The allusion of "eliminating the three evils everywhere" was first seen in the Southern Song Dynasty writer Liu Yiqing's "The World Speaks New Words: Self-Reform", which means to exhort the people of the world that as long as a person has the determination and action to change evil and follow good, no matter when it is sooner or later, he can always achieve something. Director Huang Jingfu put this allusion into the new story to interpret, which has lost the original exhortation of the story, but has added more mockery and introspection. In this column, we invited Zige, the chief writer of Qiang Draft, and asked him to interpret this Douban opening time 8 from the perspective of Huang Jingfu's work sequence0, after the screening, it soared to 84's "Removing the Three Evils Around the World". 
Eliminate the Three Evils Everywhere": I don't intend to please, and I don't intend to forgive1
In the sequence of Huang Jingfu's works, "Removing the Three Evils in the Week" (hereinafter referred to as "Everywhere") is not a large-scale. But in the category of domestic cinema films, it can be said that it has almost touched the upper limit of the scale. 
Its violentness lies not only in the visual violence, not only in the successive physical injuries, and the repeated emphasis on pain, but also in the negative energy accumulated in the whole filmThe confrontation between the unsparing evil and the "unrighteous righteousness" that kills everything is almost throughout the beginning and the end, presenting a struggle between black and gray。The film was shot in Taiwan, borrowed from the classics, and based on real characters ("Cold Face Killer" Liu Huanrong), and finally mixed up a semi-empty fable world. 
Liu Huanrong, one of Taiwan's top ten criminals, is in this world, and Huang Jingfu wants to do something realIt's about good and evil, it's about meaning, it's about self-fulfillment.
Before "Around", Huang Jingfu had not made a feature film for almost ten years. The last work can be traced back to 2014's "Vicious War". During this period, he only participated in one platter movie and one TV series, both of which were so bad that he almost disappeared from everyone. This time back, I can clearly feel that he has riveted his strength and done his homework. This once beautiful star of tomorrow, after experiencing the stars holding the moon and suddenly dimming, seems to finally glow with the light that can be captured by the mass market. 
The flaws of his previous works lie in the thinness of the plays and the overabundance of vision. In layman's terms, it is only cool, not narrative. And the "beauty" of his shots is often superficial, without attaching deeper meanings, so it becomes more and more empty. "Jianghu", "Sister-in-law" and "Vicious War" all have similar problems. In "Zhou Place", Huang Jingfu is consciously balancing the two. There is no doubt that this is the most elaborate play of all his films. Although the beginning and the end are still stiff, in terms of character building, there is also the suspicion of "one will succeed and ten thousand bones will wither". But at least, the film borrows a loose road movie structure to assemble the plot of the gangster film, which plays the role of stitching and covering up the ugliness. 
In terms of action design, Huang Jingfu has also restrained a lot. There are a total of four big action scenes in the whole film, the first three are the specialty of Hong Kong films, pursuing the intuitive transmission of flickering and moving and pain in the ultimate space, and the last "** is unusual, almost with a calm to almost frivolous attitude, presenting a large area of death, so the death suddenly lost its weight and became a series of damn numbers. It was this killing scene that set the tone for the filmIt has no intention of pleasing and is not prepared to forgive
It should be said that Huang Jingfu, who started making independent films, is the most authorial part of himOffensive。This has converged a lot after he transformed into the film industry. In the previous works, the performance is even more prominent. For example, ** complex, in his early short films "I Love the Faucet" and "Childhood Sweetheart" (also known as "Tang Dog and Beijing Dog"), are involved, the former is the father's abuse of his daughter, and the latter is the abnormal love between brother and sister. Under the lens of Huang Jingfu,The family is not a place of warmth, but a hotbed of cruelty, a killing with a smile. And this complex is also revealed in "Zhou Zhi", but it has "degenerated" into a stepfather's forbidden desire for his stepdaughter. 
Another example is the undisguised presentation of cruelty, which is in "Jianghu", the cowardly gangster (played by Edison Chen) is forced to match, and it is also in "The Death of the Avenger", the killer cuts open the belly of a pregnant woman, throws the baby into the sea, and soaks it into purple bad meat. Obviously, in "Everywhere", the visual violence is also weakened. It can be said that "Everywhere" is a work that comprehensively reduces the external offense, including the graphics and plot, which also ensures that it escapes the eyes of surveillance. But in its bones, its offense is still strong, and that's itIt presents a group of people who do not deserve to be saved and does not hesitate to kill them
The protagonist of the film, Chen Guilin (played by Ruan Jingtian), is an extreme personality. As with most of Huang Jingfu's films, the main characters are extreme. And extreme people are often very naïve. Or it can be said that it is precisely because of the naïve imagination of the world that the extremes are induced. 
The left-handed brother (played by Jacky Cheung) in "Jianghu" seems to be obedient and moody, but in fact he is just a "giant baby" who lacks a sense of security and needs to constantly use his fists and power to cover up his fragile heart; Chen Jie (played by Mai Junlong) in "The Death of the Avenger", is bent on revenge and will not rest until death, he has an incomprehensible attachment that ordinary people can't understand, but when he opens his shell, a hard love can be seen. The same is true for Chen Guilin. His starting point is also very naïve, and he is even a little secondary. When he learned that he was suffering from a "terminal illness" and saw that he was only ranked third on the wanted list, he had an idea to make a big deal before he died, so that everyone could remember him. It was a naïve decision, but he took it very seriously. Unexpectedly, on the way to hunt down the first two evildoers, his mind changed. 
There's a lot of room for fun in this shift. First of all, it is a manifestation of moral passion. That is, in the face of true evil, a wicked person will also be inspired to have good thoughts. It's as if good and evil also follow some kind of conservation law, secretly eliminating the other. It is not difficult to find that the three villains in the film, the Venerable (played by Chen Yiwen), Aberdeen (played by Yuan Fuhua), and Chen Guilin, respectively represent the greed and hatred of Buddhism, corresponding to symbols, namely pigeons, snakes and pigs, which are also symbols of the three poisons of Buddhism. And these images are also marked on the three evil people in the form of tattoos or objects (watches). From this point of view, the film is actually talking aboutThe internal contest and disintegration of the three poisons is the pursuit of greed and hatred by idiocy, and the reason why Chen Guilin did this is also because of stupidity and ignorance
The ignorance in this is subdivided into two sidesOne is the lack of distinction between good and evil, and the other is the lack of meaning。The former has become clear after Chen Guilin witnessed Aberdeen's evil deeds to his stepdaughter Xiaomei (played by Wang Jing), and at this time, Chen Guilin's motive for killing Aberdeen has partially shifted, from the original "seeking fame" to "taking righteousness". It wasn't until at the cult conference that Chen Guilin, who knew good and evil and looked forward to redemption, was once **, until he witnessed the truth, and he finally saw the real evil. It is not to take people's lives, but to take people's souls, to empty out the minds of living people, fill them with a unified will, and from then on say the same thing, sing the same song, and worship the same god. This kind of evil, which is very different from the gangsters' courage and ruthlessness, is invisible, is covered with a gentle veil, is dazzling, and is used to create danger to be safe. So it's not easy to identify and is good at spreading. 
So Chen Guilin, who broke free, jumped out of the coffin, rushed into the auditorium, and pointed his gun at His Holiness like a "rebirth". And the most ironic scene of the film was staged then, only to see His Holiness fall, and after a while, the singing began again. The song is called "The New Creation", and it repeatedly sings, "Our ordinary souls, follow closely without thinking too much". It was only at this moment that the cult's overall success was proven. That is, the Venerable is no longer there, the ** is already absent, but the self ** is still going on, more than a moment. 6
This is also the most ruthless stroke in the whole film, and the next ** is logical. At this time, Huang Jingfu's attitude was already clear, he was actually sayingIgnorance is the greatest evil。He who makes people stupid is a great sin, but he who fools himself is not innocent, and he even deserves it. From this point of view, the final **, which is dedicated to all the self-foolish, is "let them be resentful, and I will not forgive any of them".
It is here that the film quietly unfolds another side. It ultimately presents a person's self-awakening, and it is the process of Chen Guilin's "idiot", which not only includes distinguishing between right and wrong, but also re-identifying the meaning. Implicit in this is the return of instrumental rationality to value rationality, the transformation from the pursuit of "more" to the pursuit of "good", and behind it is the pursuit of greater fame to the pursuit of a moral life. Therefore, "Everywhere", as the second part of the trilogy of good and evil, continues the first "Death of the Avenger" on the question of religion and the question of good and evil. "Revenge" asks whether extreme acts of revenge out of justice are really moral? And "Zhou Place" reiterated,The importance of human awakening and self-judgment
"Everywhere to Eliminate the Three Evils" is not a masterpiece, but it is certain that it is a work with a flamboyant personality. If you bring in the perspective of meta-cinema, the scene of Chen Guilin hiding in the hotel next door and violating Xiaomei through the window **Aberdeen is regarded as a kind of reproduction of the film's voyeuristic mechanism, and the cult scene in the final auditorium is regarded as a reference to the film's hypnotic function, you will find that the director has actually brought the audience into the text and become the object of ridicule or vigilance. This is undoubtedly another offense. In addition to the film, "Everywhere" also creates additional meaning because of its special identity.
It is a Taiwanese film in the style of a Hong Kong film shot by a Hong Kong director and a Taiwanese action team. This not only helped Taiwanese films revolutionize the production of gangster and crime genre films, but also helped Taiwan's local martial arts teams prove that they can also control high-standard action scenes. In addition, in recent years, Taiwan-Hong Kong co-productions have also become a new phenomenon, indicating that Hong Kong's young directors are striving to find new creative space in the face of an increasingly tight local market. In the end, for Huang Jingfu, this is naturally a decent return.
After ten years, this Hong Kong director, who has almost lost his chance, has won a rebirth in Taiwan. Now, this new work has also landed in mainland theaters and has achieved a tour of three places. "I'm not afraid of death, but I'm afraid that no one will remember if I die. This sentence from Chen Guilin's mouth also seems to be what Huang Jingfu said to himself.