The bright light shines down from above, contrasting strongly with the thick black around it, as if on stage.
"PTU", also known as "Mobile Unit", is a Hong Kong film released in 2003. is a police film produced by the well-known Hong Kong director Johnny To's Galaxy Imaging Label (established in 1996).
Background information
What is ⊙ PTU?
Police Tactical Unit (PTU), abbreviated as PTU, commonly known as the Blue Hat, was established in 1958 and is subordinate to the Operations Division of the Operations Division of the Hong Kong Police Force. The main responsibilities are to conduct anti-crime patrols, crowd management at major events, maintain internal security, search and rescue and disaster support, etc. (Baidu)
⊙ Galactic Image
In 1996, Johnny To, Wei Jiahui, You Naihai and others co-founded Galaxy Imaging Film Company. The first film released in Hong Kong this year was "One Hundred Thousand Urgent" produced by Metropolis, which is considered to be the entrepreneurial work of the Galaxy Imaging team. Later, Johnny To and Wei Jiahui co-produced "The Birth of a Word", "Dark Flower", "Very Suddenly", "True Hero" and many other works, these movies have twists and turns, black style, full of fatalism, and very personal style, but they all failed at the box office, and Johnny To once faced the embarrassment of not being able to pay rent, forcing him to start thinking about the company's survival. In 1999, Johnny To led the Galaxy team to invest in China Star, and co-founded the Centennial Film Company with Tsui Hark and other directors, starting the bipedal route of Galaxy Imaging Author's Films and Commercial Films. Since then, Johnny To has cooperated with Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng many times to produce a series of commercially successful films, including "Lonely Men and Women", "Dark War", "Thin Men and Women", "Zhong Wuyan", "Dragon and Phoenix Fight", etc., among which "Lonely Men and Widows" is not only the Hong Kong box office champion that year, but also the best box office film produced by Galaxy Imaging so far.
After 2000, Johnny To's solo creations matured, showing a strong personal style, and gradually attracted the attention of the international film industry. For example: "Big Guy" (mainland name "Big Man Has Great Wisdom"), "Big Event" (participated in the Cannes Film Festival), "PTU", "Judo Dragon and Tiger List" (participated in the Venice International Film Festival), "Underworld" and "The Underworld is Precious in Harmony" have successively participated in the Cannes Film Festival, "Exile" participated in the Venice International Film Festival, "Iron Triangle" co-directed with Tsui Hark and Lin Lingdong participated in the Cannes Film Festival, and "Detective" with Wei Jiahui again Participated in the Venice International Film Festival, and in 2008, "Wen Que", which was filmed for four years, was shortlisted for the competition unit of the Berlin Film Festival. (Douban)
⊙ author's film style
As can be seen from the above information, this film is an author's film, which is different from general commercial genre films.
Aperial films generally refer to films with obvious personal style characteristics, and sometimes overlap with the specific meaning of "art film".
Art film is the most broadly defined individual, original, and critical expression of the world, society, and life, and an experimental attempt at film language. Art cinema is the pioneer of cinema: transgressing norms and offending common sense. Needless to say, many of their expeditions and pioneers have failed, or even lost, but it is they who continue to expand the territory of the film world. As soon as the practice of art films is successful, mainstream commercial films immediately absorb their experience. (Baidu)
"When you put on your uniform, you are your own person"
At the beginning of the film, through a short dialogue in the patrol car, the value level of the theme of the film - "own people" is clearly established, and the internal motivation of the characters' actions is injected into the evolution of the plot later. At the same time, the different attitudes of each person in the team towards the sacrifice of their colleagues are also subdivided into different levels of the same values, which refines and three-dimensionalizes the dramatic conflicts in the subsequent plot process.
The so-called "own people" are not a big deal on the surface, but as a uniformed public servant, this concept cannot be said to be correct. It is inevitable that one's own people have selfish intentions, which is obviously contrary to the law enforcer's concept of serving the public.
Lao Ren
The group of people in the car can be divided into three categories, one is Ren Dahua, referred to as Lao Ren, Lao Youtiao, who is a firm believer in the unspoken rules of "his own people". The second type of Shao Meiqi is referred to as "Xiao Shao", a little fritter, and her understanding of "her own people" is to protect her life, and it is good to go home safely, and it is also in line with her female identity. The third category is a group of recruits who have just become police officers, and they have a blank sheet of paper.
In a good plot, the dramatic conflict follows the characters, especially in the one-and-a-half-hour scene of the movie, there must be conflicts as soon as the characters come out, so that it looks good. If it's a TV series, it's an episode and a conflict, and the water is mixed in the middle. So movies are an art that is on a higher level than TV dramas.
The first scene in the car is a few minutes away, but a clash has already been arranged. The incident was a radio report on a robbery of a cash truck, in which a PTU colleague died. Several recruits teased them first, and were immediately educated by Lao Ren, and Xiao Shao also added a sentence of education. Several recruits still have the naughtiness of the school, and the recruits next to Lao Ren are obviously longer and more mature than the recruits who are ridiculed on the other side. The recruits are also broken down here.
Each character said one or a few lines, a total of four or five sentences, but a dramatic conflict was established, explaining the characters' personalities, backgrounds, relationships and other information. and hints at the cause of the climactic shootout scene at the end of the film (robbery).
At the same time, the first scene also establishes the black tone of the film through the robbery, the murder of a colleague, and the ridicule and scolding.
In this scene, the iron mesh in the picture visually creates a sense of being trapped and depressed, and together with other film languages, it reinforces the overall black mood of the film, as if the characters are locked in a cage.
This is a good movie, and he deserves to be savored.
Then the main play begins.
Hot pot restaurant drama
The fat man is the character who has the most scenes in the whole film, and he spent one night experiencing the impermanence of life that should have been experienced for a lifetime. Lin Xue played the leading role.
The first scene, a hot pot restaurant.
First up are Ponytail and four ponyboys. The first event is a table change, and the characters involved are the shop guy and the owner, as well as the red-clad customer who is forced to change the table. This incident is intended to show the law of the jungle in the market society, where the ponytail is a dog, the owner of a hot pot restaurant is a sheep, and the customer in red is a grass. It's a hierarchical relationship of power, the grass is afraid of sheep, and the sheep are afraid of dogs.
The second appearance is the fat man, and the first incident is the parking boy who has just debuted outside the hot pot restaurant. There is a reflection of the fat man's personality here, talking about seniority, and shaking his majesty in front of juniors. It's the same as the first old lesson for recruits. The comparison before and after can be seen that Lao Ren and the fat man are all the way.
There are also three levels here. Seeing that passers-by were scolded by the eldest brother of the parking brother, the owner of the hot pot restaurant changed the seats of the red-clothed customers, and the grass was afraid of sheep. The big brother of the parking car is afraid of the fat man, and the owner of the hot pot restaurant is afraid of the ponytail, and the sheep is afraid of the dog.
The parking boy was fined, and in order to take revenge on the fat man and splash the fat man with a car of paint to pave the way.
Two characters appear, each of the two characters has an event to explain the character's character, and the two events are corresponding, with a formal symmetry and balance.
There are two dogs here. The third event comes on, arranging for the two dogs to meet, and the dramatic conflict comes. This event is also a seat change. The fat man took the initiative to attack, provoking Ponytail and Mazai, and Ponytail was defeated and returned to the original table. The fat man escalates to a wolf, and the dog is afraid of wolves.
This third incident provided the motivation for the next four horses to plot against the fat man. In order to strengthen this motivation, another incident was added in which a fat man forcibly snatched beef from a horsetail.
Interlocking, tightly knit, screenwriter cow.
That's the end of a paragraph. Shots make up the scene, and the scene makes up the paragraphs.
The phone rang, and Ponytail looked at the phone with the fat man and the man in red. On the one hand, it implies that the ponytail is the same as the fat man's mobile phone, paving the way for the fat man to take the wrong ponytail mobile phone in the back. On the other hand, it is implied that the man in red is waiting for the call, which paves the way for the man in red to assassinate Ponytail below.
Ponytail answers the phone and sends four ponies out, and four ponies leave the field.
The fat man answered the phone, the fat man's head urged him to play mahjong, the fat man left in a hurry without eating, and there was no change at the checkout. This confession shows that the fat man is respectful to his boss (senior), and the fat man's yelling at the junior is one and the same, both of which are the embodiment of the fat man's character. The fat man was very polite to the owner of the hot pot restaurant and gave more money, which is essentially different from the little hooligan who bullied the soft and was afraid of the hard all the way in Mawei. Is there a bit of Lu Ti Ha meaning? Screenwriter Niu!
Four horses were taken away, and the fat man was taken away, with the purpose of the last stabbing horse show.
changed seats for two big scenes before, and buried two foreshadowings. The first one, the first time the ponytail changed seats was because the ceiling on this seat was dripping down, and the store was already full. Ponytail went to grab the seat of the man in red because the man in red occupied a big seat alone. The second time he changed seats, the ponytail returned to the drip seat, and the man in red was once again forced to change to a corner next to him.
After the four ponyboys and the fat man appeared, there were only ponytails and men in red in the shot, and the men in red had their backs to ponytails. At this time, the water was dripping again, so the ponytail changed seats, avoiding the dripping place, and moved like this, and the ponytail turned his back to the man in red.
At this time, the man in red answered a phone call, and I suspected that the director had called, so I got up and gave Ponytail a heart-warming blow from behind, with the white knife coming in behind and the red knife coming out in front. The man in red escapes through the back door, and the paragraph ends.
This is an unexpected reversal, the grassroots mutated the wolf, and the man in red, who had been bullied, instantly became a murderous assassin. The audience was really frightened, and the ground thundered. In fact, there is foreshadowing. First of all, the hairstyle of the man in red and the four younger brothers dressed with a ponytail are a style, implying that he is also a horse boy. A horse boy is not crazy, let the seat change is changed, so honest, that's what's wrong. In addition, the clothes of the man in red are too prominent compared with the surrounding environment, which is also the director's visual hint to the audience. It's a pity that the ponytail was too tender to detect something wrong with it, so I got hit. The screenwriter is too good!
People are not as good as the sky, and the fat man Liqun Mansion walks in the back alley of the wheat city.
After the fat man came out of the hot pot restaurant, one of Ma Wei's subordinates rowed the fat man's car and led the fat man to the back alley of Liqun Building, and the other three were ambushed, ready to beat the fat man. I didn't dare to openly beat the police, so I plotted in the back alley, and after beating the fat man, I was afraid that I would lose face, and I might not tell others, but in fact, the fat man and Xiao Shao, who are not very familiar with each other, did not say that they were beaten by Ma Zai. It makes sense!
An incident was added at the beginning of this paragraph, the parking boy who was cleaned by the fat man at the beginning, seeing that Ma Zai dared to row the fat man's car, he also plucked up his courage and splashed the fat man's car with paint. This is for the female police officer of the Serious Crime Team to recognize the fat man's car and follow the Chinese ice house as a foreshadowing.
Compared with the two things, Ma Zai also has a high level. Ponytail's Ma Tsai is obviously one level higher than the parking brother, and he is quite scheming, no wonder he is Mawei's follower, Ponytail is the son of the big brother of the underworld. The parking brother is just impulsive, and he can't only be the lowest parking brother.
At the same time, after Mawei was stabbed, he ran out of the hot pot restaurant, got into a taxi and went to the hospital, the driver was scared away, and Mawei drove by himself.
On this side, the horse boy leads the fat man to take the bait. As a result, the fat man had already seen through Ma Zai's trick, came to a counter-outflanking, and entered through another alley, ready to catch Ma Zai off guard.
At this time, God appeared, put a banana peel, and the fat man fell to the ground after a heavy 180 degrees, and fainted.
After Ma Tsai found out, he was forced by Ponytail's order and had to beat the fat man who was unconscious.
At this time, the horsetail drove all the way, and due to excessive blood loss, the person was already confused.
The runaway car and the four ponies who completed the mission almost collided. Without knowing it, the horses scolded the ponytail that died in the car, which was regarded as seeing off the boss.
In the middle of the night, the streets were empty. So when Lao Ren's four people rushed to the fat man to be beaten to the ground, the sound of running footsteps was particularly crisp.
The two shots are transitioned with the same voice-over soundtrack. A relatively bleak piece of music, but also a little bit of concern for Ponytail's death.
After this period, the fat man became a pig's head. And his amazing night had just begun.
The gun is gone!
To this story, the completion of the cause stage enters the passing stage.
Lao Ren and Xiao Shao's respective teams, after the first section of the patrol car, once again converged in the back alley where the fat man was beaten. Every time these two groups of people converge, it is the peak passage of the drama.
The fat man and Xiao Shao are obviously not "their own people". For Xiao Shao, who arrived early, he avoided talking about being beaten.
From the situation where Lao Ren's group flew in, it can be seen that Lao Ren and the fat man are not in a general relationship. In addition, Xiao Shao arrived first, indicating that the back alley where the fat man was beaten is Xiao Shao's jurisdiction. This paved the way for the development of the story in the future.
At this time, the fat man is still quite good, and he also puts the old-timer score on Xiao Shao, so Xiao Shao has to find an assistant to talk to the fat man. Xiao Shao knows the reason why the fat man is so good, one is that she is not "her own person", and the other is that she is a junior or a woman. So Xiao Shao was very angry and wanted to make things bigger. After all, there are still so many subordinates watching, and their faces are swinging there.
This is a quite powerful scene scheduling, and a dark aura rushes straight towards Xiao Shao.
Lao Ren began to exert dark energy. First of all, help the fat man to break the siege from the law, and prevent Xiao Shao from filing a case, the old fritter. Xiao Shao is in order.
The fat man broke the siege and wanted to leave, the second incident followed, Lao Ren found that the fat man's gun was lost, the fat man's first reaction was that Ma Zai took it, Xiao Shao immediately took action to report, because she knew how big a matter it was for someone to attack the police and grab a gun in her jurisdiction, and the lost gun would cause greater harm. She is the first person in charge, and she is the first to have an accident. You don't have to think about it, you have to report it immediately.
The fat man was also anxious, and immediately told the truth and had to deal with it himself, implying that Lao Ren should not report it. Xiao Shao immediately stopped the fat man who was leaving, and called the headquarters at the same time.
The camera changed, and it was replaced by a single shot of the fat man, and the fat man said that he would be promoted next month (no wonder he would accompany the leader to play mahjong), which was said to Lao Ren. The camera is immediately cut to a double close-up of the fat man and Lao Ren, and the focus of the picture is on Lao Ren.
Lao Ren thought for a second, and immediately pressed Xiao Shao's walkie-talkie. This is a very excessive move, especially since Xiao Shao is still a woman.
Xiao Shao fired back, saying that he lost a gun, and the camera hit Lao Ren, who negotiated the conditions and promised. Two creeps on either side of the screen begin to argue. Here's another wonderful scene scheduling.
The result is that Xiao Shao is compliant, and this first paragraph explains Xiao Shao's personality characteristics, so it is not difficult to understand her compromise here. However, before leaving, she still glanced at Lao Ren, which could be regarded as expressing her anger. It made Lao Ren a little pressured.
The last long shot of this section ends. The fat man left everyone with a proud face.
Finding guns
This is followed by a cutscene. With the music behind the picture, watching the beautiful night view of Hong Kong will relax the audience's nervous nerves. Think of yourself driving in the city in the early hours of the morning, with a cool breeze outside the window and great music. I recorded it that day and drove it out at night.
Cut back to the fat man's pig-headed face, the previous arrogance in front of people was gone, and he smoked Marlboro with a sad face.
Voiceover insertion (the sound and picture are not in place, it can be regarded as the voice of the fat man), and the radio usage of the patrol car in the first paragraph is the same as the previous one, this time it is the phone of the fat man's head, and the previous head to find the fat man to play mahjong docking. On the other end of the phone, the fat man was shocked to hear that the ponytail had been killed, and he was so panicked that he smoked his cigarette backwards. The head asked the fat man to come to the scene immediately.
The next incident was that the fat man made a fake gun, panicked, but still organized. The fat man is quite professional in making fake guns, which reminds me of Lin Xue's role in "Gunfire" in 1999, and he is also a master of playing with guns. I don't know if the director pays tribute to himself, the author and director do this, especially his own works with his heart, such as Xi Fat.
⊙ the first stop in the old man's game hall to find guns
Since then, Lao Ren's team has begun to help the fat man find a gun. Looking for a gun is to find someone, looking for the four horses with a horsetail, if you want to find a horse, you will naturally look for the horsetail first. This incident should be before the fat man above knew that Ponytail had been killed. Because he knew that Ponytail was killed, should the fat man tell Lao Ren first. But the order of the above movie is not like this, the fat man knows that Ponytail was killed first, Lao Ren is looking for Ponytail later, and Lao Ren doesn't know that Ponytail was killed.
In fact, the fat man said to Lao Ren that he was involved in the gun, and he didn't know that Lao Ren was helping him find four horses. So knowing that Ponytail was killed, he wouldn't have thought to tell Lao Yi. So Lao Ren began to look for Ponytail without knowing that Ponytail was killed.
The first incident of the old team's search for guns, looking for the old watch with a ponytail in the game hall. In this paragraph, the little soldier first checked the cards and secretly dialed the monitoring, which is the more mature soldier in the first paragraph. It's the old man's horse boy. It's quite skillful, and it's definitely been done many times. Then drive away irrelevant people, threaten with drugs, drive away the old cousin, and leave a pony boy who doesn't know the importance of his generation, and repair it (compare the fat man and the parking brother), the pony boy was beaten to tears, and the old watch was shocked by this trick to make an example of the ponytail phone.
Ponyboy's weakness is reflected in the dispatch of the picture, and the red light hitting his face arouses Lao Ren's violent desire.
The dark treatment on Lao Ren's face
The old watch had no choice but to make a ponytail call. As soon as the camera turned, the ponytail phone on the other side rang in a pool of blood.
Here, Lao Ren is addicted. The old watch hit again, and on the other side, there was a flash flashing on the horsetail corpse.
Lao Ren turned his head and looked at the old watch, and then played.
The old watch had no choice but to fight again.
⊙ the first stop of the fat man's ponytail scene to find a gun
At this time, the fat man rushed to the scene of the horsetail.
The fat man nervously muttered to himself beside the ponytail corpse, and was relieved to find that it was not a shooting.
At this time, the ponytail phone rang again, the fat man thought that his phone was ringing, and when he picked it up, he found that it was not, he watched, and his colleague put the ponytail phone into the evidence bag. The fat man stared at the ringing ponytail phone. Just wanted to pick it up, but my colleague entered the camera and said that the serious crime team was going to take over, which meant that the fat man should not move his mobile phone. The fat man still wanted to pick it up, put his head in the camera, reminded the fat man not to move his mobile phone again, and expressed his antagonistic attitude towards the serious crime team (not his own person).
The fat man is a fighter in the old fritters, with a first-class level of ripping, and he threw everything to the serious crime team that came on the field immediately. My mind is on playing mahjong. The fat man's colleagues are not handling the case with their hearts, their minds are all on private matters, these are all the fat man's own people, and the director's purpose of scandalizing them is obvious.
The theme of the director's blackening of the police is more obvious here. This is anti-heroic postmodernist thinking. Deconstructing grand narratives (such as the heroic cops in traditional cop films) and utopias (such as communist society or paradise) is one of the great powers of postmodernism. This film completes the genre subversion of police films by deconstructing the positive image of traditional police.
If you don't understand what postmodernism means, think about Stephen Chow's "Journey to the West", which is the style of postmodernism.
To be continued......