"Hong Kong pieces are not dead!"
Less than three minutes after the opening scene of "The Case of Rage," I let out an exclamation.
For the next few minutes, the tension continued, and the adrenaline rushed to the full in an instant.
Just because - the picture in front of you hong Kong movie tastes too much! correct! finish!
Chen Musheng, a tough guy who has fought for Hong Kong films all his life, found the fire of Hong Kong action movies as soon as the last movie of his life began.
After waiting for half a year after "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", the Long-Dormant Hong Kong film finally released a "bombshell", which directly exploded, and the cat's eye score soared out of 9.5, which is a rare high score for Hong Kong films in recent years.
In terms of box office, the film lagged behind "Summer Future" in the first half of the day, and finally won the single-day box office championship, the total box office has exceeded 70 million, and the Maoyan box office is predicted to reach 1.069 billion.
At the premiere of the film this time, Jackie Chan and Wang Jing stood on the stage, Xie Tingfeng, said chen Musheng once, and burst into tears, he said about dubbing his character Qiu Gang'ao: "Although they have found a professional voice actor, the voice actor's Chinese better than mine, but I still want to come by myself." I didn't want to work with him (directing Chen Musheng) for the last time, there was not my part. ”
Tears are true tears, burning, but also really burning.
Many people know that director Chen Musheng, after shooting this movie, died of nasopharyngeal cancer at the age of 58. When shooting, Director Chen's health was not good, but he still insisted on completing all the parts of the pre-shooting, a Hong Kong film craftsman, and insisted until the last moment of his life.
Speaking of which, Chen Musheng's first truly independent work, "Stormtrooper Fury Street", was in 1996, and Hong Kong films had begun to decline. And he has carried the banner of Hong Kong action movies for more than 20 years, and it has been more than 20 years since the decline of Hong Kong-style action movies, and many people have said it over and over again - Hong Kong movies are dead.
However, if you look at the title of the new film, "The Case of Anger", and the title of director Chen's first Hong Kong-style action film, there is a "fury", this Hong Kong film Michael Bay, who has been shooting Hong Kong films all his life, has a fire.
Although Chen Musheng is gone, his fire still remains in the Hong Kong film world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > serious case</h1>
"The Case of Anger" is of course a craft that Hong Kong film craftsmen have completed with their last efforts, and it is good in that—
It not only carries a strong "Hong Kong flavor", but also carries the "inertia" of Chen Musheng's films.
In a sense, chen Musheng's last film in life is also the most Chen Musheng's film.
Where is the "Taste of Hong Kong"? One of the most classic symbols: Hong Kong-style double males.
The film is clearly centered on the duo of Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse, whose names, "Chongbang" and "Gang Ao", both carry a strong inner tension.
And this movie, but also with a classic black and white double male mode, to complete a revival of Hong Kong-style fashion action films, a variety of genre elements are readily available.
The movie opens with a vicious fight, the serious crime team deploys a net to suppress the international drug lord, suddenly kills a group of masked bandits "black eat black", and even more cold-blooded massacre of policemen.
After an in-depth investigation, the international anti-narcotics policeman Zhang Chongbang (Zhen Zidan) discovers that the leader of the robbers is his former comrade-in-arms Qiu Gang'ao (Tse Ting-feng).
Originally, when the two were fighting side by side, in a case of kidnapping by a rich businessman, the two got the information of a small and chased one each.
As a result, Zhang Chongbang chased the one to find a barrister, the clue was broken, Gang Ao's side, the superior called to pressure that the case must be solved, but also said that this matter is a secret operation, all the acts will not be recorded, so this wave of police caught people and directly began to be sentenced, the result of the little said the kidnapper address, the hostage was saved, but in the entanglement with the little, Just Ao a stick down, the little died.
When it came to court, the rich merchants who were rescued stayed out of the matter, and their superiors denied letting them be tortured. During the questioning of witnesses, the chief prosecutor asked Zhang Chongbang if he had personally seen the defendant beating the deceased. Zhang Chongbang had no way, and finally said that there was.
So they were sentenced to prison, and every night they were approached by the prisoners he had caught.
When Gang Ao and his brothers are released from prison, the first thing they do is revenge.
And it was their former brother Zhang Chongbang who arrested them.
The whole movie is a strong Hong Kong film style, too lazy to talk nonsense with you, is to start fighting. Along with the investigation of the unsolved case, the feelings of the two brothers changed, and it was one fierce duel after another.
It can be seen that the film and "Bomb Disposal Expert 2" are very close to the theme, but the main line of "Bomb Disposal 2" is more inclined to Pan Chengfeng, played by Andy Lau, and "Fury" is closer to the most classic black and white double male mode. But both films have also created a very charismatic villain.
As Zhen Zidan said: The world is not only black and white, but also many gray areas. Chen Musheng gave the role of Tse Tingfeng, which is actually one of the themes of the film - anger.
The role of Gang Ao, as the base point of the film's plot, how his complex experience can make sense is the key to the success of the film. And the story of this character is as hot and exciting as the temperament conveyed by the title, and it can be seen that it is a reference to the story of the clown, a righteous policeman who goes to the other end of the scale.
But this Hong Kong version of the clown, but also particularly charming, a very dashing long curly hair, a bad smile in the, behind a group of brothers who live and die with him, it is difficult not to be moved.
In particular, in order to let Ah Ao escape, the last brother blocked in front of the police who came to arrest him, the suicide detonation grenade, and the last sentence, "In the next life, I will still be a brother", I can see the charm of the character.
There are also many old faces of Hong Kong films in the movie, such as Lu Huiguang, who was dropped by a flying leg by Nicholas Tse, Lu Liangwei, who is very imposing, and Tan Yaowen, who does not play much but is extremely funny.
There is also Ren Dahua who came to make a cameo appearance, these old faces of Hong Kong films also bring out a full taste of Hong Kong films.
The method used by Chen Musheng is to leave the complexity of the plot to this most complex character of Gang Ao, and everything else is handled in the most direct and concise Hong Kong film method, that is, a policeman and a bandit, a car chase→ a gunfight→ hand-to-hand combat, and every step is exhausted.
So you can feel that this is a standard Chen Musheng work, and it is also a Hong Kong film that we have loved and is full of madness.
The whole movie is full of Hong Kong flavor to overflow, burst out, and even, with some kind of —
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="119" > fury</h1>
Audiences familiar with Chen Musheng should know that Chen Musheng's style is two words: real.
The audience wants what they want from an action movie, and the audience only needs one copy, but he wants to double, or even triple.
For the audience, "The Case of Anger" is first of all a film that will never suffer losses in buying tickets, but from it, we can see a "fire" from beginning to end by Chen Musheng.
This fire, first of all, lies in the fact that the scene has "firepower".
At the beginning, a scene in which the police surrounded and suppressed the robbers, and the gangsters ate black and attacked the police, laid the tone of the film and laid the fuse of contradictions.
After that, he continued to use the Zhen Zidan shantytown war, serial kidnapping, square bomb disposal, street fight, church duel, etc., to string together the entire film. And Chen Musheng is still Chen Musheng.
Whether it is car chase, parkour, gunfight or hand-to-hand combat, there is foreshadowing and highlighting at the level of action design, and it is sharp and neat without dragging mud and water.
Throughout the film, all the sensory shocks are not hidden. It's just giving straight, giving straight to the last second.
Of course, as before, there are Chen Musheng's films, and explosives are indispensable.
But it is definitely not to explode for the sake of explosion, deliberately creating violence, but using explosions to create a story atmosphere and tension. For example, there is a bomb disposal scene, Zhen Zidan's wife and children are tied to the bomb, let him choose to kill the police or let the bomb explode, but he would rather die with his wife and children than be threatened by Gang Ao, and finally the police killed the kidnappers in a thousand shots to resolve the crisis.
When this scene appeared on the big screen, the immersion brought by Hong Kong-style action movies was believed to make the audience's adrenaline soar.
familiar? Only Hong Kong films can be so "wild".
Even the sound of the whole movie is very emotional, the sound of tire friction during the drag race, the sound of the knife cutting through the wind and piercing the body, the sound of breaking bones and the gunshots of the melee, all carry the unique sense of immersion and pain of Hong Kong films.
Under the dispatch of Chen Musheng, the film's action scenes are the highest in terms of quantity, density and compactness can be called the crown of Hong Kong films in recent years. At the same time, the settings are also richer and more diverse, such as gun battles, blasting, car chases, hand-to-hand combat... In short, Chen Musheng wants to melt the iconic elements of Hong Kong-style action movies into anger.
But in addition to the explosion scene, the action scene can also see Chen Musheng's "fire gas".
In terms of action, the past Hong Kong-style action films, such as Andy Lau's "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", focused on the big scenes, or such as Zhen Zidan's "Fuse", focusing on hand-to-hand combat.
The biggest feature of "Fury" is that it collects two elements of gun battle scenes and kung fu duels, and they are all shot very hard and very strong, and the kind of Hong Kong film-style fist to flesh is absolutely amazing.
After all, explosions and gunfights are all in Hollywood, but the kung fu action is only unique to Hong Kong films.
Chen Musheng has always believed that only real close combat can best represent Hong Kong-made action movies.
And this time, Zhen Zidan's martial arts action design is still very good-looking, pure hard and hard, without any nonsense, it is just.
However, the arrangement of each action scene has sufficient motivation, the character and fate of the turn, the development and change of the situation are buried deep in it, in fact, there is a rich film language design.
For example, in a scene, Zhang Chongbang went to the shantytown alone to negotiate with each other, the two from shooting and fighting to the sewer single-handed, Chen Musheng completely used the special environment of the shantytown to create action scenes, on the one hand, the action fist to the flesh, on the other hand, with the change of the environment continues to create empty falls and wrestling, so that the action has changed.
In particular, a fight in the sewers, at first it is a mutual test, and then the fight is inextricable, the bottles and plastic bags in the middle sewers have become weapons in the hands of both sides, and the special environment also makes the action duel possible at any time unexpected reversals.
Zhen Zidan in the film is no longer a dozen, but a dozen people, to the end even wrapped in a body armor as a shield, absolutely can not see that this man is 58 years old.
Of course, the most absolute, can make all Hong Kong film fans cool, must be the end of the two males in the church melee scene, the ultimate duel, one-on-one, stick against two butterfly knives,
There is the ingenuity of the MMA ground technique of "Fuse", and the fierceness of "Kill the Wolf", in the moment of life and death, both sides have taken out the long-lost fierceness of biting each other, and the life hurts people.
It is believed that this scene in the past ten years when Zhen Zidan was "beaten" the most will also stay in the history of Hong Kong film action films for a long time.
Finally, the character "Has Fire"!
If only the action scenes are brilliant, then the film is at most "cool".
With characters and stories, it is not a simple and rough "fight for the sake of fighting".
In the past, Nicholas Tse's image of a good person in the hearts of the audience was deeply rooted. A rare villain role, he is also a character in Chen Musheng's "New Shaolin Temple".
But this time Chen Musheng wanted to go further.
He wants to force out a torn, anxious, chaotic "villain" Xie Tingfeng. The real "Clown Nicholas Tse".
And this movie also makes me feel that after Tse Tingfeng has acted in a bunch of bad movies in succession, he has suddenly entered a new stage of his actor's career in enshi's movie, and I even feel that this time Tse Tingfeng's performance is much higher than the "Informant" that he won the film emperor.
The most exciting thing about the movie is that in the character setting of Gang Ao, this is a villain, but it is also an extremely rich and multi-dimensional character.
He was an elite member of the Force and took a group of brothers to solve the case. In the end, it became an outcast.
This role can be said to be another novel and breakthrough role in the field of Chinese action movies in recent years, after Pan Chengfeng.
Like Pan Chengfeng, Gang Ao also jumped out of the single concept of good guys and bad guys in traditional police films, and his struggles and choices, confusion and hesitation constitute the most authentic human color.
It also means a bigger challenge in performance. And perhaps thanks to the fullness of the role setting, Nicholas Tse's performance is far more intense, full and bursting than the villain played in Chen Musheng's film last time.
He really performed the unwillingness of being abandoned, the anger, and then the complete loss of hope, and there was no emotion on his face at all.
Just by looking into his eyes, you can guess that revenge is the only option.
But the most wonderful thing is that after he embarked on the road of revenge with full anger, when planning and implementing each action, he was so calm and even cold-blooded, but the heart of the brothers was hot, and the huge contrast between hot and cold made this villain more three-dimensional, more terrible, and more tragic.
Some people may say that when Ao just had an accident, even if there was a person who came out to help him speak, give him a chance, or have a good wife like Qin Lan in the film, then maybe everything would not reach this point.
But in fact, this character may have the seed of evil in his heart, if he had not encountered this incident, this evil may not have been stimulated, he can be a good policeman for a lifetime, but once he is stimulated out of the flower of evil, the tragedy of the character cannot be changed.
The biggest tragedy of this story is not actually the change of Gang Ao. It's his choice.
Why he became what he is today, and what he wants to become in the future, seems to have no choice.
Nicholas Tse really performed the character's evil, anger, madness, and explosion, and that kind of extremely tragic and tense performance, which made people easily empathize, and it was completely beyond my imagination of Tse Tingfeng's acting skills.
In a sense, Pan Chengfeng and Gang Ao are like the AB side of a character, just the probability of a choice, Pan Chengfeng finally chose to stand on the side of kindness and choose to be a good person. And Gang Ao chose to be bad to the end.
But even if the role is so bad, when he dies, he asks Zhen Zidan: If you go after Coke that day, will our fate be reversed?
This kind of sadness still allows the audience to look at this matter from his point of view with a tender feeling, this empathy for the role, at least I did not see in the film of Tse Ting Feng's Academy Awards, but this time, I saw it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="124" goodbye >, Hong Kong film male god</h1>
Of course, to say moving, maybe everything above, there is no end to the film, Tse Tingfeng's theme song "Confrontation" sounded, watching the last image of Director Chen's work on the set appear on the screen. Even if the cancer demon is entangled, he must face off against fate, and as a filmmaker, he will stand up and fight to the end, which is chen Musheng's real "fire".
Of course, "Furious Case" highlights a unique style of Hong Kong films, filling the commercial entertainment attributes of the film and releasing the advantages of Hong Kong action films, which is definitely worth feeling on the super screen in the theater.
But honestly, movies aren't completely devoid of flaws.
For example, the transformation of Gang Ao's role is still lacking in preparation, the character transition has a hard place, Tse Tingfeng's role is too prominent to give other actors such as Zhen Zidan, Lu Liangwei and other more literary drama space, the development of the story is too easy to guess, are the more regrettable places in the movie.
But I can safely say that the flaws are not hidden.
"Furious Case" is still one of the most Hong Kong-flavored and solid-quality Hong Kong films we can see in recent years.
Of course, it will also remind people of Chen Musheng's best movie in the hearts of many people, and it is also Chen Musheng's style-formed work - "Stormtrooper Fury Street".
The plot is nothing more than a common cop showdown, but it is enough to be emotional.
Rhythm full of soundtrack, fast knife chopping messy gun battle, smooth and natural camera grouping, after filming, Jiahe boss He Guanchang said to Chen Musheng, you don't shoot other movies, just make action movies, you will have good development here.
As a result, Chen Musheng became a professional household of Hong Kong action films, and only in his films, Tse Tingfeng would not use a stand-in in an action scene to hunt down suspects, volleys were picked up by the bus, and his hands were injured, becoming another Hong Kong film action actor who was refused to be insured by an insurance company after Jackie Chan.
This Hong Kong film god once said when he made "Sweeping Drugs": "Make a movie for several months, every time you watch it and watch it again, watch it again, watch it again... Taking "Sweeping Drugs" as an example, almost every shot can be read out before the release of the movie. Already so ripe, still have to see, what to see? Colors, acoustics, some very subtle things. In the end, I don't look at the actor anymore, just look at whether the prop behind the actor is wrong. ”
That's why I say that the soul of Chen Musheng's film style lies in honesty and authenticity.
If you are willing to spend money to watch a play, I will desperately do it for you, and my main actor will not have to stand-in and desperately shoot for you.
It can be seen that Chen Musheng wants to shoot a lot, but unfortunately there is no chance again.
Chen Musheng said: "Shooting action scenes is very hard, very hard, you love this genre is to love this type, I love to make action movies is to love to make action movies, hard work is certain, it doesn't matter." ”
And why can the blood of Hong Kong films continue to this day? He is the answer.
As a fan, since "The Case of Anger", I can no longer see Chen Musheng's movies, and even, I may not see Tse Ting-feng fighting as hard as in the past, just like he said, Hong Kong films have no Chen Musheng, I still want to make action movies, who to look for?
I still remember that Chen Musheng's first film directed was "Heavenly Love". And the character of Hua Di has the shadow of Chen Musheng himself.
That unrelenting obsession, the motorcycle that runs on the road like a white horse, is like Chen Musheng himself, but what he loves all his life is a Hong Kong-made action movie.
All this is the most moving picture that Chen Musheng gives to the audience. After that?
When Chen Musheng was still there, he was able to maintain a Hong Kong action movie with a real effort and hard work.
And now the bucket has shifted to the stars. Will there be such a pure Hong Kong-made action movie in the future? It's hard to say.
Just like the sentence at the end of the movie, Nicholas Tse asked: If there really is an if, will our fate change?
So if Chen Musheng is allowed to return to the year of "Heavenly Love" and give Chen Musheng a choice, will he still take the road of film? My character, no matter how many times he is asked to choose, the answer is the same: of course.
Although life is uncertain, you can no longer help us watch Hong Kong films. But we will not forget the Hong Kong film years that you brought us.
Well, goodbye, Chen Musheng, goodbye, my Hong Kong film male god.
And I always believe that chen Musheng's fire is still there, and Hong Kong films will not die.