After 2000, Hong Kong directors collectively went north, gradually forming two factions.
One faction is the director represented by Xu Ke, Chen Kexin and Lin Chaoxian.
After running-in, they are more and more familiar with the "rules" and preferences of the mainland film market, and they can still retain their best style in new works and make works with high reputation.
In one faction, the director seems to be somewhat "lost in himself".
The most representative is Wang Jing, who has made either the "Chasing the Tiger and the Dragon" and the "Chasing the Dragon" series in recent years, or the flashy star films such as "Macau Storm", and recently he has also begun to lay out the network.
However, word of mouth and box office prove that his creative methods have lagged behind the times.
Another person who also "lost himself" is director Zheng Baorui.
Zheng Baorui is 17 years younger than Wang Jing, and within a few years of entering the industry, he made such word-of-mouth films as "Monster", "Dog Bites Dog", "Army Chicken" and "Accident".
However, since going north, he has specialized in fantasy productions, and has successively made the popcorn movie "Journey to the West" trilogy, which makes people lament that they have lost their original sharp edge and become "degenerate commercial film directors".
Zheng Baorui himself knows it!
Maybe tired, maybe lost, he once confessed: "After shooting a blockbuster for a long time, I still want to return to the basics." ”
Therefore, after 2018's "Journey to the West's Daughter Country", he packed his bags and returned to Hong Kong to "tinker" with the suspense crime movie "Wisdom Teeth".
As the only Chinese-language film, the film was shortlisted for the special screening unit of the 71st Berlin Film Festival this year, and under the surprise of the media, word of mouth exploded in advance.
Film critics who watched the film in Advance in Berlin have given it four or five stars, comparing it with "Looking for Plums in the Snow". Some people even say that the awards of the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards have been locked in advance, and the lead actor Lin Jiadong wants to win the film emperor this time.
However, this film, just the poster is physiologically uncomfortable.
Two official posters, one with elements such as broken legs, broken hands, and naked bodies, and one with countless ants pieced together a hanging hand, seeing the dense phobia attack.
Continuing the "unfriendly" poster style, the release of this new film is not smooth.
In 2018, the first version of the trailer was released, and then it was hidden for 3 years, and it was only released in Hong Kong through online channels this year.
Now I can finally meet with the mainland audience in the form of a "net disk",
Today we will unveil its mystery together, and pick up this Hong Kong film that has been "deified" by Berlin.
I. Investigation of serial cases of "mutilation of a woman who has lost her foot"
Before opening the grill, let's take a look at the movie story
The story of the movie is actually not complicated, the police detective Ren Kai (played by Li Chun), who has just graduated from the academy, is introduced by his boss and handles the case with the experienced but well-behaved old police officer Zhan Ge in the police force. (Played by Lin Jiadong)
They are investigating a serial murder case against a woman who has lost her foot.
The victims were all young women and illegal immigrants with no personally identifiable information.
The murderer's modus operandi was to cut off their left hands, then brutally kill them and throw them into the garbage dump. So Ren Kai had to face the stench of piles of garbage every day, while enduring the pain caused by the wisdom teeth in his mouth.
In the process of investigating the case, they meet Wang Tao (played by Liu Yaser), a young girl who has just completed her sentence and been released from prison.
When Brother Zhan saw Wang Tao, he suddenly lost control of his emotions, and he drove the street to chase Wang Tao wildly, and after a punch and kick, he tried to shoot her with a gun. Fortunately, Ren Kai took the gun from Brother Zhan's hand in time to prevent this tragedy from happening.
It turned out that Wang Tao had once fallen, driving illegally after taking drugs and causing a car accident, knocking Brother Zhan's pregnant wife into a vegetative state.
Although Wang Tao was punished by the law, Brother Zhan could not let go of his hatred, and would take revenge on her when he saw Wang Tao again, hoping to make her pay her blood debt.
Wang Tao is actually kind by nature, and she also harbors guilt for Brother Zhan and his wife, so she decides to give all the information about criminal figures that she has mastered for many years in the jianghu to Brother Zhan in exchange for his forgiveness.
However, in order to retaliate against Wang Tao, Zhan Ge exposed her informant identity to criminals, which caused Wang Tao to lose her foothold at the bottom of Hong Kong's society.
However, Wang Tao did not hate Brother Zhan because of this, but helped them track down the location where serial murderers often haunted step by step, and found the drug addicted female Coke Sister (played by Liao Ziyu) who had been abused by the murderer and beheaded.
Because Brother Zhan did not care about Wang Tao's personal safety, this caused Wang Tao to fall into danger, first being hunted down and killed by hooligans, and then falling into the hands of the murderer.
Brother Zhan began to regret it, blaming himself for being too cruel, so that Wang Tao fell into the hands of a murderer. In order to rescue Wang Tao, Ren Kai and Zhan Ge regain their strength and join forces to find out that the murderer is yamada Tsutomu (played by Hiroyuki Ikeuchi), an unemployed homeless from Japan.
Hiding in the garbage heaps of the slums, he made a living as a garbage collector and lived like an ant, and hunting women became a perverted hobby.
In the end, Ren Kai and Zhan Ge found Yamada's old lair, and after a life-and-death struggle, Ren Kai shot yamada in self-defense and killed him.
When Brother Zhan found Wang Tao again, he was shot and killed by Wang Tao, who was already insane, with the gun of Ren Kai that he had picked up.
However, Brother Zhan died with a smile, and he finally let go of his nostalgia, no longer resentful of this world, and was able to meet his wife in another world.
In the fight, Ren Kai was accidentally smashed by Yamada's wisdom teeth, and his cheeks no longer hurt.
Second, Lin Jiadong's image has a breakthrough, and Ang Lee's son's performance is very mediocre
Some people say that this is a big breakthrough in Lin Jiadong's acting skills, in the film he has a mouth full of beard, hair seems to never dry, become sloppy and untrimmed.
This image is very "breakthrough", but it is not his first, as for the performance, it does not leave too much impression, not that his acting skills are not good, but that the role of Zhan Ge itself can play a small space.
Liu Yaser, who plays Wang Tao, has received a lot of praise, although he is a mainland movie star, he can be well integrated into this story. Her character is too tragic, from beginning to end, she is running away, being beaten, abused, abused, sexually assaulted, but tenacious as a fighter, trying hard to survive.
Liu Yaser worked hard, even if she knew that this was an unlikely to be released in the mainland, destined to be a niche film that only a small number of people liked, she also took out a lot of hard work to seriously shape the role.
There are many fight scenes in the film, which are very difficult, and she does it herself, and she does not even use a stand-in for the shot of falling from the second floor to the ground.
Li An's son, Li Chun, played Ren Kai, who has long wisdom teeth in the film.
As the male number two, he is the witness and witness of the whole story, and when Brother Zhan was lost in hatred, it was he who stopped the tragedy in time; when Brother Zhan was dazed, he gave Brother Zhan the motivation to go on.
However, Li Chun's performance is only decent, and does not leave too much impression, and the character characteristics of the character are not significant. On the image, Li Chun is a little fat, no figure, and not a handsome man, because of Ang Lee's fame, he should have more opportunities than others! But in this movie, the role of Ren Kai itself is too mediocre.
Third, the movie is very raw, but the shortcomings are just as obvious
This new film is called "Wisdom Teeth", which can be seen that the intention of the creator is hidden under the title.
Wisdom teeth are the innermost third molar teeth on the alveolar bone in the human mouth, and when the wisdom teeth erupt, they are often accompanied by persistent and severe pain, and some people have to go to surgery to pull them out.
The protagonist of the film, Ren Kai, endures the pain caused by the emergence of wisdom teeth, which also implies a continuous, lingering depression and pain, which is very consistent with the dark atmosphere of the film's dirty, gray, damp and embarrassing.
The dirty streets full of garbage and the visual impact of the crowd in despair bring a strong sense of discomfort to the audience.
In the process of watching the movie, Pigo more than once pondered the pictures of the dirty streets that came into view, which ones were real and which were specially made by the movie.
But if you think about it, even in the relatively developed Hong Kong area, there are also low-level people living on the fringes of society, and the previous "Mai LuRen" and "Cage People" are the true portrayals of these people.
If the movie is colored, Pi ge, who has always loved cleanliness, may be sick to his stomach and can't watch it when he sees those garbage-like shots. The black-and-white image weakens the stomach-watering discomfort of this image, but also makes the picture darker, creating a sense of confusion and helplessness.
Zheng Baorui, who studied under Lin Lingdong, joined Galaxy Image in 2009 and made the suspense movie "Accident", which was evaluated by Du Qifeng as the most "imaginative" director.
After making a money-making but insulting "Journey to the West" trilogy, the work "Wisdom Teeth", which returned to the Hong Kong film industry, is his presentation of this stylized feature.
"Raw" is the most used word by film critics.
It seems that after experiencing the 90s of "all overheated, all crazy", and the continuous downturn of 2000 to the present, Hong Kong films have finally found the confidence and pride that has been missing for a long time.
But after these over-the-top praises, we should see the shortcomings of the film's thin story.
Compared with the shrewdness and competence of the policeman Zhan Ge, the murderer Yamada's modus operandi is not clever, or even has no technical content.
The suspense of the film is not retained until the end, but is revealed early in the second half, which makes the narrative of the climactic part lose its appeal to the audience.
The director deliberately set the story in a dark, damp, garbage-laden alley in a slump, and Yamada, as the perpetrator, and Wang Tao, as a victim, are also at the bottom of society.
But for their lives, there is not much to show, and there is no explanation for the social problems behind their tragic lives, just superficial, like two tool people.
Therefore, "Wisdom Teeth" is still a shortcoming at the ideological level, one step away from the classic, but it is that step that determines the artistic height reached by the film. Compared with Weng Ziguang's "Treading Blood and Looking for Plums" 6 years ago, there is still a big gap.
Fourth, Hong Kong movies are still lost
Some say this year is a year of hong Kong film revival, but "True Three Kingdoms" released in May is a miserable performance; another work by Lin Jiadong, "Hand Cigarettes", is only average. After receiving great attention, "Wisdom Teeth" currently has a douban score of 7.3, to be honest, this is expected by Pigo.
Therefore, in fact, Pi Ge feels that Hong Kong movies still have not gone out of the past routine, and breakthroughs cannot be talked about, so why revive it?
The loss of Hong Kong films is the loss of ideological themes, and it is impossible to find a way forward in the confusion, which is the problem of Hong Kong films and the problem faced by the entire Hong Kong society.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Bloody Dan Heart
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