The road of life is inevitably fraught with setbacks, even the king superstar Andy Lau is no exception. In the early 1990s, Andy Lau, who was forced to transfer from TVB to the projection world, saw the vigor of the Hong Kong film industry at that time, so he decided to join hands with Lai Tai Wai, Yu Weiguo and others to jointly establish "Tianmu Production Co., Ltd.", thus starting his own entrepreneurial road.
"Tianmu" company launched a total of 11 movies in the 1990s, but in addition to the entrepreneurial work "91 Divine Eagle Heroes" made money, most of the rest of the box office was not ideal, which directly led to the later "Tianmu" fell into the loss of 40 million to 50 million Hong Kong dollars, and once shut down the dilemma, "Heaven and Earth" released in 1994, can be described as one of the lost works.
This film is co-produced by Tianmu and Yongsheng, which is a large-scale production created by Andy Lau with all his strength, which not only puts the story line into a grand historical background, but also runs to Tianjin, Shanghai and other places to shoot, which is enough to see the ambition of this film.
The story tells that commissioner Zhang Yipeng (Andy Lau) was entrusted by the Republic of China government to go to Shanghai to fight drugs. When he arrives in Shanghai, he discovers that the situation is far more severe and complicated than he imagined: on the surface, the head of the Police Department, Ni Kun (Gu Baoming), although he vigorously supports his anti-drug work, behind the scenes, he colludes with dai jimin (Liu Songren), a big drug lord who usually presents himself as a great philanthropist, to engage in the drug business.
Because Zhang Yipeng is an upright person and jealous and hateful, he not only refuses to join forces with Ni Kun and others, but also leads his assistants "Shandong Leopard" (Jin Shijie) and Wu Jun (Yu Feihong) to destroy the drug factory related to Ni and Dai and intercept a batch of drugs, which makes them even more resentful of Zhang Yipeng.
One night, Ni Kun sent assassins to carry out an assassination operation, Zhang Yipeng avoided a disaster because he returned to the hotel to retrieve the left behind items, but his wife Su Su (Chen Shaoxia) unfortunately died of several shots, and then Ni Kun and others forced Wu Jun to tell the whereabouts of the robbed drugs, the latter in order to keep secrets, so he committed suicide, ni Kun had no choice but to imprison Zhang Yipeng and frame him, in an attempt to destroy and disintegrate his good public image, "Shandong Leopard" heard the news, and went to rescue Zhang Yipeng without fear of danger. In the end, he also exchanged his own death for Zhang Yipeng's chance to escape.
Seeing his wife and colleagues fall one after another, Zhang Yipeng not only did not fear Ni Kun and Dai Jimin, but strengthened his determination to punish the two, and then Zhang Yipeng used the whereabouts of drugs to successfully provoke Dai Jimin and Ni Kun to kill each other, and quietly filmed the whole process in the theater, in the chaos, Ni Kun was shot and killed by Dai Jimin, and Dai Jimin was also severely injured by Zhang Yipeng and fell on the chair in the theater.
Not long after, just after taking office, General Li, who was in charge of the anti-drug work, came to Shanghai, and Zhang Yipeng personally handed over the film recording the evidence of Dai Jimin's crime to his hand.
This film is one of Andy Lau's most famous tragic films, and its most special place lies in the fact that it is contrary to the traditional formula of "good people do not die, bad people must die", the righteous people who always abide by their duties and are impartial and selfless do not end well in the end, while the big villains who are fierce and fierce and do all bad things are at large, but such plot arrangements and reversals are also reasonable in that special era: it is not easy to be born in a chaotic world, and it is not easy to steal peace, not to mention how can you reverse a whole big era with your own strength?
Just like Zhang Yipeng in the film, although he represented the progressive youth who were eager to change the status quo in China at that time after the founding of the Republic of China, because he did not understand the official field and was not smooth enough, he was hindered everywhere later, and even finally sacrificed in vain, his tragedy was actually the tragedy of that era.
In order to restore the characteristics of the times, the film spent a lot of thought on photography. The photographer is Li Pingbin, who has won the Golden Horse Award for Best Cinematography many times, and in the film, he uses a large number of distant lenses to show the grandeur, luxury and luxury of the concession buildings, thus reflecting the smallness and powerlessness of the individual characters, and also laying the groundwork for the tragic fate of Zhang Yipeng and others later. In particular, the series of long shots of Zhang Yipeng getting up and leaving the dinner table at the beginning of the movie, insisting on taking away Susu and arguing with Ni Kun, is a stroke of genius, which not only refines Zhang Yipeng's down-to-earth status quo and strong sense of alienation, but also indicates that this film is a film full of a solemn atmosphere.
In addition, the film's costume props and art sets are also more elaborate, and the director also deliberately uses a large number of palatial interior scenes to contrast with the harsh reality, thus strengthening the intensity of irony and criticism.
"Heaven and Earth" is actually a story of human nature and dignity, even in a complex environment mixed with fish and dragons, the protagonist vows to fight the evil people to the end for his ideals and beliefs. Although Zhang Yipeng, played by Andy Lau in the film, has not completely jumped out of the usual characteristics of his previous roles, his bright and upright personality characteristics that are unswerving to death still make this character stand up and have a strong personality charm.
And Taiwanese actor Gu Baoming's portrayal of Ni Kun also interprets the greed of human nature into three points. In contrast, dai jimin, the villain played by the old drama bone Liu Songren, can be described as the most brilliant supporting role in the whole film, his old scheming and sinister viciousness are not just conveyed through expressions, but there are a large number of psychological dramas as support, especially in the end, when the audience thinks that he has been punished as he deserves, the evil smile at the corner of his mouth makes people's scalps tingle.
For commercial reasons, the film also added three action scenes, the largest of which was the last zhang Yipeng in the theater with Dai Jimin's fight, in which Andy Lau not only had to grab the curtain and sway in the air, but also had to break through a huge piece of glass behind him, where except for some shots with traces of the use of stand-ins, most of the scenes were completed by Andy Lau himself.
However, when it comes to the most difficult filming, there is also a section where Zhang Yipeng led the team to destroy the drug factory, where there is an action stunt scene where the protagonist and opponent shoot along the slide while chasing and shooting, and the camera also slides down with the actors.
However, as a drug-resistant movie, whether the film does not need to add too many action scenes has become a question, and Zhang Yipeng suddenly changed from a literati-style anti-drug commissioner at the beginning to a lone hero who can fight with the crowd, which inevitably seems abrupt, and although the film has a big background as the support of the story, it has not risen to a larger pattern as a whole, or it has become a Hong Kong film cliché, some regrets.
After the release of this film, although the box office exceeded 10 million Hong Kong dollars, such achievements were barely strong after all, compared with "God of Gamblers 2", "Drunken Fist 2" and so on, which got a box office of 40 or 50 million that year, there is obviously a big gap. According to the production scale of the film and the loss of "Tianmu" later, the film not only did not make Tianmu make money, but even the investment could not be returned, which was definitely a big blow to Andy Lau and his film company at that time.
The reason why "Heaven and Earth" did not have a box office hit, mainly because it caught up with the era of "double weekly", coupled with the fact that the film's name was literary and artistic, the theme was divorced from the local, and the theme was sad and serious, which naturally did not interest the vast majority of the audience, which is as the classic and sadistic line in the film said - sorry, you were not born at the right time.
Even so, the film is the "Tianmu" work that best balances commerciality and artistry, and it is also the one with the largest vision, thanks to Andy Lau's courage to break the mainstream of the film industry, the courage to break through, and another way to have "Sky and Earth" such a film that can stand the test of time. The following year, Andy Lau was invited to the Spring Festival Gala stage to sing "Forgetting Love Water", which made this song popular overnight, but many people did not know at the time, "Forgetting Love Water" is the theme song of this "Heaven and Earth".