I'm sorry, Aaron Kwok!

In the past few years, there has been a flirtatious black saying on the Internet: money is not for women to spend, but for women to see.

Aaron Kwok is the practitioner of this sentence.

Guo Tianwang is worth as much as 2 billion, but he is a "love grande".

In the early years, he and Xiong Dailin fell in love for 7 years, and in the first few years of their relationship, Aaron Kwok was exposed to break up many times because he was too stingy.

Later, on Xiong Dailin's 30th birthday, Tianwang was finally generous, and the media broke the news: Guo Tianwang gave his girlfriend a sports car worth 3.6 million.

As a result, I refuted the rumors that this sports car was "only picked up and not given".

Later, Aaron Kwok continued to reduce his love expenses, and Xiong Dailin celebrated his birthday again, and even receiving a blessing text message was a luxury.

The two eventually parted ways.

Aaron Kwok is still the same Aaron Kwok, Xiong Dailin has nothing but "former Tianwang girlfriend".

Aaron Kwok is in love, why is he so picky and searching?

Hong Kong media broke the news that they did not give gifts, probably because they did not want to "develop bad habits".

And after dating Xiong Dailin, her catwalk market skyrocketed, and she didn't need to give her a gift at all, falling in love with her was the best gift in itself.

Coincidentally, in 2015, Aaron Kwok and Fang Yuan fell in love and soon got married.

Wang Sicong broke the news sourly that Fang Yuan came out of the "celebrity training class" and was a "classmate" with Wilber Pan's wife.

Netizens shouted that the king of heaven was fooled.

But there are rumors on the Internet, but Aaron Kwok himself doesn't care about it, and lives his little life with peace of mind.

This is the willfulness of the Heavenly King.

And his willfulness doesn't stop there.

Aaron Kwok is 59 years old this year, and other celebrities use high-tech and ruthless work to stay beautiful, but he has been handsome all his life, and he has long been "searching up and down" on the road of playing ugly.

In "Father and Son", he is a father who is sloppy and rude;

In "Treading Blood and Seeking Plum Blossoms", he is a strange policeman who only cares about work, his life is a mess, and he is abandoned by his wife;

In "The Favorite", he is a grizzled little man who was found stealing joy in the warehouse;

In "Wushuang", he became a depressed and poor painter.

"Becoming ugly" allowed Aaron Kwok to successfully transform from a national idol to an acting school, and won the actor.

Others become ugly because "time is a knife to kill pigs", and he becomes ugly, just ugly for fun, which is still the willfulness of the king.

It's a pity that this time, Aaron Kwok can't get up.

Not long ago, the new film "Temporary Robbery" starring Aaron Kwok, Lin Jiadong and Ren Xianqi was released.

Judging from the pictures at the scene, although Aaron Kwok dyed his hair yellow and wore a bright plaid suit, his figure was well maintained.

But as soon as the picture is enlarged, you can see that he is nearly 60 years old, and he does have a certain old state.

However, Aaron Kwok himself doesn't care.

He mingled with the audience when promoting the movie, and he already spoke Mandarin very slipperily, without the so-called king baggage.

If you watch the film, you can better understand Aaron Kwok's calmness.

This time he not only pretended to be ugly, but also ugly to the extreme.

The story of "Temporary Robbery" is simple.

Lin Jiadong and Ren Xianqi play two decadent brothers who plan to rob, but are accidentally disrupted by the gangsters played by Aaron Kwok.

The three of them formed a temporary team by mistake and performed a black humor together.

Aaron Kwok wore buckteeth this time, and his whole temperament changed.

laughs like Zeng Xiaoxian, and is serious like the lead singer of Queen "Uncle Ya", who is silly and silly, and when filming, he often makes the people around him lean back before he says his lines.

It is worth mentioning that Queen's biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released in 2018, "Temporary Robbery" was filmed in 2021, and Aaron Kwok's gangster style is an intentional tribute to "Uncle Ya".

It can't be said to be very similar, it is exactly the same.

While watching the movie, Brother Pi once suspected that if this bandit picked up not a pistol, but a microphone, he could directly hold a concert.

The bucktooth bandit is named Mei Lantian, his appearance is very explosive, and his character design is also very black humorous.

He knows how to be polite and has quality, which one is not happy to do, but afterwards he pays attention to proportion, and he must seriously say sorry.

This is reminiscent of Liangkun played by Wu Zhenyu.

Liangkun has a golden sentence, "Come out and mix, talk about credit, and kill your whole family if you say kill your whole family", which is similar to Aaron Kwok's "sorry" in this film.

The character design of this funny bandit also borrows from Norman Stanfield, the villain who listens to classical music and kills in "This Killer Is Not Too Cold", all of which use contrast to create a sense of humor.

A hero and three gangs, and the two actors around Aaron Kwok also shine.

One is Ren Xianqi.

Ren Xianqi became popular all over the country with a song "Too Soft Heart" in his early years, and anyone who saw him had to call Brother Xiao Qi.

But after he used his fame to act in various youth idol dramas and Jin Yong dramas, he finally found that he was more suitable for playing criminals.

In the past ten years, he moved to Hong Kong and starred in works such as "Tree Moves", "Death Gold" and "Accident" by Johnny To's side, and has established himself in the Hong Kong circle and has become a professional in crime films.

In this film, he plays a bad boy with a lot of money, although he is not brilliant, but he is also a stable performance.

Another actor is Lin Jiadong.

In this film, he plays a selfish and cowardly character, and the high contrast is very real, giving people a feeling of a cold-faced smiler.

Under the backdrop of the two, the role of Aaron Kwok shines.

Aaron Kwok's Hong Kong films in the past few years, such as "Wushuang", "Off the Internet", "Anti-Drug 3" and "When the Wind Rises Again", always wears a straight suit, looking bitter and hateful, and a large number of homogeneous characters reflect the sameness of Hong Kong films.

This time, the new role has an obvious collage feeling, a little deliberate, but it still brings great freshness, and is even expected to help Aaron Kwok be nominated for the best actor again.

After watching the film, I can feel that in addition to creating superficial gimmicks, the main creator also has strong creative ambitions.

The producer is Er Dongsheng, the director who is the best at filming emotional scenes in Hong Kong.

Most of his works are realistic, focusing on marginalized groups and touching people with their true feelings.

Although "Temporary Robbers" is a fictional plot, Er Dongsheng injected enough realism into the film.

The three protagonists are all small people who are oppressed to the point of despair by reality.

Mei Lantian who is not crazy and can't survive, Murong Hui who has no brains to talk about love, and Ah Yi who is really kind and calculating, behind the funny is a cold and cruel metaphor of reality.

Director Mak Qiguang is not well-known, but he is the younger brother of Er Dongsheng and To Qifeng, and participated in the filming of films such as "Disciple", "Big Man with Great Wisdom" and "Drug War" in his early years, and was deeply influenced by the big brother.

"Temporary Robbers" can see the shadow of Johnny To's early galactic image.

The two bags of money at the beginning of the film circulate in the hands of various characters, obviously imitating the gun change scene at the end of Johnny To's "Detective", using a misplaced plot to connect the group portraits of the characters.

The technique is immature, but full of sincerity, vaguely shining the glory of Hong Kong films.

In terms of the main story, the director uses genre film shooting techniques.

But he continues to extend the extremely random sub-line story, creating a unique sense of absurdity of fate in Johnny To's films, supplemented by the unique expression of love and righteousness in Hong Kong films, which vaguely let us smell the pure Hong Kong flavor of peak Hong Kong films.

This is not over, the film also plays with a multi-line narrative.

A group of people bent their waists for two bags of money, and a subject pulled out thousands of bizarre social wonders, which looked very much like Ning Hao's "Crazy Stone".

There is no doubt that "Temporary Robbery" broke through the creative trap of traditional police and gangster Hong Kong films, and the director's efforts to build a subtle black comedy are rare in recent years.

Unfortunately, however, all attempts have been made to a halt.

After the multi-line narrative at the beginning, the tracking of realistic issues is unsurprising, which makes it possible for the film to change from a farce to a drama.

If the trio played by Aaron Kwok, Lin Jiadong and Ren Xianqi dig deeper, they can dig out their helplessness when they are forced to go to Liangshan, which is the core of the whole film.

It's a pity that the director has a glimpse of the film, and he only leaves a superficial impression of obscenity, scheming and stupidity, and the characters are not explored enough, and the film stops at a farce.

The main characters are flattened, and the thief played by Zeng Bit, the policewoman played by Zhang Keyi, and the gun dealer played by Lin Xue appear later, which is even more of a capital tool.

In this way, the plot lines are entangled, the relationship between the characters is confused, and the director tries his best to show To Qifeng's fatalism, but unfortunately he can't do it.

In the end, the stall was too big to hold, and a large number of coincidences could only be used to forcibly advance the plot, and the credibility of the play was greatly reduced, and it was reduced to a kind of jigsaw puzzle game in which A, B, C and D appeared in turn, and various coincidental permutations and combinations.

As a Hong Kong film, the film's most outstanding shootout scene was shot extremely badly, and the budget that can be seen to the naked eye is not enough, and it is stretched everywhere.

It can be guessed that the film was filmed after the epidemic, the budget was reduced, and it could only fool things around on the big scene.

With such a strong cast, so many interesting characters, and so many tributes to the classics, it could have mixed various elements to make a Hong Kong-style black comedy in the new era.

But the director has a hammer in the east and a mallet in the west, floating on the surface and failing to grasp the essence, Aaron Kwok's subversive styling and actor-level performances are wasted.

I remember last year, Johnny To spoke boldly at the Berlin Film Festival, saying that now the world's films have deteriorated, and the film world he was familiar with in the past has gradually disappeared.

Johnny To's words were only half right.

With the popularity of short videos, the public is indeed pursuing a short-frequency and fast experience, film as an art has been greatly impacted, and culturally aware art creators are losing their voice because they cannot provide instant gratification, and world cinema has been in decline in the past decade.

This is happening not only in Hong Kong, but also in the mainland, in Hollywood, and in all corners of the world.

But on the other hand, Johnny To, as a traditional Hong Kong director, his set of things is also outdated.

To Qifeng is just engaging in lens language, working narrative skills, and by the way, using fatalism to depict all kinds of human states.

However, the foundation of today's movies is the film industry, and once the Netflix assembly line is opened, hundreds of works like Johnny To's exquisite structure, rich lens language, and stories can be produced a year.

Hong Kong films need to be saved, but it is by no means a simple application of Johnny To's template, it was once the glory of Hong Kong films, and now it is covered with dust.

"Temporary Robbery" is essentially the director turning over the old yellow calendar and using the style of Johnny To 20 years ago to make movies of this era.

As a result, the technique is insufficient, looking ahead and backwards, and in the end, everything is covered, but it is not interesting in any aspect, and it is a pity to become a failure with only courage and no strategy.

Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: A chicken

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