The Knockout Chinese drama has received rave reviews since its broadcast, and its popularity is as “high” as the title of the show.
Not only the main characters Zhang Yi and Zhang Songwen have gained a lot of discussion, but even the supporting characters Gao Ye (played as Chen Shuting), Li Jian (played as Li Xiang), and Jia Bing (played as Xu Jiang) are all surprising.
Even the “villain group” Su Xiaoding (as Gao Qisheng), Lin Jiachuan (as Tang Xiaolong), Aruna (as Li Hongwei), Sun Yan (as Tang Xiaohu), Feng Bing (as Lao Mo), etc. have gained attention.
These characters on the Douyin platform even have their own bgm.
The drama even made Gao Qiqiang’s pillow book “The Art of War” popular. On the QQ reading platform, more than 752,000 people have added various versions of “The Art of War” to their bookshelves.
As the first hit Chinese drama in 2023, it may be slightly lacking in terms of quality, although there is a suspicion of a bad end, it is undeniable that The Knockout is the most influential Chinese drama in 2023. Both the plot and the ending are hot topics of discussion.
The Knockout Chinese Drama Review
The Knockout tells the story of the more than 20-year battle between good and evil between the political and legal team represented by criminal policeman An Xin (played by Zhang Yi) and the gangdom represented by Gao Qiqiang (played by Zhang Songwen).
The drama cuts into three time and space contexts, not only showing a story of a struggle to gang crimes, but also reproducing the formation and rise of gangdom under the changing times. Several clues go hand in hand, sketching a picture of the struggle between justice and evil for the audience.
Unlike past criminal investigation dramas and anti-corruption dramas, which mainly focus on peeling off clues to solve the case or letting the audience guess about the “protective umbrella”, the main plot of The Knockout focuses on the growth of two different characters, one black and one white.
One is a hot-blooded, kind-hearted, and even a bit stubborn criminal police. He originally has a promising future, but is ostracized because of his investigation into a case with a “deep background”. 20 years later, he has become a white-haired fringe policeman, but his original intention remained unchanged;
One is a bullied fishmonger, lost in the desire, he finally becomes the leader of the gangdom…
An Xin
An Xin in the drama is determined to fight for justice and is always ready to die for justice, but he experiences blows again and again:
The most trusted master may be the “black police”.
The most trusted partner comes together with a leader suspected of corruption…
Facing betrayal and sacrifice, An Xin has become a true lone warrior, who leaves no way out for himself.
He is an orphan, so he has no weaknesses like his parents or relatives. His former lover Meng Yu is also pushed away by him.
If not for such a solitary identity, he might have weaknesses everywhere. And such a weakness is fatal to him.
But what he didn’t expect was that every time he fought against evil, he would still lose.
Just like comrade Li Xiang said: That was a monster, which could destroy ordinary people’s lives, dignity, and everything with just a flash of its fangs.
All An Xin could do was wait.
It wasn’t until the guidance team arrived that he saw a glimmer of hope.
Although the subject matter of the play is serious and the protagonist An Xin is more like an ideal yet tragic character, The Knockout does not always tell the story with a straight face.
An Xin has many hilarious plots in the early stage. For example, An Xin meeting Meng Ju like a mouse meeting a cat. Another example is when An Xin went to change the medicine after her arm was pierced by a steel bar, and he cried when he was on the phone with Li Xiang. It was thought that the tears with joy, but he ended up saying “It hurts so much” which made people laugh…
In fact, there are many small and exquisite designs in the play, which not only bring a relaxed and humorous atmosphere to follow the drama, but more importantly, compared with An Xin’s humor and ease in the current period and the vicissitudes and caution in the later period, it made the audience even more saddened.
20 years ago, An Xin would rush into the conference room and confront Meng Dehai in order to catch the mole.
20 years later, when a road is blocked by someone, An Xin will turn around and walk away. Instead of confronting others head-on, he would turn around and wait for the next opportunity.
He used to have a bad temper, but he is soft-hearted. Later, he became more and more gentle, but his heart became more and more ruthless.
Gao Qiqiang
The best part of this drama is that it writes that “good or bad are not completely opposites, and have more reality.”
The characters are not “black and white”. The play creates a flesh-and-blood villain Gao Qiqiang. His complex experience gave his transformation a strong tension, restoring the process of power alienating good people into bad people.
Gao Qiqiang was once a fishmonger. His family was poor and he grew up alone with his younger siblings. A bowl of pork trotter noodles, he could only drink soup, his young sister ate pig trotters, and his young brother ate noodles.
He was also bullied for selling fish. He bought a new TV and wanted to please the overbearing marketing administrator, but he was beaten instead.
Until he met An Xin.
An Xin, who kindly helped Gao Qiqiang, accidentally let him taste the sweetness of “power”. The honest man who was often bullied suddenly felt the real benefits brought by “power”.
Even if this power is only a little bit, for the people at the bottom, it is enough to allow them to live a very stable and dignified life.
Gao Qiqiang, who was once weak, dared to go to the VCD rental store to stir up trouble.
After accidentally killing someone, he took 20,000 yuan and cried.
In the process of playing against Xu Jiang, he thought about turning back, but when he consulted a lawyer and learned that he would have to spend several years in prison, he still chose a path of no return.
The sense of deprivation from a poor background stimulated Gao Qiqiang to have an unsatisfied excessive desire for power. The overthrow of past sufferings accelerated the crazy growth of his desire for power.
As the plot progresses, the reasons and process of Gao Qiqiang’s darkening are extremely convincing.
As well as his character who is always trapped in family ties, and his many tense encounters with An Xin, many viewers also felt sorry and sympathized with Gao Qiqiang for embarking on a road of no return.
The clearer and fuller the character’s outline, the more alert and self-reflective the audience will be.
Li Xiang
Complex human nature is not only reflected in the portrayal of villains.
An Xin is an ideal person, a righteous figure in people’s imagination, who is not so real.
Gao Qiqiang is too real, but his experience only makes people sympathize with him.
Then Li Xiang, the captain of the criminal police team in The Knockout who was ultimately “unforgettable”, is one of our countless ordinary “good guys”.
His concealment of the truth about his master, his avoidance of the Mang Village kidnapping case, his protection and tolerance of An Xin’s various “fearless moves forward”…
He will also balance the interests of all parties, will bend over backward to please Zhao Lidong, and will pick up various membership cards one by one when An Xin knocks them down on the ground with disdain…
In the end, Li Xiang died. He died of a reasonable occupational injury, not a big hero.
So plain and reasonable, it couldn’t cause any trouble, and died quietly.
Li Xiang wrote in his suicide note:
“Life, dignity, relatives, friends, everything you care about are the weak spots they attack.”
No one knows the perseverance he paid for this, only An Xin knows it.
An Xin knows that Li Xiang has family members and weaknesses. Although he is the captain of the criminal police, he cannot move forward like him.
He knows about Li Xiang’s perseverance as a police officer, and also knows about Li Xiang’s insignificant self-righteous “undercover”, even at the cost of his life, he could not access any core evidence of the crime.
Li Xiang died of ideals.
Based on the weakness of human nature, he had to walk between black and white, and finally kept his faith and achieved the highlight of his life. Because of this, many viewers will never forget him.
The Knockout Ending
Huang Yao reported Gao Qiqiang.
With the destruction of the gangdom headed by Gao Qiqiang, one of the “cancers” in Jinghai City, Zhao Lidong, was captured.
The biggest “protective umbrella” behind – He Liming, executive deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of Linjiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, finally surfaced…
In the end, He Liming fell and the “protective umbrella” of Jinghai was uprooted!
Gao Qiqiang, Tang Xiaolong, and Zhao Lidong were sentenced to death. Yang Jian was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Gao Xiaochen was sentenced to five years in prison. Meng Dehai was punished and demoted.
In this fight against gang crimes, the righteous party also paid a huge sacrifice: Li Xiang, Lu Han, Tan Siyan, etc. also paid the price with their lives.
This ending, in the words of chief director Xu Jizhou, is “very cruel” and a “tragic victory.”
At the end, in prison again, the scene was just like the day they first met. An Xin finally gave Gao Qiqiang another meal of dumplings.
Gao Qiqiang and the white-haired An Xin were separated by the bars. The scene in which An Xin said “There are not so many ifs” in the face of Gao Qiqiang’s hypothesis made many viewers sigh.
At Last
Although The Knockout Chinese drama has ended, the impact and shock it brought, the choices between emotion and reason, the struggle between good and evil, the struggle between conscience and desire, persistence and beautiful beliefs, will always remain in the audience’s heart, triggering more people’s thinking, inspiring more people to avoid evil and save good, not forgetting the original heart.
And these are the most fundamental and valuable meanings of this drama.
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