The movie "Article 20" is the latest masterpiece of director Zhang Yimou's Spring Festival file of World War III. The first two "Sniper" in 2022 and "Man Jianghong" in 2023 got a box office of 608 million and 4.544 billion respectively.
Coupled with the box office of 2.454 billion yuan in "Article 20", the scheming "national teacher" finally understood the Spring Festival file, not only contributing more than 7.5 billion box office to the Spring Festival file, but also leading a wave of upsurge of using family-style comedy to meet the public's emotional value demand and emotional output demand.
1
"Article 20" tells the story of Article 20 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China on legitimate defense.
The film revolves around the temporary prosecutor Han Ming and three cases.
The main story is the case of Wang Yongqiang. Wang Yongqiang's family owed loan sharks because they wanted to raise money for their children's medical treatment, and the creditor, Liu Wenjing, repeatedly violently collected debts and insulted and raped Wang Yongqiang's wife, Hao Xiuping.
Wang Yongqiang seriously injured Liu Wenjing with scissors, and the latter eventually died. According to Wang Yongqiang, the reason why he stabbed Liu Wenjing with scissors was because he threatened to hack himself to death with a knife and walked to his car to get the knife.
In the process, Wang Yongqiang fought back to ensure his safety.
The crux of the case is to take a knife and disappear after the fact. Liu Wenjing's father and cousin, together with the villagers of Kang Village, repeatedly persecuted Hao Xiuping and kidnapped her mother and daughter.
The other two are the case of school bullying who was accused of assault and the case of a bus driver who was convicted of intentional injury.
The turning point of the film is also caused by the sudden change of these two righteous and courageous cases.
The bus driver, Lao Zhang, wanted to stop the passengers from playing hooligan behavior on a girl, but after it turned into a mutual assault, Lao Zhang hit one of the hooligans on the head with a fire extinguisher, causing him a head injury.
Lao Zhang was sentenced to three years in prison. After being released from prison, his daughter has always wanted to seek justice for her father, and has repeatedly asked Lao Zhang to petition.
On the way to petition for the last time, Lao Zhang was killed in a car accident.
In the process of communicating with Lao Zhang's daughter, Han Ming knew that all the misfortunes of Lao Zhang's family came from that righteous and courageous act, which made Han Ming realize for the first time that dealing with new cases according to previous judicial cases would not necessarily lead to the most fair and just results, and fairness and justice must be fought for.
On the other hand, Han Ming's son Han Yuchen has always been unwilling to apologize to Director Zhang's son. The latter contacted a group of thugs and beat Han Yuchen.
Han Ming's wife accidentally pushed Director Zhang again, causing him to fracture his bones and was sentenced to 7 days of administrative detention.
On the way to send her to the detention center, Han Yuchen asked her father if she would still take action when her classmates were bullied in the future, and Han Ming gave a positive answer.
Han Ming said that the law was not wrong, but his son's sentence "then who is wrong" made him speechless.
Han Ming's colleague Lu Lingling has always insisted on finding the knife that can prove Wang Yongqiang's legitimate defense, even if she was asked by her boss to hand over the hosting rights because of her stubbornness, she did not give up her protection of Hao Xiuping's mother and daughter and insisted on the fact of Wang Yongqiang's legitimate defense.
Although Han Ming found more than a dozen similar cases, he was convinced that handling Wang Yongqiang's case according to these existing cases was the crime of intentional injury. But Lu Lingling still believes that the reason why Hao Xiuping chose to jump off the building is because she is desperate for the rule of law, fairness, and public security.
"Everything right has a price, but you can't stop doing it just because it has a price."
This is what Han Ming once told Lu Lingling, but it was gradually forgotten by him as the years passed.
Lu Lingling's words made Han Ming regain his original intention of studying law and aspiring to become a prosecutor.
At the hearing, as Wang Yongqiang's presiding prosecutor, Han Ming moved everyone with an emotional, sincere and touching speech.
"What we are doing is not a case, it is a person's life."
The authority of the law comes from the most simple emotional expectations of the people, and responds to the demands, emotions and most simple expectations of every ordinary person with true fairness and justice.
The law is to make it more expensive for bad people to commit crimes, not to make good people do it more expensive.
The most important thing is that "the law, we cannot give in to the lawless." ”
In the end, through the end credits, fairness and justice re-respond to the most simple emotional expectations.
Wang Yongqiang was found to be justified in self-defense and did not bear criminal responsibility; Liu Wenjing's father, cousin, and the ruffian of Kang Village were punished by the judicial authorities; The bully is given a demerit and the bully's guardian is reprimanded; Lao Zhang was posthumously awarded the title of "Righteous and Courageous Citizen", and his widow can enjoy the government's preferential policies.
Justifiable defense is a sacred right conferred on citizens by law, and it is necessary to uphold the unity of national law, natural principles, and human feelings, and resolutely defend the spirit of the rule of law that "the law cannot yield to the lawless."
2
Let's talk about the advantages of this movie in a nutshell. The film firmly grasps the emotional pain points of our people and the simple feelings of the law.
Everyone has a defining standard of fairness and justice in their hearts, and of course we hope that the law can always maintain our simple standard of fairness and justice, but we also hope that the law can be continuously improved and rigorous.
This process may come at a painful cost, but in the long run, the law has always stood by the side of the broadest masses of the people, and has been improving and developing day by day.
The film's portrayal of the prosecutor is relatively real and vivid, Han Ming took the video to Lao Zhang to analyze frame by frame where it is legitimate defense, where it is to beat each other and where it is intentional injury, this way of expression is also very close to reality.
The parents of Han Ming's family are short, and trivial arguments are quite easy for people to bring in, and the quarrels between husband and wife are often trivial to forced to interrupt.
In general, the film has played a certain role in popularizing and publicizing the justifiable defense system in Article 20 of the Criminal Law, and has also used the family comedy to neutralize the overly serious story of law popularization.
It can be regarded as a successful completion of the "task" of law popularization led by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and it also meets the audience's appeal for the Spring Festival family comedy.
3
Although, this is an exploration film that uses the genre style of comedy to carry out legal education and publicity, the task attributes are full, and the degree of completion is also very high.
But don't forget, this is a movie directed by "National Teacher" Zhang Yimou, and from the perspective of film art, the biggest problem with this movie is that it is not like a cinema movie with rigorous logic and touching audio-visual sounds.
This is more like a comedy and popular law drama grafted and combined with a family comedy sketch and a popular law column drama.
The comedy part basically focuses on the living treasure couple of Han Ming played by Lei Jiayin and Li Maojuan played by Ma Li, and they basically create jokes through large sections of dialogue.
This is very small, no wonder some viewers said that these passages may become a hit if they are directly put on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala.
In addition, the switching method between family comedy and popular legal drama is also very simple and child's play.
Here Han Ming and his wife were still arguing, and then Han Ming received a phone call, and there was a new case progress, and he began to turn to PfaAmway, without the slightest feeling of silky smoothness.
At this time, Han Ming and his wife were still arguing in the car, and then Lao Zhang had a car accident in front of them, and his soul returned to Jiuquan, such a turning point was too abrupt and blunt.
In order to pass over Liu Wenjing's father and Kang Village's entanglement with Hao Xiuping's mother and daughter, the scene of Hao Xiuping jumping off the building was designed.
After jumping off the building, the previously aggressive Kang Cun people relented one by one, and also confessed the whereabouts of the key evidence knife, which was not a complete effort, but it was obviously too dramatic.
The two righteous and courageous cases are not directly related to the justifiable defense cases of the main line, but more like they can be designed to complete Han Ming's character arc.
Both cases are more eye-catching at the beginning, but the end is hastily summarized, summarized in words and stills, the tool attributes are too strong, and there is a relatively obvious sense of separation from the main line.
It can be said that Zhang Yimou seized the traffic password of the Spring Festival file, transplanted the successful elements of "Man Jianghong" into the law popularization propaganda film, and even the final speech was retained.
It's a pity that the old man's pursuit and persistence in art have not been preserved.
Finally, I want to say that, in the words of Mr. Luo Xiang, when judging legitimate defense and intentional injury, we should substitute the position and vision of the parties, and should not use an overly rational and omniscient vision to speculate on the actions and thoughts of the parties.
Although I can understand the difficulty and limitations of director Zhang Yimou to complete such a task film, starting from the classic films he has directed, I still hope that he can find his original intention of audiovisual language, narrative structure, dramatic tension and other elements, and let the film continue to maintain and carry forward its unique artistic charm while boldly exploring.
The picture in this article comes from the Internet
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