Sunshine and the "Gangster Family".
Don't Mess With Me, aka Gangster Family, is an action comedy film directed by Luc Besson and starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Deanna Agron.
The film was released in the United States on September 13, 2013. The film tells the story of a mafia family who moved to Normandy because of a witness protection program, hiding from the hunt in a peaceful French town, but still can't change the story of using gangster violence to solve the problem.
"Don't Mess with Me" is essentially a gangster film, but the film incorporates a large number of plots that coexist with comedy and family, forming a kind of film genre mixture.
Director Luc Besson abandons the idea of literary film construction in this film, focusing on the Hollywood-style narrative structure, in order to further strengthen this Hollywood-style narrative.
Directors are obsessed with creating dramatic conflicts through various differences, the most obvious point is the ontological difference between family films and gangster films, these two film types inherently have different narrative cores, and the fusion of the two will naturally lead to a "spectacle" effect.
On the other hand, it is an auxiliary embodiment of audiovisual performance, and the film "Don't Mess with Me" uses a large number of soft light and light music, subverting the dullness and simple bloody violence of the previous gangster films.
Especially in the processing of light and shadow and picture, a large number of natural light is used, and the abundant sunlight of France is used without hesitation, which effectively eliminates the shadows in the picture, and thus breaks the classic atmosphere of gangster films, which triggers a separation between the image body and the traditional gangster paradigm.
In addition, in the character's speech processing, it has also achieved a separation from the traditional gangster film, and the character speech characteristics are no longer the cold and conciseness of the traditional gangster style, but more lifelike and full of various cold humor, which is actually the unique character characteristics of Luc Besson's film: chattering, endless stems.
This makes "Don't Mess with Me" effectively break away from the mindset of gangster movies and turn to the presentation of ordinary people's family life.
The core content of "Don't Mess with Me" is to express a series of cultural aspects juxtaposed, and Luc Besson, known as the "Spielberg of France", is good at co-locating art films with commercial films, triggering dramatic conflicts and integrating corresponding connotations.
In "Don't Mess with Me", this connotation is the difference in consciousness between countries, and when this difference of consciousness goes further, it forms an effect of cultural juxtaposition.
Interestingly, as a Frenchman, Luc Besson seems to be keen to show the hostility of his hometown people to foreigners, such as the early encounter of a family in the film when they first arrived in the town, and his son was questioned by a classmate, "Americans are particularly rich, aren't they?" ”
It's hard to say whether the director is joking or really trying to say here, but it's a microcosm of the underlying cultural conflict, with the French having a congenital disdain for Americans in all aspects of life, such as etiquette, taste, and even food, and all sorts of cultural differences are deliberately displayed in the film.
The final solution has actually been integrated into the exploding supermarket, and each family member in the film has carried out a classic gangster-style counterattack according to their talents.
This way of counterattack is difficult to rise to the general consciousness of countries, but it is still the current thinking of some Americans: to use strong national strength to rudely end everything, there is no objection.
Luc Besson's accusation of his hometown, borrowed from the film "Don't Mess with Me", actually touches the crux of today's French society, where the noble French people are still obsessed with the arrogant etiquette of the old era or the red tape that has become obsolete.
In his films, satirizing the current situation in France seems to have become a must-have program, and will choose the corresponding satirical direction for the type of film, but when this idea is applied to the film, there will be a kind of consciousness deviation, which is not a simple comparison of American and French culture, but a different consciousness of tradition and modernity.
Luc Besson's character and plot modeling method is very easy to trigger the former, and the film has become a reverse cultural input that exalts the United States and thus demeans France in the eyes of some audiences.
This also caused some strange cinematic feelings, a Frenchman seems to be constantly elevating the other, and through this contrast to question his own compatriots, perhaps out of a strong dissatisfaction with the current situation of French society, or perhaps out of the actual feelings of Luc Besson himself living in the United States, in short, the intensity of this irony in "Don't Mess with Me" is extremely rare.
The opposition between France and the United States is also the opposition of the two major film branches, both represent the most outstanding art films and commercial films, in the field of film, the ideological gap between France and the United States has a long history, the two constantly collide and communicate, giving birth to a series of major film changes, and Luc Besson's film features are also the combination of art and business, perhaps in his heart, there has been a deviation from a certain direction.
Finally, there is a little discussion of feminism in the film, in the film "Don't Mess with Me", the sister played by Deanna Agron shows an independent new female image, she is not afraid to face the gangsters alone, expressing a female self-improvement spirit.
Director Luc Besson used this image to elicit his recognition of women today, and in his new film "Anna" in 2019, this attitude of recognition and praise was thoroughly and comprehensively unfolded.
Women's own excellent abilities, as well as their self-given independent spirit, have become excellent image carriers, carrying countless new women's struggle against unfair society, and constantly through this to prove that the symbols of "gangsters" and "killers", which were once rich in male strong bodies and power meanings, are no longer exclusive to them.