Prison movies have always used "escape" as the core theme.
In a closed and high-pressure environment, it breaks through the barrier-breaking process of layers of blockades and forms its own unique type style.
From "Escape from Pretoria" for survival, to "The Golden Cicada Shell" for justice, to the film history classic "Shawshank Redemption" that fled for freedom, "escape" is the unchanging theme.
The tense excitement of the escape process, which is every second counts, is an important element of the prison theme movie that is loved by the audience.
But can you imagine a movie that adds humor to a serious and tense escape?
Who is so cute? It is
Prison Break Brothers
"Prison Escape Brothers" is directed by Mak Haobang, written by Huang Zihuan, and co-starring Tan Yaowen, Zhang Jicong, Bai Tiannan, Zhang Jiansheng, Huang Debin and other actors.
The story takes place in a prison mixed with dragons and snakes, where the two giants of the jianghu carrying the handle "Roller Brother" (Tan Yaowen) and the "Knife Scar" (Zhang Jiansheng), who was sentenced to life imprisonment, divide the "world" equally.
Chen Haozheng (Zhang Jicong), who is still serving a prison sentence, learns that his mother is in urgent need of a kidney replacement due to acute kidney failure, and the highest success rate of kidney replacement is naturally the use of immediate family members, and the most suitable for him is of course his son's kidney.
However, Chen Haozheng, who was imprisoned, could not even go out, let alone donate a kidney.
Asking for help from Prison Chief Deng (Huang Debin), who is only thinking about promotion, is not only relentlessly dismissed, but also punished by running laps until the lights go out.
As the saying goes: there are hearts planting flowers that do not bloom, and there is no heart to plant willows.
Chen Haozheng actually saw an overhaul worker walking from the prison administration building through the sewer to the outside of the prison, which made him suddenly feel hopeful.
Chen Haozheng is looking for help from the unjustly imprisoned architect Mai Jiantian (Bai Tiannan), who has a grudge with the two giants in the prison, and he agreed to Chen Haozheng and planned the escape plan together.
While planning the escape route, they discovered that the vent opening in the carpentry room was a security hole, but it was the roller brother's territory.
But before you formed a beam with the roller brother, how can the other party help you escape.
Coincidentally, Chen Hao accidentally stole a wallet when he was outside, and the photo on that wallet was exactly the same as the photo of his daughter in the roller brother's room.
After checking, it turned out that the drum brother had always thought that the daughter who was cut off in the accident was not dead, and later went abroad with his mother. Today, she is an adult and will marry her beloved in Hong Kong on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
After more than ten years of thinking about her daughter, and now that she can see her daughter again, Brother Roller immediately agreed to Chen Haozheng's request, but there was a condition: he had to take him with him when he escaped on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
In the heavily guarded prison, the three conspired to stage an escape plan.
First, the plot to escape is not so serious, and the small humor relaxes the nerves
In the general prison escape plot, the plot to escape is often careful and cautious, and the slightest carelessness will abandon the previous achievements.
However, "Prison Escape Brothers" is not so serious, but sets up a lot of humorous bridges.
When Brother Roller learned that his daughter was still alive and had grown up, that moment of happiness came too suddenly. Before he could speak, Brother Roller fainted happily.
The three of them squatted in the toilet, Chen Haozheng and Mai Jiantian listened to the drum brother with a bitter face and confided his heart, do you think he is in pain inside?
No! He's just the power of the invigorating front. (This is a flavorful GIF)
In order to make the key to open the door, the three of them jointly performed a scene to steal the mold of the key from the prison guard.
I didn't expect it to be in hand, it sucked!
There is no chance to start elsewhere, so the repetition of the technique may be suspected.
What to do? Change the script!
The three of them staged a bitter meat trick around the prison guards, and finally stole the mold when he was not paying attention.
In order to cut off the iron fence in the ventilation duct, the three men took turns with a small file.
Every day the cut is a sore arm, and you can only massage each other every night.
Look at the sour expression on their faces, it is real and funny.
After adding these humorous little bridges, the overall style of "Prison Escape Brothers" does not have the sense of urgency of the previous prison movies, but on the contrary, it makes the audience look not only relaxed, but even a little funny.
The addition of humor does not spoil the overall atmosphere because these embarrassing plots can highlight the characteristics of the protagonists' small characters.
As prisoners at the bottom of the prison ecology, no matter how beautiful and capable they were, they were the most powerless in prison. Secretly, it is difficult to do things without being discovered, all kinds of tools are developed by themselves, and even the missing materials have to find ways to get in.
Therefore, these humorous passages that make people feel funny do not make the overall plot feel divided, because they fit the real life situation.
Second, jailbreaking is not something you can get over if you want to
Since the roller brothers and their party are small people at the bottom of the prison ecology, the escape plan must not be as smooth as they think.
As early as the early stages of their preparations, Prison Chief Deng targeted them and sent a horse boy to spy on them secretly.
Sure enough, during the Mid-Autumn Festival night action, he was immediately reported by Ma Zai.
Although Prison Director Deng found them fleeing, he never saw anyone under surveillance.
In the previous plan, turn off the electric gate in the power room and cut off the surveillance video in order to win ten minutes of escape time.
But they never expected that the button did not respond, and the hard tearing down of the wire not only did not power off, but also triggered an alarm.
Helpless, they let go of their hands and appeared under surveillance, and were immediately discovered by Prison Director Deng.
What's worse is that the sewer manhole cover in the administrative building not only has to be lifted with a crowbar, but also sinks to death. Chen Haozheng and Brother Roller moved for half a day before moving away, at this time, Prison Director Deng had already arrived.
In order to stop Prison Chief Deng, Chen Haozheng and Mai Jiantian stayed behind to fight him to the death, just to create time for Brother Roller.
Three people were planned to escape, but only one escaped.
Compared with the prison escape movies that eventually retreat, the escape ending of "Prison Escape Brothers" is more real and convincing.
After all, not everyone knows all the details, and it is impossible to make correct judgments and reactions in a very short period of time when encountering unplanned emergencies.
Some netizens commented that this movie is "Hong Kong version of the golden cicada shell", in fact, I do not agree.
Stallone in "The Golden Cicada Shell" is an expert who is good at finding prison loopholes, not only extremely familiar with various equipment in prisons, but even has enough experience to support him and be able to crack some new levels by example.
Arnold plays a prisoner with a high force value, who can help Stallone save his life and escape from a group of murderous prisoners.
Compared with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stallone in "The Golden Cicada Breaks the Shell", Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stallone who met the gods and killed the Buddha, the three brothers in "Escape brothers" simply escaped in a simple and awkward way, which is simply low-worthy.
But it is precisely this "low configuration" that can highlight the helplessness of the "roller brother" who chose to escape from prison.
Third, escape is not for freedom, but for the sake of wishing
At the beginning we mention that the escape from Pretoria is for survival, the escape from the golden cicada is for justice, and the escape from The Shawshank Redemption is for freedom. The protagonists of these three films really want to escape from prison.
But the "roller brother" and "Chen Haozheng" in "Prison Escape Brothers", the "escape" of the two of them is more out of helplessness. (Mai Jiantian gave up the prison break after weighing the pros and cons, but still helped them plan)
Brother Roller just wants to take on the responsibility of a father at his daughter's wedding and make up for his daughter's lack of paternal love for many years.
Chen Haozheng just wanted to donate a kidney to his mother and do a little bit of filial piety that his son should undertake. (Tattoo on the body is an expression, although the word is wrongly engraved)
In the two of them, we see more of their guilt as fathers and sons of man, rather than really wanting to escape the punishment and punishment of the law.
Therefore, the ending of "Prison Escape Brothers" is also very different from the previous prison movies.
The tumble brother who attended his daughter's wedding hid in the shadows to hear his daughter's thoughts and evaluations of himself, and quietly left contentedly.
In the face of the pursuing police, he not only did not run away or resist, but instead made a booing motion, signaling the police not to disturb and sabotage his daughter's wedding.
Chen Haozheng, who was rushed to the hospital because of the fight, grabbed the doctor's hand and said: I want to donate a kidney when he was pushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
At that moment, a smile appeared on his face, and there were no regrets.
When both of their wishes were fulfilled, they did not resist, did not escape, and returned to prison to continue to accept their fate.
It seems that the "roller brother" failed their escape from prison, but in fact, for them: the wish has been fulfilled, and there are no regrets in this life.
The movie "Prison Escape Brothers" can be said to be a warm outlier in the prison genre film.
The addition of humorous elements, imperfect prison escape plans and failed escape endings are definitely rare in previous prison movies.
What's more different is that in the male-dominated prison theme, "Escape Brothers" wants to convey that the core emotion is not brotherhood but family.
At the end of the movie, "Chen Haozheng" and "Brother Roller", who experienced the escape from prison, said their feelings about life.
Chen Haozheng said:
I have always used jail time to escape my responsibilities as a son. But at the same time, I also gave up the time of living happily with my mother.
The drum brother said:
I used to think that taking good care of my brother was the most important thing. In fact, in this world, there is nothing more precious than family.
Yes, no matter how high the achievements are, or how great the mistakes we make, our families will always be our strongest backing.
Your family will not count your faults, they will be proud of your achievements, they will accept your strengths and weaknesses, they will accept everything about you.
Therefore, there is nothing in this world that is more worthy of our protection than our families, to love them well.
To borrow a classic line from "Journey to the West", it is: If I had to add a deadline before this love, I would like to say ten thousand years.
Bluestone Movie | Leng Zimo (Internship)
This article is the original content of Bluestone Films, please do not reprint it in any form without authorization