The 2018 film "Peerless", directed and written by Zhuang Wenqiang, is definitely one of the best Hong Kong films in the past decade.
The film won a record 17 nominations at the Academy Awards, and finally won 7 awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and the plot progressed until the final suffocating peak circuit turn, highlighting Zhuang Wenqiang's strong screenwriting skills.
In fact, as early as the 2002 film "Interactive Murder Incident", Zhuang Wenqiang, as the screenwriter of this film, has proved his strength, he is based on the traditional police film genre, while integrating detective, suspense and other genre elements, the original simple police confrontation into a more complex and exciting reasoning to investigate.
Just as the slogan of "the whole people participate in the arrest of the murder" was played when the film was released, the film scattered the details and clues in all corners of the story like a snake and a gray line, allowing the audience to deeply participate in the plot and work with the police in the film to find the truth of this confusing case.
01, details control Zhuang Wenqiang
Turning over Zhuang Wenqiang's resume as a film screenwriter, we can see that there are some popular classic works: from the "Eavesdropping" series to the "Head Text d" starring Jay Chou, the most well-known is the "Infernal Affairs" series, which directly laid the foundation for Zhuang Wenqiang's unique position in the Hong Kong film industry.
Zhuang Wenqiang is a very good storyteller, as mentioned in an interview, he is the "manipulator of the story", manipulating the characters in the story and the audience off the screen.
The film opens with an image of Anna being kidnapped, an actress in the music scene, and Anna's frightened expression and the looming figure of the kidnapper Jash in a dark environment set the tone of the film full of suspense and darkness.
Jash told the police in an email that if he wanted to know how to follow up, he would find Ni Wu, a former criminal police officer numbered pc3946; in the subsequent investigation of the case, Ni Wu, who had been away from the police force for many years, as a core member of the police, began a thrilling "cat and mouse game" with Jash...
The most wonderful thing the film does in the suspense is the hiding and transformation of the character's "identity", which seems to have become a unique identity of Zhuang Wenqiang's screenwriting work from "Infernal Affairs" to the later "Peerless".
Until 10 minutes before the end of the film, the identity and ending of each character in the film seem to have been settled, but Zhuang Wenqiang has pieced together many details of the previous fragments to restore the shocking but reasonable truth, and look back and carefully touch these details, which makes people can't help but have a sense of pleasure in reading speculative fiction.
"Details" is the most important point of Zhuang Wenqiang's screenwriter, many details in the film seem to be irrelevant to the case, and it is not easy to attract attention, but it is an important part of piecing together the truth: for example, the ragdoll tiger hanging on Ni Wu's car, such as the pink watch of the supernatural girl Shana, and even the name of dash, all contain important clues related to the case.
There is also the FBI test question on perverted personality, although it is not related to the main plot, but it has become one of the most profound memory points for many people for this film, interestingly, a few years later, "Wulin Wai Biography" also appeared in this question, I don't know if it was influenced by this film.
There is a monologue in the film, one of which is "Every time the devil is destroyed, God will make another more terrible devil", and by the end of the film, as the truth comes out, this sentence seems to have really become a reality, Jash is dead, but evil will not disappear...
02. The director has passed away in 2020
When it comes to "Interactive Killing", I have to mention the director of this film, Deng Yancheng.
Just last July, the sudden death of the 69-year-old due to illness triggered the stranglehold and remembrance of many people in the film industry and many veteran Hong Kong film fans.
Audiences familiar with Hong Kong cinema are no strangers to Deng Yancheng, many people have referred to him and Qiu Litao as the two major leaders of Hong Kong cult films, and in people's impressions, his works are always inseparable from words such as "bloody", "dark" and "violent".
The early works of Deng Yancheng are full of extreme acts of violence, with extremely cruel and cold portrayals of human nature, such as "Rainy Night Butcher" Ren Dahua, who always kills people on rainy nights in "Doctor Lamb", and his crazy and extreme murderer image is still creepy to think of.
But Deng Yancheng is not limited to the genre of perverted killers, such as "Interactive Killing" is his new commercial creative environment, his personal style and mainstream commercial genre more successful integration.
Especially in recent years, his style has become more changeable, both the "Legend of Lu Xiaofeng" with the theme of ancient costume martial arts, and the detective theme "Line of Fire" series with the background of the Republic of China, which have achieved a good reputation, which shows that he is familiar with the field of commercial films.
03, Zheng Zhongji subversively plays a perverted murderer
The two core roles in the film are undoubtedly Ni Wu, played by Xu Zhian, and the killer Rush played by Zheng Zhongji.
But compared with the performances of the two, Xu Zhian can only say that he has completed his role tasks, but there are few highlights in the performance; on the contrary, Zheng Zhongji, who plays a perverted killer, has contributed an almost "film emperor-level" amazing performance in this film.
In the audience's impression, Zheng Zhongji often plays various nonsensical roles in "Bad" comedies such as "Fortune Superman", "Hundred Star Hotel", "Hanada Happy Affair 2010" and so on, but rarely can make a deep impression.
However, in this film, Zheng Zhongji's performance is an anti-comic comedic image, subversively playing an "extremely anti-human" murderer, and its ugly and vicious image shaping makes people vaguely see the shadow of the perverted killers in the director's previous works.
Especially in the second half of the film, the pale-faced and messy-haired Jash makes a "killing declaration" to the camera, and the madness and excitement in his eyes make people feel that this is a complete madman, an arrogant and inhuman devil.
The role of jash is a shocking subversive attempt by Zheng Zhongji, but unfortunately, Zheng Zhongji, who is obsessed with comedy, does not continue to "subvert", but continues to go black on the road of comedy, but it is always difficult to get public recognition.
Many years later, the director of this film is no longer alive, Zheng Zhongji, who was once pinned high hopes, gradually became unknown, and the former "male god" Xu Zhian became a spurned "scumbag", and the impermanence of the world had to make people sigh.
But what is gratifying is that although many people are now strangling "Hong Kong films are dead", from the perspective of the market performance of police films such as "Riot Control" and "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", high-quality Hong Kong films still have a strong attraction for the audience, and Hong Kong films are far from the point of "death".
Even if the Hong Kong film style is no longer as brilliant as before, its mature genre norms and the spiritual core of Hong Kong-style humanistic feelings will not disappear, and will be continued in the current film creation. (Author: Pippi Shrimp)