The Young Master of Bac Lieu: the script is exaggerated like Uncle Ba Phi's, the emotions are almost silly

The movie "Cong Tu Bac Lieu" arouses curiosity when wanting to discover the thrilling things behind the "money burning" anecdote. However, what the audience receives is just an absurd and superficial work.

The main character of Cong Tu Bac Lieu is Ba Hon (Song Luan) - the son of the richest Councilor Linh (NSUT Thanh Loc) in the South. After studying abroad in France, he brought home all kinds of degrees of entertainment and dancing. Ba Hon asked his father to buy him a plane worth hundreds of pounds of gold to fulfill his dream of flying in the sky.

However, the Council forced his son to "make a living" by managing a bank in Saigon. This was also the time when his bad habits came into play with all kinds of mischief, "burning money" and the classic confrontation with the son of My Tho, Tu Phat (Cong Duong).

In fact, the anecdotes about the Prince of Bac Lieu are full of satirical and exaggerated colors like the story of Uncle Ba Phi of the Southern people. Many of these stories were confirmed by his own family to have never happened or to be only partially true.

Director Ly Minh Thang was also quite right when approaching Cong Tu Bac Lieu in a satirical, satirical (dark comedy) direction like Parasite (2019), Don't Look Up (2021) or Babylon (2022)... However, the immature way of making and poor editing made the humorous situations ridiculous and forced. The dancing and overacting scenes of the characters did not bring laughter but only boredom and boredom. On the contrary, the emotional scenes... made people laugh because they were too naive.

Audiences come to watch Cong Tu Bac Lieu because they want to know the truth behind the anecdotes about this character, or a typical example is the competition between Ba Hon and Tu Phuoc to cook sweet soup with money to win Bay Loan's favor. But what the film brings is only blandness in a few segments. Throughout the duration, everything is just wrapped up in Ba Hon arguing with his father, wanting to prove himself and then going out to party and cause trouble. It just repeats over and over again without any specific highlights.

The only commendable point in the production is probably the costumes and the rather neat set. However, everything in Cong Tu Bac Lieu looks brand new, even the poor people's clothes have no trace of dirt or wrinkle. As for the set, it is clear that the entire set is just an elaborately built film set, without the antique color of the 1930s or the feeling that people actually live there.

Besides the script, the way Cong Tu Bac Lieu builds the character Ba Hon and conveys the overall message is very confusing, even distorted. Every time he is scolded by his father, Ba Hon is always angry, sad and wants to prove his talent to him. He always appears dangerous, as if he is hatching some great plan. Even the "danger" of Ba Hon is shown in the scene where the character stands in the rain and dances when sad, no different from Joker Bac Lieu. It is true that Ba Hon is the real Joker, but he is the clown in Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) and not the prince of crime in The Joker (2019).

Ba Hon has no talent and zero knowledge of banking. Because banks are just places to mobilize deposits from people to use for profitable business. Ba Hon uses it to buy airplanes and advertise for as many people to deposit as possible, no different from multi-level marketing.

Viewers waited for the whole movie but did not see Ba Hon's talent, everything was only shown through words. Or is the movie actually condemning the habit of being too superficial? In the end, everyone realized that they were just watching a prodigal son, spending money for his father and showing off his talent, and when he was not given money, he would act like a jerk without even knowing it.

But if Cong Tu Bac Lieu did that to condemn, then there is nothing to discuss. The film intentionally "whitewashes" Ba Hon when everything he did was to... serve the people and "want the French to respect the Annamese people".

Prince Bac Lieu filmed beautifully but superficially, cutting many scenes of "dirty" adults Đào Đào15:57:56 08/12/2024Prince Bac Lieu has just debuted and quickly occupied the top 1 box office. Besides, the online community can't help but argue about the film being invested in beautiful images, quality cast, but taking advantage of adult scenes, leading to a lot of cuts.