The Third Man – Ly Nha Ky’s forgettable film

Third person belonging to the psychological and emotional genre mixed with fantasy and sensational elements is a movie project developed by ‘s company Ly Nha Ky production investment. The movie was originally titled Paradise and started filming in 2018. However, because of many production problems, the project was halted production when it was 80% complete, prompting the film’s director, Mr. Park Hee Jun, to urgently write a letter. to the Vietnamese press.

After four years of silence, the work was released in theaters last weekend. Sharing with the media, Ly Nha Ky said that the film was invested with a production cost of up to 33 billion VND. In recent days, the businesswoman – who also plays one of the important characters – regularly organizes movie viewing sessions and exchanges with the audience to attract viewers for the work.

However, the businesswoman’s efforts were not effective when after 6 days, the film only collected more than 845 million VND (according to Box Office Vietnam) – equal to 2.5% of the production budget.

Ly Nha Ky in the chaotic timeline

Third person It started with a fatal accident. The victim is Thien Di (Ly Nha Ky), a talented cardiologist. A year after Di’s death, her husband – painter Quang Kha (Han Jae Suk) – is still nostalgic. He happened to buy an old laptop that once belonged to Kelly – a famous radio host (Kim Tuyen). Kha discovered through the laptop that she could contact Kelly, but she was a year ago.

Realizing the God-given opportunity, Kha immediately sought to bribe Kelly, borrowing her hand to save his wife from a tragic end. However, the unbelievably man’s efforts to save the life of his longing mate put the lives of himself, his daughter, Kelly, and anyone who knew about the incident, in jeopardy.

The film invested and produced by Ly Nha Ky took four years to be completed and released in theaters.

However, the challenge of films with more than one timeline existing, twisting and influencing each other is to separate the audience who is in which timeline, a decision from the present that will affect the audience. affect the past and vice versa.

The plots that play with the timeline (and the audience’s mind) are no longer rare on Vietnamese screens. In 2021, the audience once enjoyed the movie “Parallel” revolving around a woman who has the ability to contact the past through an old TV on a stormy night.

With The Third, the audience had no trouble following the film despite the existence of two parallel timelines. This (relative) coherence stems from the fact that the current line of characters and events have been completely neglected since the middle of act two. The end of the film also leads the viewer to a new branch of reality, completely different from the “beginning”.

This is ultimately good for the film itself rather than harmful. Partly because the work does not claim logical or scientific correctness. On the other hand, it helps the audience to be less tired when they have to follow the future storyline and soon there is no space for further development. The short film length, encapsulated in less than 90 minutes, is also commendable considering the overall quality of the work.

The plot “familiar but strange, strange but familiar”

Time Third person Recently released in theaters, the film received many compliments for its plot that exploits a fantasy theme that combines new investigation and crime-solving elements. However, after three weekends, the Internet appeared to suspect that the screenplay was borrowed from the content of the novel Tomorrow (Demain) by Guillaume Musso.

Ly Nha Ky and Han Jae Suk in promotional photos for the film.

Readers of Tomorrow quickly pointed out the similarities between the French novel and the course of Ly Nha Ky’s movie – from the detail of the two going to the same coffee shop but never meeting to the sad story of a man grieving the loss of his wife while she searched for him. Find a new lover in your life. Fate leads them to discover that each other is in a different time, and he needs her for a difficult mission. The biggest difference in the two works only comes in the third act, with the turmoil in the ending – tied to the wife’s decision to soon pass away.

For audiences who love Korean television, the happenings in the first act of The Third may even remind them of the episodes in the first episodes of the TV series Kairos (2020).

In the film, a man from the present also tries to contact the girl who lived in the past in order to plan a plan to prevent the kidnapping and murder of his daughter. The film also has a scene where the two characters meet at a cafe but do not meet due to the difference in space and time.

Han Jae Suk can’t carry the work

Umbrella Third person borrowing Tomorrowor this is an adaptation from the beginning, the fact that the film lacks convincing in both details and emotional development is still undeniable.

Time is the biggest barrier preventing the characters from interacting with each other – when Kha is stuck in the present and Kelly lives in the past. Kha’s insistence that Kelly hurry to save his wife because “she doesn’t have time” also kills the opportunity for their emotional interaction to develop. The characters don’t even have a chance to really talk and understand each other.

Another problem with the Third Person script is that it is unknown who in the story is the main character. Quang Kha, Kelly, and Thien Di each have their own stages, but they are three independent stories, reluctantly tied together by a fatal accident and a plan to stop it.

After a week in theaters, the film of Ly Nha Ky and Han Jae Suk has not reached the milestone of 1 billion dong, facing the risk of loss.

Quang Kha is currently the excuse for the story to begin, but he completely “mutes” right from the middle of the work.

The materialistic Kelly in the first half of the film suddenly becomes a detective who loves her job, solving cases based on a multi-part story built from her own imagination. The character was also suddenly removed when the script was no longer needed at the climax, although around her there were still unresolved questions.

As for Ly Nha Ky, her role as Thien Di is a big question mark. Among the inconsistent characters that appear in the film, Thien Di is the most difficult to understand. The character has too many absurdities in both motivation and psychological progression.

Why would a character with a passionate love for his first love marry another man and have children with him while plotting to take this man’s life?

If her goal from the beginning was just to use Quang Kha to save her sick lover, why did Thien Di keep her patient waiting for so many years? Not to mention, she also tortured him when she made her lover watch her get married and give birth to another man.

And most of all, when she was determined to kill her husband with a sophisticated plan, just waiting for the moment to take his heart out to replace her dying lover, why did Thien Di say “I’m too tired”? Before that, throughout the third act, it was difficult for the audience to find a single detail that revealed the psychological instability of the character.

Thien Di’s return is, after all, like a request from Ly Nha Ky herself to the screenwriter, so that “My character doesn’t appear too cruel in the end. I don’t want to be a villain, I need a reason to be a victim.” Returning to the screen with a complex role, Ly Nha Ky made viewers tired because of her awkward expression and slow and distorted speech.

After all, The Third Person lacks a compelling (and linguistically fluent) narrator who can tie the three disjointed stories into a harmonious picture and lead the film to its full conclusion. Unfortunately, the three main actors of the film all failed to shoulder this responsibility.

For Han Jae Suk, his first role in a Vietnamese film requires him to become a melancholy husband, lost in pain. After all, the Korean actor did everything he could. His biggest weakness isn’t in his acting – the film doesn’t require, or create many opportunities for, him to act out scenes of inner self-expression.

The fact that Han Jae Suk can only speak Korean shortened his number of scenes, and mainly took the far corners to avoid revealing his mouth movements that were too different from the dub. The conversations between Korean speakers and Vietnamese people make his character even more out of place. Even the male lead is isolated from his own film, which is understandable as the Third Man struggles to find an audience.

According to Zing