MovieChat Forums > Dai si gin (2004) Discussion > The opening 7 minute 1-take shot is mast...

The opening 7 minute 1-take shot is master showmanship!!!


The opening scene was taken in one whole shot for 7 minutes with many twists and a lot of tension that ended in a grand scale gun fight. I have never seen any heist film like this one. It is absolutely amazing!


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Maybe the filming is great, but there are so many goofs that I can't say that it's "amazing"

The street is 10 meters large, everybody's firing, the cops don't hit any burglars. The bad guy are just walking very slowly without aiming, they don't cover their backs while the hero has a MP5 and can't manage to hit them once with 30 bullets... Ridiculous.

Regards
Mr Vergeur

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It's true, I was staring at the screen in disbelief! How are these guys not getting hit with bullets?! lol... then the shot goes up into the sky and shakes and stutters to the guy in the window, really took me out of the film.

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I guess you didn´t get the point of the whole movie. it is in some ways a parody of the typical movies of the genre... the scene looks like it did for a reason, not just because this guy didn´t know how to shoot a firing...

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I jus' thought they looked really cool just walking away with guns blazing... I dont really think it was supposed to be taken seriously.

"Hell is a place much like London"
Shelley

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You give the police too much credit. Several years ago there was a incident where I live where the police shot something like 200 bullets with no hits.

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I've seen video footage on "World's Wildest Police Videos" in which a cop and a crook were standing no more than ten feet from each other, fired about eight shots a piece, and they both left unharmed. Along with the t.v., I'm also a big true crime fan, having read dozens of books about police and their stories, and almost everytime a gunfight is mentioned, they talk about how strange it is that no one was injured. The reason most of Hollywood doesn't abide by this rule is because it's not as cool as a guy firing a gun and hitting someone everytime, but the fact that this movie doesn't play that way adds a certain sort of realism. I was sort of happy it brought us back down to earth, in a way.

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I'm pretty sure that there was one moment panning up an apartment where the filmmakers could have broken the shot in two. Like the camera focuses on a concrete section of the wall for some 2 or 3 seconds, easily enough time to piece two continuous shots together to make it seem like it was all shot at once.

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I'll give them credit for trying something so difficult. However, I thought the 7 minute single take was an unnecessary gimmick that, because of its sloppiness, called attention to itself instead of building the tension that proper editing might have given it. Perhaps this was done deliberately. The camera platform was too unstable... especially at the starts and stops of the movement of the camera. Unlike the hand-held camera technique that's supposed to be constantly shaky, a smooth camera platform movement that's followed by a sudden jerkiness, takes me away from the story. I wondered why they didn't at least use a Steadycam! See the eight-minute opening shot of The Player (1992). Sure, it doesn't go up and down three stories of the side of a building, but it doesn't really call attention to itself. Most people didn't even notice it was a single take.

I like when a movie draws the audience into the story and characters so much that we forget we are even watching a movie. This one doesn't do that. The production team seems to be saying to us "How skilled and clever we are... look what we can do!". (with a pat on the back from their peers, colleagues, film students and IMDB readers)

Also, look closely on the ground and you can see what looks, to me, like some of the wiring that might have been used by the production team for this stunt with little effort to hide it. Perhaps this, too, was deliberate.

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Extended continuous shot done in one take is not exactly new. Boat People (1982, Chinese Title: Tou bun no hoi) made by Ann Hui has a one-take continuous opening sequence (forgot how many minutes it was?), following a massive column of triumphant North Vietnamese motorized unit coming to town, to be met by a cheering greeting crowd of local population, where the rest of the story would unfold. That one-take scene was, if I remember correctly, hailed as the first of its kind ever seen in a Hong Kong movie.

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[deleted]

I did like Yuen when he popped out his AT4 missile launcher and tried to blow up Cheug's unmarked squad car. Shame it didn't hit it.

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THERE WAS A MISSILE LAUNCHER?????????????????????? I don't remember that.

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There is. The camera panned it so far that you'll see a puff of smoke coming out of the hijacked police van. If you see screenshots of it from post-production, it's an AT4.

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OH yeah! now i remember! i thought it was a grenade launcher. can you show me the pictures of the AT4 ?

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I liked it alot too myself. I do agree with others that everyone seemed to have Stormtrooper aim.

drew

Cid Highwind: This is Man Talk.
-FF Advent Childeren

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The scene is now uploaded on Youtube.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CJlCYNt2z9k



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YES, THEY DESERVE TO DIE, AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL!

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Never take a HK action film seriously. Suspension of disbelief is a necessary skill for watching these movies.

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Neither the crooks or the police can hit each other in 10 feet but the
same crook later on can manage to hit a rolling gas can and another crook can use his cellphone to take some three snap shots within what .... like 5 seconds ??!!

Suspension of disbelief is a necessary for this film but not necessarily appropriate for this film

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Yep, it's definitely up there. And without the benefit of CGI, even...

I don't know of any American filmmaker short of Marty Scorcese who would even attempt something like that.

That being said, if someone decides to make an Americanized version, they probably shouldn't attempt to reproduce it. Like I said, MS is the only one that leaps to mind.

"Now, that is one nutty hospital!"

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The only factor of that scenes that makes it unrealistic is the fact that they were shooting at such close range, and from both sides were incapable of tar getting each other.

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