Today, let's talk about the Hong Kong movie "Detective Wars".
片名Detective VS. Sleuths / Cold Detective (2022)。
Detective Wars is a pseudo-sequel to the 2007 movie Mad Detective, and the story still revolves around Li Jun, a talented and paranoid detective played by Liu Qingyun.
This plot is based on a series of horrific murders, and many years later, a series of revenge crimes against the criminal suspects of that year occurred, Li Jun keenly found the clues, but did not expect that he had already been counted by the other party.
In recent years, Hong Kong films have given people the feeling of "no", and the box office reputation is a cliff-like decline. There are many reasons, such as Hong Kong's economic development lagging behind the global economic development situation, such as the rise of American, Japanese and Korean films, seizing the Hong Kong film market, such as Hong Kong filmmakers have gone north, local filmmakers are not picking up, such as local filmmakers are self-imposed without innovation.
In this "Detective Wars", you can see these points, the film is still Wei Jiahui, Liu Qingyun and other old people, everyone goes north to cooperate, and the theme is still a pseudo-sequel to the movie more than ten years ago.
There are a lot of Hong Kong flavors in "Detective Wars", but it is insufficient, and the movie-watching feeling is not "the familiar Hong Kong film is back", but always feels where the shortcomings are hot.
The film wants to make some achievements in all aspects of plot, performance, visual effects, etc., but it can only achieve seven successes everywhere. The film has a very Hong Kong flavor in terms of plot, but the performance and visual effects are not so "Hong Kong flavor", which is also destined to be the most Hong Kong movie in recent years, rather than an authentic Hong Kong movie.
Talk about the plot.
There are a large number of horrific murders in "Detective Wars", such as the "Rainy Night Murder Demon Case", "Yuen Long Butcher Case", "Kwun Tong Demon Police Case", "Victoria Harbour Massacre Case", "Typhoon Shelter Cooking Case", "Temple Street Gate Flying Corpse Case", etc. Just listening to the name is enough to be horrifying and frightening, and what is more frightening is that these cases are also taken from real cases.
"Rainy Night Murder" is adapted from the serial murder case of taxi driver Lin Guoyun, who used his work to brutally kill 15 women and hide the victims in his own home, and he was arrested when he went to rinse photos of the victims.
The movie "Doctor Lamb" is adapted from this case.
The Yuen Long Butcher Case was a serial murder case that occurred in late 2002.
The murderer, Tang Yongqiang, a Vietnamese national, who was short and thin, left him because he was dissatisfied with his wife's new marriage, began to cast a spell on magic, laid out the "revenge of the five ghosts" bureau, and murdered five girls in the apartment of Pak Sha Village, Yuen Long.
The movie "Devil Butcher/ Sky Devil Butcher in Kowloon" is based on this case.
The "Kwun Tong Magic Police Case" is based on the 2006 Tsim Sha Tsui gun murder case, which is more expressed in the movie "Detective".
In the real world, from 2001 to 2006, there were robbery and shooting of police officers, bank robberies and police officers in Hong Kong.
In 2001, a policeman was killed and his gun was snatched; In the same year, someone used this gun to rob the bank; In 2006, Xu Bugao was killed in a shooting with two patrol officers, and all three were killed, and the gun Xu Bugao used was the same gun that had been snatched five years earlier.
Xu Bugao's criminal motives and the confusing shooting process at the scene have aroused speculation from all walks of life, and gradually circulated into a suspenseful case, which has also become an excellent material for the movie "Detective".
The "Victoria Harbour Mutilation Case" refers to the 2009 case in which 16-year-old Hong Kong's aided maid, Jia Mei, was killed by a guest.
The movie "Treading Blood and Finding Plums" is based on this case.
The "Typhoon Shelter Cooking Case" is based on a vicious murder in 1999 in which three men kill their victims and then hide them in a mermaid-shaped HelloKitty doll.
"Human Head Tofu Soup" is based on this case.
The "Temple Street Flying Corpse Case" is adapted from the "Three Wolves Case", which occurred in the Hong Kong kidnapping case from 1959 to 1961. The Three Wolves refer to the murderers in the case, Ma Guangcan, Li Wei and Ni Bingjian.
On June 19, 1959, the three kidnapped Huang Yingsu, the son of Huang Xibin, a wealthy ticket-torn businessman, and cut off Huang Yingqiu's ear and sent it to the Huang mansion. On February 10, 1961, three wolves kidnapped Huang Xibin. Soon after, he killed Tang Tianfu, a resident of Yuen Long, New Territories. The three wolves were arrested on November 3 and sentenced to death the following year and executed.
The movie "The Strange Case of the Three Wolves" is based on this case.
Taking from the real case greatly enhances the appeal of the film, stemming from the fact that reality is higher than reality, which is also a magic weapon for the original success of Hong Kong films.
So many appalling cases are all brought together, and all the detective work is concentrated on one person, and this person can also solve these cases. So he is not a detective, who is a detective?
Just as the so-called not crazy devil can not live, the cost of Li Jun becoming a divine detective is also extremely huge. He paid beyond the ordinary mind to crack the truth in an almost monster-like state.
The famous quote from Nietzsche's "The Other Side of Good and Evil" in the film is repeated: "Those who fight monsters should be careful not to become monsters" "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss is also staring at you", and repeatedly recited in German. The purpose is to express the core theme.
Li Jun sees Fang Lixin in the mirror in the final shot, not that he is a hidden criminal detective, but to echo the main theme of the film. Li Jun, who has been dedicated to fighting monsters, stares at the monster for a long time, and the monster in the mirror is also staring at him.
Li Jun seems to be crazy and paranoid, but in fact he understands the truth that great good is evil and great evil is right.
He was angry, he resisted, but after all the dust settled, there was still endless nothingness.
A visible enemy, no matter how ferocious and cunning, always has a way to confront it. No matter how painstakingly the "detective" lurking inside is laid out, he can never change the facts that have happened, the criminal murderer is the criminal murderer, Li Jun only needs to find a proper opportunity to fight back, and can always tell the truth.
And the invisible enemy is the most difficult to deal with. Li Jun can see the monster that others can't see, and this monster is the root of his inability to eventually go crazy. He gave an output of air, except for being treated as delusional by ordinary people, which had basically no effect. Another monster he can't deal with is bureaucracy and formalism, Huang Xin gangster can "solve the case" by inserting his hand in a circle at the crime scene, and systematic decay can ignore the truth, even if the detective directly opens the god perspective. This is the great good and evil that the divine detective cannot resist.
Two talk about performance.
The biggest highlight of "Detective Wars" is Liu Qingyun's performance.
Li Jun can show paranoia and madness in "Detective", he can see the inner personality of others, and can see the truth through simulated crime. In "Detective Wars", he went one step further, and the living dead, both male and female can be simulated. He needs to switch to the different characters in an instant, to convince the audience that he has the target attached to him. It can be said that Liu Qingyun single-handedly raised the upper limit of the performance of this movie.
When Cai Zhuoyan and Lin Feng performed the opponent play with Liu Qingyun alone, they could see that they were also trying, but they couldn't catch it. Liu Qingyun's energy was unloaded when the other party performed.
In the absence of Liu Qingyun, Cai Zhuoyan and Lin Feng's performance is OK and will not let people get out of the play.
The little dragon girl Li Ruotong, who is familiar with us, plays the police boss Huang Xin in the film, and Li Ruotong's performance can be simply analogous to Liu Tao's performance in "The Beginning".
Huang Xin always looks at the waves of life and death without being shocked, and the performance is inappropriate, and the audience is free to judge. I think that if she wants to make up for her performance, it may be that she wants to use this way of expression to accuse bureaucracy and formalism, so that she can't act well.
Three say visual effects.
Director Wei Jiahui spent a lot of thought on the "big war". From the beginning to the end of the film, gun battles and chases continue, and there is no shortage of small climaxes in the whole film.
The advantage is that with a big scene and a big production, the audience will feel that it is worth the ticket price, and the disadvantage is that the battle scene is out of the category of detective, and it is almost on the RPG. The suspenseful atmosphere of the original brain showdown was diluted by the explosion.
The texture of the film is often almost like a TV series, if you can add a color filter as a whole and adjust the color, the viewing effect will be better.
If you don't go crazy, you won't live,
There is a Hong Kong flavor but not strong.
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