Text/Fernandez
Among the three films at the end of the year, "Old Cannon" undoubtedly has the most topical malleability, because in addition to the good production quality of the film itself, the role of "Old Cannon" as the oldest relic of the times has aroused the memories of many people: Beijing in the four-nine cities, the legend of the little bastard, the rules of the jianghu in the 70s and 80s, the binary opposition between the compound and the hutong... It has triggered people's recollection and even reflection on a civic culture, of course, mixed with a lot of sense of loss.
"Old Cannon" has a bloody part, but unfortunately most of the time just to do the show, the whole film did not really fight, the most excessive is that even the ice war at the end of the film was also dropped, I don't know how others, I see this treatment is stupid: just like this? My sense of loss at that time was far greater than that of my friends who were lost because of the absence of Beijing's customs.
So I thought: What would happen if this kind of subject matter was handed over to foreigners to shoot? After all, domestic film censorship is relatively strict, although foreign countries are not easy, but after all, they can be filmed. Many people like to compare Clint Eastwood's "Classic Car" with Takeshi Kitano's "Dragon Three and His Party of Seven" when discussing "Old Cannon". These three films do have a lot in common: the younger generation is in trouble, the old soldier is shot, and there are two generations of different era backgrounds that conflict values, but the last two are a positive drama and a comedy (partial farce), and the action scenes are handled slightly larger than "Old Cannon". But the biggest difference between these three films is: the protagonists of "Classic Car" and "Dragon Three and His Seven-Man Party" are veterans and old gangsters, whose identities are fundamentally different from those of old cannons from civilian origins, although the old cannons can be counted as marginal people in society because they are often in and out of the bureau or even in prison, and their rich experiences also belong to the "best" in the crowd in terms of narrative function, but their violent behavior and professional identity are a weak association, they are not soldiers or gangsters, in terms of classification, they may be more similar to the skinheads Bad teenagers or youth gangs are taking fighting as a hobby, and at the same time they are more or less integrated into some social and political demands.
So you can't compare "Old Cannon" with underworld movies, military movies and even movies that show political turmoil in the matter of "blood level" and "violent scale", there is a paragraph in "Old Cannon", the sixth master Feng Xiaogang asked Zhang Hanyu to dismiss the young people who shouted to help the fist, on the grounds that these stunned young people are not light or heavy, once there is a "dead two wounded servants", they will not be able to clean up, but will a gangster movie or crime movie care about such a thing as "dead two wounded servants"? The violence in "Old Cannon" is ultimately just the level of "passing the family" in the movie world. Of course, traditional gangster movies like "The Godfather" full of the beauty of classical Italian art films are actually very weak, and without slowing down the camera, you will find that the fight scenes are particularly fake: the fist is a foot away from the person, and the person falls to the ground and rolls over - the director does not intend to reshoot or switch angles, so it is taken out. It's one thing to deal with these details like this, but it's another thing to see what kind of events the film shows. After all, "Old Cannon" did not play any ice war, and adopted a direct skipped strategy, the reason for which was first of all because of the constraints of supervision; secondly, in the films around the world that showed people who resembled old cannons, there was a lack of rendering of violent scenes, and in the theme, it was full of conservative flavor and indoctrination motivation.
In other words, this kind of movie, innately, is not tough.
"Old Cannon" reminded me of not "Classic Car" and "Dragon Three" for the first time, but a less famous American movie "Four Brothers"
Directed by black director John Singerton, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for "Block Boys" (aka "The Juvenile Murder Next Door") at the age of 23, and if I remember correctly, it holds the record for the youngest director to be nominated. "Block Boys" is a well-known work among black audiences, and in this year's comedy "Pre-Prison Education", which is full of racial and prison memes, "Block Boys" is an important meme of a tandem story. "Four Brothers" tells the story of a kind lady who adopts four mischievous orphans, and years later, the old woman is shot, and the two black and two white four brothers swear to avenge their mother, they execute the murderer, and challenge the gang behind the scenes.
The film's action scenes are handled cleanly and neatly, and the character portrayal of the four brothers is also simple and effective, which is equivalent to expressing the suppressed part of the blood catharsis in "Old Cannon" in a very direct way. Watching "Old Cannon" in the first half and "Four Brothers" in the second half, I think it is a good choice.
How would other countries deal with similar themes? How do they behave these "above the law, the gang is not enough" people?
Let's look at the United Kingdom, you will find that the United Kingdom has made a lot of films about the skinheads, or the problem of youth movies since the seventies, as we all know, the violence of British teenagers is already a social problem, British filmmakers and relevant departments for these young people can be said to be heartbroken, beaten and beaten, punishment can not be punished, so I had to make some movies for these children to see.
For example, there is this kind of "Block Battle", which tells the story of the British little hooligans rising up against alien monsters, and using this strange story to express the expectations of the elders for teenagers: Although you usually do evil, but at the critical moment, we believe that you will fight aliens, you are all good children, well, we believe this.
There's also this kind of "Harry Brown," about a 70-year-old former naval officer's old friend who was beaten to death by a neighborhood hooligan, and the old officer decided to go out on his own to get rid of the scum. This film aims to form a intimidation to the little hooligans: don't think you're very good, 70-year-old people don't easily provoke, the world was once ours, as long as we are willing to move, the world is still ours, huh.
And the movie that really features the little British gangster as the protagonist is like this:
The thick nostalgic little fresh smell of this "This Is England" has almost overflowed from the poster... This film removes the violent tendencies of the skinheads from the root, which is of the same nature as "there is no fish in the fish and meat", in fact, the films made in the past ten years showing the British skinheads and small gangsters in the sixties and seventies are first undertaken a nostalgic task. In essence, it is even more conservative than "Old Cannon".
My personal favorite director and actor Peter Moulin's "The Tale of Ah Fei" tells the story of Glasgow in the 70s, and there is also a female director Lynn Ramsey's "The Mousetrap" that shows the idle teenagers in Glasgow in 73 years, and there are so many stories about Glasgow in the 70s! This "Ah Fei Story" is also based on nostalgia, and the sullen and somewhat similar flow accounts record the life of a group of small hooligans and explore the impact of the environment on human growth. The scale is also not large. As for the slightly larger -- "Robert Super High" produced in 2005, the plot is simply unclear.
I still like to count the 2014 production of Gangster Gangster, although the title is translated as gangster, but it is still different from the gangsters we usually know - they are more like a kind of handicraft workshop, and the plot of this film and Old Cannon is quite similar: the younger generation of gangsters use more organized criminal acts to challenge the semi-retired previous generation, and after many trials and provocations, it finally evolved into a chaotic war between two groups of with obvious generation differences, although the weapons are mainly fists. But people really shot the fight out, and the leader of the two gangs was still a father and son of different skin colors! Big names like Star Wars are very calm.
Looking at the situation in the United States, after excluding a large number of gangster films and crime films, there are also a few fight movies in the United States that can be compared with "Old Cannon".
The first is the classic 1979 Warrior Gang, a movie made for street fights, about hundreds of gangs across New York City each sending nine unarmed representatives to an underground convention, but the convener of the conference is killed at the scene, and a gang squad called the "Warrior Gang" is framed and flees back to their territory in the night and all the gangs.
All the gangs in the film have cool dress codes, and all the gangs are full of enthusiasm for fighting, "fists and feet are nothing", the fight is very practical and wonderful, and the escape route of the warrior gang squad is also full of thrills.
Another famous fight movie is "Fight Club". The content of this movie is very rich, the plot is also very interesting, and those who have not seen it can watch it.
In addition to fight movies, the United States also has small riotous themes that black directors like to shoot, like Spike Lee's famous work "Do What You Should", as well as films that reflect neo-Nazis, such as Edward Norton's "Beast Good People", but these films are very conservative, "Beast Good People" is still a "prodigal son back" style film, Although Norton has trained a muscle, but it does not come of much use, in fact, directors all over the world are very conservative in the theme of neo-Nazis, and they dare not play big. For example, "Lawlessness" produced by Australia and "The Life of the Skinhead Party" ("Ross 88") produced by Russia show that the skinhead party is inward-looking, disillusioned, vain, and achieves nothing.
In fact, this kind of neo-Nazi movie is the same as the film that shows the British little gangsters, the choreographer and the industry stand carefully, because the gangster movies and war movies are actually far from real life, and the entertainment is stronger, but when it comes to neo-Nazis or British hooligans, which are from civilian characters, because they are often around us, they must be restrained in tone, and cannot play a role in incitement and demagoguery.
However, this is not the case in Asia. The three countries of East Asia, China, Japan and South Korea are particularly keen to shoot bad boys, sometimes positive performances, and can shoot the beauty of violence in the fight scenes. Because of the large number of such films, there are only a few representative examples.
The first is Japan's Takashi Miike, whose "Crow College" shows the concept of "good fist", does not shy away from suppressing violent acts such as fighting, pours faith in violence, treats violence as a normal form of communication, and actually proposes a set of things like "rules" in "Old Cannon", which has a long history of blood tradition in juvenile manga or film and television, which is part of Japan's national character. Of course, back to the movie itself, the fight scene in this film is much more than "Old Cannon", although the whole is quite fake, but it is very hot and happy to watch, and it will not be like "Old Cannon" to hold you back.
In South Korea, recommend a "Cruel History of Mazhou Street", directed by Yuhe, a poet, who also has a work "Gangnam 1970" released this year. "Horses" is about high school students falling in love, friendship and fighting, and it is filmed very well. Kwon Sang-woo, the male protagonist who worships Bruce Lee for practicing double-cut sticks, kills four parties in the rooftop battle at the end of the film, completely releasing the power of the whole film, and the line all schools in Korea is also catchy.
Hong Kong recommended a "School Storm", which is a campus film that Lin Lingdong and his brother Nan Yan have worked out to integrate social films and gangster films, Nan Yan's screenwriters are good, the drama is sufficient and very gripping, and the realistic tone combined with Hong Kong-style exaggeration can often create a cool and pathetic effect. In fact, I have always wondered whether "Ancient Puzzle Boy" can be counted as a triad, and lack of understanding of their way of living, otherwise I can follow the clue of "The Tiger of Wan Chai who Drunken Dreams of Death", "Temple Street Story", "Gold List Title", and sort out the context of the ancient Puzzle Boy movie...
Finally, as an Easter egg, I recommend a German neo-Nazi film "Former Leader", which is the only neo-Nazi film I currently recognize. If you have a chance, you can take a look.