

What's great about the first half of The Foreigner is that it knows you're expecting action, so still satisfies that with a couple of big bursts of action, but it most impresses when it comes to the slower, quieter sequences in which Chan begins his quest for justice after his daughter is killed, and he is left feeling utterly battered and alone.

Jackie Chan himself is one of the real stand-outs of the whole movie, proving that he's actually got the dramatic chops when it comes down to it, and impresses with a genuinely nuanced performance early on, bringing home the tragic nature of his character's situation, easily letting you sympathise with him.

So, throughout the film's first half, we see Chan becoming more and more engrossed in the search for the terrorists who killed his daughter, to the point where he travels from London to Belfast in Northern Ireland with the hope of gaining information from an influential politician.

At first, the film continues the character's tragic story, and continues to impress in that degree, even showing some hugely unexpected lengths to which a man will go in search of justice.

However, the second half of the film is where things start to change, and unfortunately disappoint. Despite the first act's dramatic intrigue, the story runs out of genuinely interesting development, not managing to bring anything further to the plot than watching Chan get more and more impatient in his quest for answers, something that really does get repetitive eventually.

From then on, the movie turns back into the big action thriller you were expecting when you first went in. Despite his character's age, Jackie Chan abruptly bursts into his trademark martial arts action, and although it's a plot point that is eventually explained, it's not something that feels all that organic in the middle of the story, instead feeling like the dramatic story ran out of ideas, to the extent that it could only resort to Jackie Chan's trademark stuntwork.

A lot of the action is actually pretty good, and Martin Campbell directs a lot of the fighting sequences with an impressively brutal and striking style, meaning that the film remains an entertaining watch throughout, even if it doesn't manage to keep up the impressive drama it had managed to establish earlier on.

The film "The Foreigner" is a truly brilliant thriller that holds your breath from the first minute to the last minute. You never know what will happen and have to stare on the screen all the time.

The makeup, sound mixing, action choreography, and acting performances are all top-notch. Jackie Chan perhaps gives his career-best performances, both physically and emotionally.

More specifically, there are two disparate story lines in "The Foreigner". The first is an action line, where Quan(Jackie Chan) seeks revenge after the death of his daughter, and the second story line is a political one, in which Hennessy(Pierce Brosnan), a former IRA member, gets involved in a complicated conspiracy. The two story lines progress in parallel in an extremely fast pace, and converge from time to time. The directing is just amazing in the sense that such a complex story can be told in less than two hours. Some action fans might get confused when they find out that only half of the film is about action, but the political story line only adds to the complexity and depth of the film, making it more relevant to real life.

In one word, I would give the film a 9/10 rating.

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