The Chinese film “Decoded” can be described as a World War II spy drama filled with espionage focused on a distressed mathematician focused on cracking codes commissioned by the army. However, there is more to the film than this; this film depicts two novel names that have not been portrayed in prior films. Liu Haoran is a heartthrob and because of this, it is weird to see him in the lead role and the character is very drab and socially awkward Jinzhen, portrayed as a codebreaker. As for his directing, this is very different from his biggest success being the silly ‘Detective Chinatown’ where among other elements typical for that film copious amounts of comedy. All in all, in the case of “Decoded”, Liu Haoran in particular has never directed something in this genre but in this case, the two actors did not employ their wild imagination in fact, there was turned into a sedate version of the over the top vain themes.
Liu nga vizuri, He also played a gifted wallflower, albeit a frustrated one, in “Detective Chinatown”. He was more believable in the movie films because he was a fringe of a winning buddy duo, but as well because he was not attempting to act big time while wearing wigs, that look ridiculous since his character’s hair thins as he gets older. Liu embodies Jinzhen, who I was reminded of Crowe playing the fevered schizophrenic mathematician John Nash in ‘A Beautiful Mind’. Most associations become harder and harder to shake as Jinzhen becomes increasingly weakened since he becomes more engrossed in his task of cracking Black Cipher, an encryption key that was designed with his capability in mind and essentially meant to defeat Jinzhen. Liu is mostly convincing as a lead whenever he manages to convey many characteristics of Jinzhen without ever raising his voice, always looking down to avoid eye contact as though Jinzhen is in trouble. But still, he is often overshadowed by co-star John Cusack since the latter often gives a broad and twitchy performance with a lazy fast dragging speech which makes most of his lines go unnoticeable accompanied by a number of goofy dream sequences that are intended to represent the subdued Liu. Liu will prepare viewers and customers for a big and mighty reveal.
By treating the problems as common ciphers rather than puzzles, Jinjshen made it his business to beat those who confronted him with their PhD to Sherlock-level intellect. That is why he dreams of being a man who deciphers the world’s darkest secrets in his sleep. Frankly, dreams do come true for him. In simple words, go out of your way even to solve dreams. Many of Jin’s dreams signal inevitable conflicts yet exist in suspense accompanied by catchy graphics. Jinzhen’s dreams eventually take center stage and as a consequence, Set Jenson’s “Decoded” says level with the narrative of nearly every other movie where a brilliant man overcomes numerous challenges. Nevertheless, “Decoded” features and accurately yet unbearably slowly chronicles the events that led Jinzhen into his journey, his defining quest of unraveling the Black Cipher.
In the space of the 2.5 duration more or less keyboard types something head-scratching. During these long shots, Jinjshen is a passive observer whenever characters appear on screen and when they exit. One of those characters, a distant relative and a university professor Xiaolili (Daniel Wu), adopts and nurtures him. Jinjshen also catches the eye of Professor Liesiwitz (Cusack) of animated activity who studies computational mathematics and claims to be above Kuomintang censorship. Liesiwitz is magical as he literally annoys everyone during his speeches except for screaming at war. Soon, he will be forced to work at the National Security Agency of America. In this instance, he is assuming the role of making ciphers more and more complex such as Black cipher.
Like many others, Jinzhen’s forced to hack for a global government, but he’s okay with it, because sometimes he remembers the amazing civics lessons Xiaolili gave him while building up the atmosphere, during the monotonous chess matches with Liesiwicz and the uninteresting conversations with him. Jinzhen is recruited by Director Zheng (Chen Daoming), a mysterious G-man from China whose character comes through only through the description of his stoical speech, punctuated by a limp. Then Jinzhen is locked away in a classified Government facility, where he goes through the motions of courting a woman named Xiaomei (Krystal Ren) whom he proposes to through hand-written ciphers and sleeps with after a cheap tease (Layer by layer, the truth is unveiled).
By the way, ‘Decoded’ is completely free of s*xual content. Rather than this, there are multiple cheap, and overly long dream sequences that often border on the level of a bad screensaver. At times, Jinzhen’s imagination is engrossed within a hal 9000 like behemoth named ENIAC, an enormous computer system that intimidatingly torments Jinzhen in Chinese by yelling strange statements such as, “You will never understand us.”At other times, Jinzhen has had dreams about the legendary Beatles, because for some reason their music video features their song “I Am the Walrus” which contains the answers to the Black Cipher. Watching Jinzhen as he pants and sweats, attempting to run away from four terribly unconvincing interpreters of the Beatles, who screech: “I am the egg guy. We are the egg guys. I am the manatee.” is not very enjoyable to say the least.
Liu works rather pitifully in his effective role as a character. His role consists of reactions and thoughts that revolve around finding the next lead which Jinzhen might need to use in order to overcome a newly developed issue that is troubling him.
Yet again the creators try as much as they can to make up for the many disadvantages of their unlikable protagonist lacking any charm but even the twin powers of Lloyd Dobler and the Fab Four bring not a single joy to this DOA-era piece.
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