《我不是药神》英文影评
The character Xu Zheng plays in Dying to Survive is a cash -strapped adult shop owner called Cheng Yong, who is struggling through his middle-age crisis. Desperate about his ex-wife’s attempt to take over his son’s custody and his father’s astronomical medical expenses, he accepts Lv, a leukemia patient’s request to smuggle from India generic drugs. With the help of Lv, he secretly sells the the drugs, which are much more affordable than the branded drugs at home but with similar efficacy, to large numbers of patients suffering catastrophic health expenses.
Along the way to higher sales, he meets another three people who have connection with leukemia in some way and later become his business partners: an introverted redneck who robs their drug to save other people; a stripper who works in the club to pay for her daughter’s astronomical medicine bill, and a priest who soothes the disease-plagued patients in the church. Initially, Cheng’s motives were anything but charitable. As the final stretch approaches and two of his teammates tragically die, it is sheer sympathy and grieve for the lost lives that brings about Cheng’s personal changes and drives him to run drugs back to China and sell to the sick and vulnerable at extremely low price, with himself covering the cost. With these four people from distinctive backgrounds joining in, it brings humanistic, and even heroic element to the story.
Like his previous work Lost in Thailand, Dying to Survive smacks of exotic touch with those Indian scenes and interspersed with witty moments. But Xu Zheng rises beyond that this time. Inspired by the real-life story of Lu Yong, this movie touches a quite sensitive issue in China-- the dysfunctional health-care system and its stagnant reform in China, and crucially, lay bare the cruelty of poverty and death, and also,religion--one subject the government has done utmost to suppress recently years. There’s also the requisite tug at the heartstrings when an old patient begs the police to let Cheng off the hook that even steely viewers will find themselves moist-eyed.
Inevitably, audiences may find echoes of Dallas Buyers Club in this movie. But compared with the Oscar-acclaimed work, what is largely missing in Dying to survive, though, is the depth of the sensitivity it reaches. It indeed questions the pricing mechanism of monopolistic pharmaceutical companies, but it fails to rutinize the rotten medical system, while Dallas shed light upon the heroic revolt against the machinery of the medical establishment and the government, as well as a flashback of the hostile public attitude towards LGBT communities. However, it already towers the themes of most Chinese movies. After all, it is quite unusual that such a movie gets to pass the notorious censorship in China.
This July and August again mark the typically big months for movies with few Hollywood blockbusters to be seen on Chinese screens. Luckily, with Dying to survive, and some seemingly attractive works coming up, this vacuum of exported films won’t seem too long and borin.
影评还是不要轻易尝试，太难写了！！！！
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