In Marvel's movie list this year, the most anticipated is "Black Widow".
As the debut of Marvel's phase 4, "Marvel Sister" finally ushered in her personal screen debut.
Since her appearance in "Iron Man 2", the "widow sister" portrayed by Scarlett Johansson has firmly attracted the attention of the audience. She is not only good looking, but also extraordinary, calm and rational, and acts as a binder in the Avengers.
Her identity and resume are legendary, she is a former KGB agent, S.H.I.E.L.D. level 10 agent, the Avengers super spy, her body has been genetically modified, greatly slowed down her aging rate, and strengthened her immune system and physical fitness.
In "American Team 2", we learn from the villain Dr. Zora that Black Widow was born in 1984, except for a few clips, the audience knows little about the character's history, and due to the character's super popularity, Marvel has promoted the black widow single-person movie to the schedule, which will be released in July this year.
Speaking of this kind of human-modified female agent image, 30 years ago, Hong Kong director Sin Qiran made a female action film "Black Cat", which achieved a box office success of more than 10 million in the Hong Kong film industry that year, ranking 17th at the Hong Kong domestic box office in 1991, and later launched a sequel.
This film had a far-reaching impact at the time, creating a trend of female assassin films in the Hong Kong film industry, and Wang Jing, who had a keen sense of business, immediately followed the trend the following year to concoct a more daring "Naked Lamb", allowing the goddess Qiu Shuzhen to play a sexy female killer, and won the first Academy Award for Best Actress nomination.
The heroine in "Naked Lamb" is called a kitten, and the male protagonist is also the male protagonist Ren Dahua in "Black Cat", 10 years later Wang Jing filmed a "Naked Agent", although the actor has changed a stubble, but the story routine has not changed at all.
It can be seen that "Black Cat" is fully qualified to be called the originator of the naked agent film in later generations.
In this issue of the "Cult Movie Awards", let's review this classic female action film from 30 years ago.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="25" > Black Cat</h1>
Black Cat
The film was released in 1991 and is produced by Deppel Pictures.
Debao was only established for a short period of seven years, but it has left many masterpieces in the history of Hong Kong film. The company was funded by wealthy businessman Pan Disheng, co-founded by Cen Jianxun and Hong Jinbao, of which Debao's name was mentioned by Hong Jinbao.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Debao took over Shaw's cinema line and gradually developed into three major film companies alongside Jiahe and New Art City. In the early days of Debao, the most important signature film was the "Royal Sister" series starring Yang Ziqiong, which not only made Debao famous in the industry, but also made Yang Ziqiong the most popular actress in the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s and 1990s.
However, by the time the series reached its fifth film, it was already a lackluster box office, and it was at this time that the director Xian Qiran, who was the executive director of Debao Film Company at the time, met Liang Zhen, who participated in the Miss Asia's unsuccessful selection, and invited her to star in the heroine of the movie "Black Cat".
At that time, Liang Zhen was still just a lonely and nameless newcomer, and he could play a heroine when he first entered the film and television circle, which can be said to have a very high starting point. Liang Zhen did not come from a martial arts background, but in his debut work, he challenged many difficult action scenes, and Debao Company hoped to train Liang Zhen as Yang Ziqiong's successor.
Kung Fu pays off, and Liang Won the Best New Actor Award at the 1992 Hong Kong Film Awards for "Black Cat", which also established the image of a female star in martial arts movies and has participated in many action movies.
Later, Liang Zhen sought a transformation due to an injury to a pat scene, and began to join TVB in the late 1990s. For young audiences, the most familiar is the role of the weak and slender Naran Fuya (Fu Guiren) played in the costume palace fighting drama "Desire for The Golden Branch", and Liang Zhen was nominated for TVB Taiqing's "Leap forward female artist" with this role, which is her more well-known role in recent years.
The story of the film takes place in the United States.
The heroine, Catherine, is an orphan girl in a foreign land, she has a rebellious, strong and fierce personality.
To make a living, she worked in a restaurant, and one night a long-distance truck driver came to the restaurant.
The driver was tall and tall, and when he saw Catherine, he wanted to flirt, but he did not expect Catherine to directly pick up the tableware in her hand and insert it into the driver's palm.
The driver was so angry that he slapped Catherine, who was swept out of the house by the restaurant owner.
Homeless Catherine living on the street, did not expect the driver still refused to let her go, out of the money to let Catherine accompany her for a night,
Catherine pretended to agree, but in fact quietly picked up a stone and smashed it under the driver's crotch.
The driver and Catherine wrestled together, after all, Catherine was not as physically strong as a man, and was beaten and injured, but she still refused to give in, like a beast, fighting the driver for her life, and finally took the pistol and shot the driver.
The police soon arrived at the scene, injured and unconscious Catherine, in a trance mistakenly thought that the driver was going to assault herself, subconsciously opened a gun, did not expect to kill a policeman, Catherine was arrested.
After undergoing a near-humiliating physical examination by the prison guards, Catherine was placed in a cell.
Unexpectedly, however, a fat policewoman sneaked into Catherine's cell and beat catherine wildly with a baton, while the guard in charge of the guard turned away when she saw this scene.
It turns out that the policeman catherine killed by mistake that day was the brother of the policewoman, and she wanted to avenge Catherine.
Unexpectedly, although Catherine was beaten all over the body, she still refused to accept defeat, relying on the life-for-life style of play actually killing the female police, and the guards saw that the female police were about to suffocate, so they subdued Catherine and held her in solitary confinement.
After a few days of detention, Catherine was about to be taken to court for trial, but on the way to the courtroom, Catherine used the excuse of going to the toilet, quietly unplugged the wire of the water tank in the toilet, and successfully opened the handcuffs.
Afterwards, Catherine took the risk of grabbing a gun, escaped from the courthouse, and ran into a nearby alley in a panic.
Unexpectedly, however, in a car in the distance, the mysterious man in black with sunglasses had pointed the muzzle of the sniper rifle at her.
The bullet shot out, and Catherine fell to the ground on the spot.
When Catherine woke up again, she was in a special ward, and sitting next to her was Brian, a senior CIA agent.
Brian told her that he had saved her as a murderer and had transformed her body to implant a high-tech chip code-named "Black Cat" that could unleash the body's full potential.
The CIA wanted to train Catherine to become a professional agent and help them carry out some shady assassinations, which Catherine exchanged for a chance to live.
Catherine wants to escape, but by this time she has no choice but to leave unless she is trained by the secret service.
In this way, Catherine began a rigorous training as a secret agent.
Because of the role of the black cat chip, coupled with Catherine's own strong personality, she showed extremely high talent.
Physical fitness, fighting, marksmanship, diving... Catherine excelled in all training programs.
It is worth mentioning that the agent training in this film also involves the training of science fiction brain thinking.
It is to use the device to connect the protagonist's brain and create a dream for her to perform an assassination mission, so as to strengthen the protagonist's subconscious as a killing machine, and test whether the protagonist will accept orders and commands 100%.
The cruelty of agent training is that once it is found that the trainee has the slightest disobedience, he will be directly executed as a failure of training.
But even during such a brutal training process, Catherine still longed for life outside.
At this time, the superior Brian's booing and warming made Catherine gradually fall for it, and the two began to develop into an underground affair after training.
Catherine soon embarked on her first assassination mission, aiming to assassinate a politician who was having a wedding.
Catherine pretended to be a wedding guest and eventually shot the target on the spot, but when evacuating, she found that the escape vehicle and pistol magazine prepared in advance could not be used, resulting in Catherine being chased and surrounded by politicians and security personnel.
Fortunately, Catherine, with her superior physical strength, finally jumped into the river of the canyon and narrowly escaped the pursuit.
When Catherine came ashore from downstream, she saw her superior, Brian, who had been waiting here for a long time.
It turned out that all this was only the last test for Catherine, equivalent to the graduation exam.
Catherine has endured nine deaths, which has finally given her a chance to leave the training base.
Her superiors asked her to live like a normal person, but to be on standby at all times, and she had to perform tasks when she had them.
Catherine returns to Hong Kong, where she is going to assassinate a wildlife scientist.
Disguised as a tourist, Catherine quietly shoots the target across the river, but is photographed by a young zoologist, Allen (Lin Zuhui), as she evacuates.
Worried about the exposure of her identity, Catherine quietly follows the other party and sneaks into Allen's home, gradually learning that Allen actually fell in love with Catherine at first sight and did not doubt her identity.
Later, Catherine deliberately created a chance encounter with Allen, the two chatted very closely, came and went with each other, Catherine gradually developed feelings for Allen, which made her gradually begin to desire to be an ordinary person.
However, agents are not free, and Catherine can only live an unknown two-sided life.
Sometimes with her boyfriend Allen dating and watching movies, Catherine can use the time to go to the bathroom and carry out assassination missions.
And Catherine's assassination method is also very special, sometimes creating it as an accident,
This time, she wanted to assassinate a businessman, so she climbed the tower crane of a nearby building on the way the merchant was driving, and then hoisted a piece of steel bar and created the illusion that the steel bar accidentally fell, causing the merchant car to be destroyed.
However, Catherine's inadvertent disappearance, more often, still aroused the suspicion of her boyfriend Allen.
He thinks his girlfriend is hiding something, but Catherine can't tell her the truth, and the contradictions and entanglements make Catherine think of leaving the secret service organization.
However, the secret service organization represented by the superior Brian appeared beside her anytime and anywhere like a shadow.
There were even former friends who recognized Catherine's identity, only to be found dead in the house the next day.
Apparently, the secret service organization deliberately killed it, which made Catherine more afraid that she would involve her boyfriend Allen.
Soon after, Catherine was given another mission to assassinate a major figure in Japan.
Catherine offered her boyfriend a vacation trip to Japan together, and the two stayed together in the hot spring hotel where the big man lived.
On the day of the assassination, Catherine deliberately broke up her boyfriend, and then took advantage of the opportunity of the big man to soak in the hot spring, quietly dived close to the target, and finally cut the throat of the target with a knife.
The mission went off smoothly, but Catherine, who was returning from diving naked, happened to bump into her boyfriend Allen.
The boyfriend again asks Catherine what she is hiding, and Catherine does not explain too much, but is determined to escape with her boyfriend.
For the Secret Service, Catherine's escape meant betrayal.
Therefore, the secret service organization sent a large group of men and horses to pursue and kill, and Catherine fought alone, outnumbered and wounded.
Eventually, the two were cornered and surrounded by Brian's men.
In order to protect her boyfriend, Catherine agrees to return to the organization with Brian, but Brian raises his gun and turns his gun at Allen.
At the critical moment, Catherine grabbed the pistol and fired a fatal shot at her boyfriend's heart.
Brian left with Catherine satisfied, and Catherine watched her boyfriend fall, her heart full of pain.
However, only in this way can Alan's life be saved, because only Catherine knows that her boyfriend's heart position is different from ordinary people.
At the end of the film, Catherine follows Brian on a plane and leaves, and the story ends abruptly.
From the current point of view, the end of "Black Cat" is somewhat dog blood and routine, but the screenwriter and director are obviously aiming to create a series of movies, so they deliberately leave enough suspense at the end, and it is true that after the release of "Black Cat", not only in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but even released to the European market, the sequel to the film was quickly put on the agenda.
It's just that "Black Cat 2" has become a more commercial political thriller, without Ren Dahua, there are more Qiu Yunbo who can fight, so there are more action scenes, and the story is more hot and exciting, but unfortunately, the plot is fully reversed, resulting in a far less repercussive response than the previous work.
Speaking of this "Black Cat 1", Debao Company intended to use this film to break into the Western film market, so it transplanted the story of the film to the United States for filming, and went to Japan in the middle, trying to strip away the Hong Kong style and create an action film with an international perspective, but it is not difficult for the discerning person to see that the story of this film is almost completely copied from the famous work "Female Prisoner Nikita" by French director Luc Besson.
The main plot structure and human conflict of the movie, and even the actor's styling are almost all imitations of "Nikita", the more brain-opening place is that the director also added a sci-fi setting such as implanting chips, so that the transformation of the heroine into a super assassin is more gimmicky, and other than that there is indeed a Marvel "Black Widow" flavor (also to interject, there is really a female villain role of "Black Cat" in Marvel comics, but it should not have much to do with the movie).
Although the film is not original, but fairly speaking, the director Xian Qiran is still imitative, the first third of the heroine of the film accidentally killed the policeman and was tortured, and then accepted by the secret service organization to carry out the training of the plot is very exciting and vigorous, the heroine Biao Biao Wildcat's character modeling is still excellent, but unfortunately the second half of the film fell into the cliché.
Finally, more than a decade after the release of "Black Cat", when director Luc Besson brought his new film to Hong Kong to promote, he also specifically mentioned an old thing:
According to Luc Besson's recollection, a Hong Kong film dealer took a copy of the film to sell to Lu Besson's distribution company, and as a result, Luc Besson did not look at it tightly, and when he saw the film, he was no different from the plot of his own filming of "Nikita", and copied me and sold the copyright to me, which made him grumpy.
This invisibly also tells the chaos of the Hong Kong film industry in that era, and excessive prosperity led to the endless emergence of films that copied cottages.