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Just finished reading the screenplay for LA Confidential prior to Black Friday fun and games.
LA Confidential is a pinnacle of crime cinema, because it manages, in a little over two hours, to sculpt three vivid main leads, a truly unforgettable villain, a female lead that raises "hooker with a heart of gold" to the next level, and a great supporting cast--on top of tightly wound script with loads of mini-clues building up to a bunch of nice reveals.
Anyhow, midway through reading the script, I realized--why not do a "Infernal Affairs-->The Departed" style remake of this movie... except do it vice versa?
So basically release a Hong Kong variant of this film and set it in a modern-day mainland Chinese city.
The script practically writes itself.
The Chongqing gang trials were a series of triad-busting trials in the city of Chongqing that began in October 2009 and concluded in 2011. Carried out under the auspices of municipal Communist Party chief Bo Xilai and police chief Wang Lijun, a total of 4,781 suspects were arrested, including 19 suspected crime bosses, hundreds of triad members, and a number of allegedly corrupt police, government and Communist party officials, including six district police chiefs and the city's former deputy police commissioner, Wen Qiang.[1] Time described it as "China's trial of the 21st century".[2] The crackdown is believed to be the largest of its kind in the history of the People's Republic of China. Concerns over due process surfaced following the trial, including allegations of torture, forced confessions, and intimidation.[3]
The trials earned significant media attention for local party chief Bo Xilai, and its implications partially contributed to Bo's downfall in March 2012.
The best thing about this is that since the film limits the corruption to the city-government level and provides a nice, neat, sleazy, sexy narrative that avoids implicating higher levels of government, a film like this may even get official endorsement.
What do all of you think?
 
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Idk if foreigners would be very interested.. The story becomes interesting once you know China a little and once you know just how common corruption is over there. There needs to be a reason why this whole thing is important to foreigners, a reason for them to get excited about the place and people involved.
I don't know what Chinese people like to see when they go to the movies. Shady, do you think Chinese people would be interested?
And could a movie like this be produced in China? I find that hard to believe.
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I would watch the shit out of that movie.
Tommie, just as the Departed was marketed towards Americans, this hypothetical movie would be marketed towards Chinese people rather than foreigners. Sounds like you've misinterpreted.
Chinese people would definitely be interested as well. Crime thrillers are a popular and very established genre.
The only problem I see is censorship. The script would have to be cleverly written to be exciting for viewers while not offending the government.
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On November 23 2012 22:00 mijellin wrote:
I would watch the shit out of that movie.
Tommie, just as the Departed was marketed towards Americans, this hypothetical movie would be marketed towards Chinese people rather than foreigners. Sounds like you've misinterpreted.
Chinese people would definitely be interested as well. Crime thrillers are a popular and very established genre.
The only problem I see is censorship. The script would have to be cleverly written to be exciting for viewers while not offending the government.
In what way was "The Departed" marketed towards Americans?
I don't think simply taking place in America qualifies as being marketed towards Americans.
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On November 23 2012 22:47 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 22:00 mijellin wrote:
I would watch the shit out of that movie.
Tommie, just as the Departed was marketed towards Americans, this hypothetical movie would be marketed towards Chinese people rather than foreigners. Sounds like you've misinterpreted.
Chinese people would definitely be interested as well. Crime thrillers are a popular and very established genre.
The only problem I see is censorship. The script would have to be cleverly written to be exciting for viewers while not offending the government. In what way was "The Departed" marketed towards Americans? I don't think simply taking place in America qualifies as being marketed towards Americans.
Marketed towards Americans in the sense that they never worried about whether Chinese people would enjoy the movie.
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The problem with American movies is that they always have this "good ending" which is something extremly irritating when you grow up and start to understand a bit more about philosophy and life. LA Confidential was a fantastic movie but i was disappointed by the ending.
You also cited Infernal Affair and i have the exact same problem with the Departed. It's a decent movie but the ending is just plain bad compared to Infernal Affair. The fact that Andy Lau, the "bad" guy is still alive at the end of Infernal Affair makes it fantastic.
So basicly i would really like a remake without the typical "good" American ending. Bud should probably kill Exley and/or Lynn for example, that would make him a true tragic hero lol.
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Yesss internal affairs/the departed was amazing and I think if those ideas were mixed in it would be mind-blowing. Recently there has also been a lot of attention on China in cinema so it might actually work.
Eh for departed I think the theme was on the characters' identities and on how their decisions weren't easily escapable etc. It differed from internal affairs in more than just location. If the bad guy in the departed had survived, it wouldn't have been badass. It would have been more like the protagonist of match point surviving based on luck, though luck is much more of a main theme in match point.
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So the other story that I think would port well would be The Great Gatsby.
Imagine it: poor guy goes and gets rich doing shady shit... comes back to compete for some rich bitch... throw murder, some affairs, a jaded sense of cynicism, and set it in Shanghai, and everything is done
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Hell yes, love that idea as well. I know the novel purposefully doesn't make it completely clear/certain what he did to get his money (though there are several rumors that have more plausible sources), but it would be cool to see him work his way up in the mafia in a beginning segment or something. Like Batman Begins too except, instead of working among criminals and then for a ninja vigilante society to the ultimate ends of crushing crime, the protagonist goes into the mafia and gets rich in Shanghai in order to pursue a high-class Beijing girl.
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On November 24 2012 07:12 Aerisky wrote:
Hell yes, love that idea as well. I know the novel purposefully doesn't make it completely clear/certain what he did to get his money (though there are several rumors that have more plausible sources), but it would be cool to see him work his way up in the mafia in a beginning segment or something. Like Batman Begins too except, instead of working among criminals and then for a ninja vigilante society to the ultimate ends of crushing crime, the protagonist goes into the mafia and gets rich in Shanghai in order to pursue a high-class Beijing girl.
I smell a trilogy
Part 1 - Poor guy gets rejected, then goes into crime, makes his bones, girl gets married
Part 2 - Guy becomes huge/respected mob boss, comes back to win the girl, they start an affair
Part 3 - Their lives both unravel, one or both of them end up dying in tragic fashion
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On November 23 2012 22:47 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 22:00 mijellin wrote:
I would watch the shit out of that movie.
Tommie, just as the Departed was marketed towards Americans, this hypothetical movie would be marketed towards Chinese people rather than foreigners. Sounds like you've misinterpreted.
Chinese people would definitely be interested as well. Crime thrillers are a popular and very established genre.
The only problem I see is censorship. The script would have to be cleverly written to be exciting for viewers while not offending the government. In what way was "The Departed" marketed towards Americans? I don't think simply taking place in America qualifies as being marketed towards Americans.
How was the movie not marketed towards americans? lol...
You never saw a single trailer or poster for it? Did you miss the fact it was filmed in the US and took place in Boston with an entirely Caucasian cast?
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On November 24 2012 07:38 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 22:47 zalz wrote:On November 23 2012 22:00 mijellin wrote:
I would watch the shit out of that movie.
Tommie, just as the Departed was marketed towards Americans, this hypothetical movie would be marketed towards Chinese people rather than foreigners. Sounds like you've misinterpreted.
Chinese people would definitely be interested as well. Crime thrillers are a popular and very established genre.
The only problem I see is censorship. The script would have to be cleverly written to be exciting for viewers while not offending the government. In what way was "The Departed" marketed towards Americans? I don't think simply taking place in America qualifies as being marketed towards Americans. How was the movie not marketed towards americans? lol... You never saw a single trailer or poster for it? Did you miss the fact it was filmed in the US and took place in Boston with an entirely Caucasian cast?
Here's a simpler explanation
75% of the Departed's marketing budget went into North America
80% of Infernal Affair's marketing budget went into China/HK/Taiwan/Singapore
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The Departed was inferior to Infernal Affair because Martin Scorsese didn't and the script writer didn't understand the eastern religious aspect of death/rebirth and reincarnation that was present in Infernal Affair. The Departed was just a straight out gangster film. What made the ending great in Infernal Affairs was the multiple ways you can look at the ending, in that even though the bad guy( Andy Lau) "won", he really lost in the sense that he is perputally stuck in hell whilst the other guy escaped, hell being their respective fake identities.
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Another awesome movie idea
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2162842/Dead-man-Santosh-Kumar-presidents-race-hes-alive.html
TLDR Indian guy gets declared legally dead by his cousins because he married a lower-caste girl... underlying motive is to seize his 12 acres of land. Guy has struggled for 9 years to prove to the world that he is "still alive" in the face of Kafkaesque bureaucratic corruption. Now he is running for President of India to show the world that he is still alive.
Slumdog Millionaire redux. The guy even works for a Bollywood actor, so he already is in the right place to get his story made into a script
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all great ideas in this thread. i would totally watch these films.
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EPT
