Hong Kong movies really can't do without him! How many more of his plays can I watch in my lifetime?
He blew up the Hung Hom Tunnel under the sea.
Bomb over the Qingma Bridge.
Pull the car past the Central MTR Station.
It almost destroyed the Hong Kong International Financial Center and the International Airport.
also repeatedly killed the male protagonist.
That man, come back!
That's right. He is a crazy and rapid progress, not crazy devil, no survival, in the entire Hong Kong film industry, and even in the Chinese film industry, there is almost no right director: Yau Litao.
This time he brought bigger productions, more stars:
Anti-drug 3
Sir had seen it in advance, and this time it was even crazier.
And not only planes, artillery, boom!
Pistols, AKs, bazookas, quadruple anti-aircraft guns, MP5...
18 types of live ammunition, dry!
also "toy" Liu Qingyun, Guo Fucheng, and Gu Tianle's three major actors;
Xie Junhao, Luo Jialiang, Fang Zhongxin, three heavyweight male partners, in the palm of the hand.
However, today Sir is not going to go into detail about how fierce this film really is.
And I just want to talk about why, at a time when Hong Kong films, especially Hong Kong-style action films, are gradually not being welcomed (just look at the box office of several Hong Kong films this year).
A Qiu Litao who was once less favored.
will become one of our fewer and fewer, expectable Hong Kong film directors.
After all, for Hong Kong films, he is a spiritual successor.
But at the same time, there is a proper "anti-bone".
01
If there is only one "strange person" chosen in the Hong Kong film industry, then this person, without a doubt, can only be Yau Litao.
On his body, there are many labels.
First, Kuaishou.
In the past 40 years, he has directed 103 works (including unfinished), with an average of 4 directors per year.
The value for money is also good.
Filming "The King of New Comedy", Li Lizhi called him: "Fast gunman, fast and beautiful, finished in one month". (Xingye, you look here)
"Forgive Him 77 Times" took 21 days.
Filming "Eight Immortals Hotel's Human Meat Char Siu Bun", only spent eighty percent of the budget.
Some people say that he: Give the money to this person, and the play will be filmed for you.
Second, the cult holy hand.
In 1993, "Eight Immortals Hotel's Human Meat Char Siu Bun", so that many people until now, as soon as they see the three words "char siu buns", they will automatically think of "human flesh"...
Although it is a third-grade film, after the painting, the box office remained high for three consecutive weeks, and the Hong Kong and Macao char siu bun business languished.
The male protagonist won the Academy Award actor, and Brother Tao has also become famous since then.
Third, the all-round player.
B-grade films, big productions, horror, police and bandits, gangsters, love, erotica, New Year's greetings, realistic dramas, and main themes can be controlled.
Direct, edit, cut, film, proficient.
He directed Dou Wei and Zhang Chumen's Hung Hom concert "Rock Chinese Music Power".
also filmed "Yin and Yang Road", which set off the trend of ghost movies.
He has filmed "Old Master 2001" in live-action + animated form.
also made the main theme movie "Qiu Jin" in the early years.
And look at the list of his works.
You will definitely sigh "So he did this".
And among them, the majority of fans are the most familiar and make him the most "famous", which belongs to his "ruthlessness".
How ruthless is Qiu Litao?
"Human flesh char siu buns", which made him famous in the first war, not only meticulously shows the process of handling, processing, and cooking corpses.
And with close-ups, the police officers chewed too hard to deform their faces.
The meaning speaks for itself:
It's not just eating meat, it's eating people.
After the "Ebola virus", the male protagonist killed as soon as he came up.
How to kill?
Only rely on the legs of a folding table.
The camera captures the moment when a person is squeezed to death.
In the era of big productions, his "bad taste" can still sometimes "show his feet".
Death still requires the sculpting of ritual.
In "Drug Sweep 2", Gu Zai and Hua Zi hit people in the face first.
The bullet passed through the braincase, leaving bullet holes in the solemn expression, exploding flying blood, in the cold filter, not red, but more terrifying than a river of blood.
Handsome guys, there must always be something missing:
"Anti-Drug 2", Gu Zai broke his hand; "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", Hua Zi broke his leg; "Drug Sweep 3", Chengzai almost broke his arm.
Villains, to be bad, but also perverted:
In "Sweeping Drugs 2", Jizo (played by Gu Tianle) wears a woolen coat and passes through the cold storage of hanging pigs.
He grabbed the razor and pumped it at the naked man's thigh.
While smoking, she chatted with the female companion on the phone about the underwear she wore.
In "Drug Sweep 3", Brother Cha (played by Liu Qingyun) wears the fire ring of the grenade into a pigeon egg.
This evil smile seemed to be about to go crazy at any moment.
Hunting the strangest strange, the most crazy crazy, Tao Ge's works have an extreme sense of almost out of control.
This extreme brings a strong stimulation to the senses.
But in addition to looking cool, you will find that he will always give something "unpleasant".
This is "not pleasant".
is the reason why Qiu Litao has not become "superficial".
02
To put it bluntly, this "unhappiness" stems from his challenge to the audience.
Saying that Qiu Litaobo's eyeballs, the impact is so strong that it is even a little disgusting, which is undoubtedly offending the audience.
Say that his story is shallow and bloody, but when you taste it carefully, he has never been as simple as the confrontation between good and evil, and the mutual knowledge of police and bandits.
"Human flesh char siu buns", the male protagonist Huang Zhiheng is heinous.
But when he was arrested and imprisoned, he was still wantonly humiliated by the brother of the tougher victim.
Law enforcement police, lawlessness and principle.
When you get to his shop, you will feel at ease and walk along the char siu buns.
In order to obtain confessions, confessions were extorted through torture, in disregard of procedural justice.
Huang Zhiheng's murder is shocking, but the expression of the little nurse when she injects tap water under his skin with a huge needle, how is it not hideous?
Unlike the direct difference of the barbarians, self-righteous civilized people, when they show their barbaric side, often find a justification for themselves.
Is it necessary to subdue the barbarians in a more barbaric way than he did?
This is the paradox of civilization and order thrown out by Qiu Litao.
Today's Tao Ge, although he no longer uses excrement, mutilated limbs, and killing to create horror, his challenge still runs through his works.
Heroes are afraid of death.
"Bomb Disposal Expert", the male protagonist can't disarm the explosives, and after making a generous statement, he turns around and runs.
Note that this escape shot is from the perspective of the colleague who was left behind, shooting the back of the male protagonist.
Other shots that run away after defusing bombs mostly let the characters come in the direction of the audience, because in this way, the impact of the bomb can be most intuitively presented.
Watching the savior escape, at that moment, the audience felt the loneliness and despair of being abandoned.
Good people can go astray.
In "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", the male protagonist was blown off a leg during the mission, and after being fitted with a prosthetic leg, he was marginalized and became a civilian.
So he teamed up with the villain to devise a plan to destroy Hong Kong, and has already successfully carried out an explosion.
Villains also have a human flavor.
In "Drug Sweep 3", in addition to brotherhood, there are also villains Brother Cha.
For undercover police officers Ou Zhiyuan (played by Koo Tianle) and Zhang Jianxing (played by Kwok Fucheng), the feelings for Cha Ge may just be the heartstrings of certain moments.
They will eventually follow their inner sense of justice.
And what about the poor brother to them?
Because they have been saved by them, they have really always regarded them as brothers.
When fleeing for your life.
He took care of himself and did not forget to take his brother with him.
Brother Cha is, of course, also atrocious.
In the opening ten-minute shootout scene, under the heavy fire of the police, he fled desperately, showing his true colors as a bandit.
But what about Ou Zhiyuan and Zhang Jianxing, who couldn't help themselves?
In order to gain the trust of the poor brother, one person accidentally hit and killed someone.
One person indirectly caused the death of others in order to join the group.
The villain kills for greed, and the good man "has to" offer a petition, although the purpose is very different, but the tragic result is the same.
Exactly.
When the two undercover police officers mentioned the bad brother, although they always stressed more than once, "drug dealers are always drug dealers, and they must be arrested no matter what."
But every time a criminal is arrested, the mental price they have to pay may be immeasurable.
Supervisor has questions:
You are addicted to doing undercover work
Or get used to drunken gold fans
Sir thought that they were stuck in the quagmire for the mission and could not break free.
Good people are not monolithic.
Bad people are not only so one-sided as doing bad things.
Qiu Litao presents you with the absurdity of good and bad, good and evil at the same time, so that the story always leads to an unexpected, out-of-control ending, and questions human nature.
03
Speaking of which, it is necessary to mention another label of Tao Ge:
Intelligentsia.
What?
An intellectual who is passionate about making cult films?
To be honest, many years ago, before he saw his book "Cultural Thinking and Practice of a Film Director", Sir did not associate him with the word intellectual.
But in that book, he seriously talked about the cultural industry, talked about the concept of authorship, and even, using the example of "nude photos door" to talk about "moral judgment".
It is obviously the handiwork of academic research.
He holds a Master of Cultural Studies and a PhD in Philosophy from Lingnan University.
His doctoral dissertation took the filming process of his film "Qiu Jin" as an example to explain the historical changes of film censorship.
He also worked as an investigative journalist and founded a publishing house.
He has founded magazines such as "Big Pictures" and published works such as "Public Housing Scandal: A Reporter's Investigation" and "Four Generations of Hong Kongers".
He was praised by his peers as "one of the most admired intellectuals of his time." ”
△ Qiu Litao most often wears a rock T-shirt
But why would an intellectual make cult films that many people disdain?
In fact, the background of strange feelings is just a general struggle at the bottom.
For example, the chicken in "Ebola Virus" is itself a bullied bottom of society.
At the beginning, the killing was a counterattack after being bullied by the boss.
After exile, he not only endured the racial discrimination of white people, but was also arbitrarily oppressed by his boss.
However, he is not a good type.
In the face of such a hateful weak person, you will find that the kind of empathy and sympathy that often arise when watching the story of revenge at the bottom is not useful here.
Let the audience struggle with sympathy and hatred, examine their own morality, and provoke skeptical thinking:
Under the soaring economy, why do people still live in such an environment?
How much discrimination, discontent and despair breed in the invisible corners?
That's right.
If you say chivalrous and tender pony brothers, romanticize violence with sassy heroic posture.
In Tao Ge's B-grade films, he uses cruelty to reduce violence to violence itself, and in independent films, he expresses compassion with sharp and alternative perspectives.
He has a natural "backbone".
And now in the police film that has to distinguish between good and evil, his accusation is obviously more hidden.
The male protagonist in "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", although he later reined in the cliff, but his former rebellion has helped him achieve part of his revenge on the system.
In "Drug Sweep 3", the boss cares about the police officers, but he is also worried.
Then compare the "simple and rude" of the bad brother.
It seems that the latter, because of its disregard for the law and discipline, is fearless, but it seems more bloody.
So it's not so much that Zhang Jianxing is really used to a life that walks between light and decay.
It is better to say that he feels that in the gap of "great righteousness", that little bit has nothing to do with position, has nothing to do with the human nature of good and evil.
So even if the transformation is a big production.
Qiu Litao is still stubbornly writing delicate observations of human nature.
This is the last insistence of an "intellectual".
At last.
Sir also wants to talk more about the topic of "Hong Kong films".
That's right, Gu Zai, Chengzai, Uncle Qingyun, a whole generation of Hong Kong film creators are old, so many people are also saying that they are "consuming feelings", which makes the recent Hong Kong film results are not ideal.
But is it really so?
Are the Hong Kong films that we remember that we don't care about, those extreme expressions, those crazy and overheated Hong Kong films have really become memories?
In fact, in Qiu Litao's films, there are still shadows of old Hong Kong films.
It has the neatness of Hong Kong films.
That is the efficiency honed from a lot of actual combat experience, "Drug Sweep 3" opens ten minutes, the relationship between the characters, the main contradictions are clearly explained, as well as gunfights, explosions, reversals, all available.
It also has the coldness of Hong Kong films.
He does not believe in absolute good and evil, fairness, order, civilization, so he makes good people undercover impulsive, bad people drug lords have blood.
But he also branded a unique mark on Hong Kong films and completed his rebellion against Hong Kong films.
Dispel the charm of heroes, reinterpret brotherhood, and respect the natural occurrence of human nature and human feelings.
The basis for him to continue the past and forge ahead is that he still retains the spirit of Hong Kong films.
That is the spirit that you can only see in these people, passed down for many years, almost disappeared.
Seeing their courage to really fight and fight hard in order to shoot.
See their self-disciplined efforts.
Why is the heinous drug dealer Cha Ge impressive?
Because he was played by Liu Qingyun!
Vicious, vicious drug dealers are not uncommon, but not many are interesting.
Growing hair, growing a beard, and wearing "strange costumes" is his understanding of the character, "I think this drug dealer in this world of drug dealers, in fact, he is a little abnormal."
How abnormal?
In the face of the brother's reaction, the first reaction on the face of the gun was not fear, but "ouch" sighed, as if the next sentence had to say "otherwise you go to the side a little".
High cold boss? Non-existent, look at this smug energy.
He is stubborn to the point of almost "naïve", and has a childish dependence and trust in Zhang Jianxing.
In the end, I still want to fight to the death to save the "brother".
The shot is a classic, which is the charm of the actor.
Sir felt that instead of asking, "how are they still them", "how many more times can I see them".
In fact, Hong Kong films are not "dead", but have changed, experienced ups and downs, big waves, through the industry, the situation changes, it has gone to another path, becoming calm, restrained, and gloomy.
Perhaps, if one day, the Qingyun of Guzai City can no longer be moved, and Qiu Litao can no longer shoot, that is the real sunset.
At that time, not only will we no longer see the "rightful" villain charm, but we may even no longer feel the sensory impact of Hong Kong films.
But at least now, even if the youthful face is no longer there, we can still see the dedication and determination of the "last generation of Hong Kong stars" in them.
After all, no matter how famous it is.
Just wear your head and put on your makeup.
Even if the opposite side is a sea of fire in the Dao Mountain, they will still "top hard".
And this is what a real movie, a real star, should look like.
The picture of this article comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: Almodovanya