"Removing the Three Evils Around the World" seems to have gone to the altar.
It has been a long time since a Chinese Taiwanese film has achieved such proud results in the mainland: it has only been released for 5 days, the box office has exceeded 100 million, and the Douban score was once as high as 84 points.
Although the rating has dropped back to 8 in the past two days2, but this is still the highest score among all Chinese films this year, and the passionate praise on social media has infinitely raised the expectations of watching the movie, and some viewers commented: "I haven't felt that watching a movie in the cinema is such a happy thing for a long time." ”
However, walking into the theater with a high preset is usually an unfortunate beginning: the film is indeed good-looking, but it seems that it is still so far from being truly a god.
Before you say something bad, finish the good one.
First of all, it must be affirmed that "Removing the Three Evils Around the World" is a crime action movie above the standard. Whether it is a novel plot or a smooth and silky play, there are both surprises and acting skills.
All the "nitpicking" that follows will be based on the premise that this is a work that deserves more to be asked for.
**"Removing the Three Evils Around the Corner", the most intuitive feeling is cool. Even if you don't have a brain, you can have a good time.
To put it simply, this is a road movie in which the three big brothers on the wanted list decide to kill the first and second on the list.
The whole story is like a racing car on the straight, starting with a whin, and then the throttle to the end, and flying more and more:
Chen Guilin, the underworld killer played by Ruan Jingtian, dares to shoot the ruthless man who succeeds the boss at the funeral of the underworld boss. After four years on the run, he found out that he was terminally ill and his time was short, and he was persuaded by the underworld doctor to turn himself in.
But when he arrived at the police station, he found that no one recognized him, and those "big events" that he once thought were earth-shattering had long been forgotten. Even on the mottled and yellowed wanted list, he is only the third on the list.
Chen Guilin is not afraid of death, but he is afraid of dying in obscurity, he said: "I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid that no one will remember if I die."
So he decided to kill the first and second on the spot, and seek a vigorous fame before he died.
Along the way, God blocked and killed God, and Buddha blocked and killed Buddha. No one can stop him on a physical level, and there are no laws or morals that can dull his butcher's knife.
The wicked people who are full of evil must be killed, the minions who work for the tiger must be killed, and the unarmed cultists who do not return to their faith must also be killed. As long as Chen Guilin believes that the damned person will be "executed immediately".
Chopping melons and vegetables all the way, the blood plasma overflows, sweeping away the world, and avoiding evils. In the end, he really gained a great reputation, rescued many victims, and he also testified by killing, and the prodigal son turned back.
Traditional underworld films like to emphasize morality, restraint and repentance, but "Everywhere in the World" doesn't care at all, it uses a marginal protagonist who is detached from the world, and completes the pure pleasure and revenge outside the order.
Just to understand this level, there is no need to think about it: there are silky and smooth fighting scenes in the film, there are weak and helpless glamorous naked women, and there are also cults full of cult attributes, which can coerce the senses all the way and soar with the protagonist.
And if you bring your brain into the theater, you will get even more.
You will find that director Huang Jingfu is really fond of symbols and metaphors, and the whole film is inlaid with dense symbols like a puzzle book.
The title of the film is a key, and "Removing the Three Evils Around the World" is quoted from the allusions contained in the "Book of Jin" and "The New Language of the World":
Legend has it that the Wei and Jin Dynasty people were proud of their high martial arts when they were young, so they ran rampant in the township, and the white-fronted tiger and the water Jiao that were raging nearby were called the "three pests". Some people instigated Zhou everywhere to kill the tiger and Jiao, hoping that the three evils would fight each other and both would lose. Everywhere happily went, fought for three days, and killed tigers and Jiao. As a result, when he returned to his hometown, he found that the villagers thought he was dead and were celebrating with the crown. Zhou Zai had an epiphany that he was disgusted, and since then he has repented, reformed himself, and eventually become a generation of famous generals.
Looking at Chen Guilin from the periphery, wrapped in the cloak of violence, it is actually a story of self-discovery.
More details, the grass snake gray line, the veins are thousands of miles.
When underworld doctor Chen Guiqing went to the hospital to receive a chest X-ray, the doctor's name plate outside the clinic was written "Zhuang Yiren", which seemed to be the name of the doctor who received the consultation, but in fact implied Guiqing's identity, "a person pretending to be a doctor".
Before Chen Guilin went home and opened the door, he took a peanut from the door shaft, threw it into his mouth and ate it. This is not only a manifestation of a wanted criminal's anti-reconnaissance consciousness, but also a metaphor for execution. In the joke, "eating peanuts" means "eating guns".
If you want to touch it carefully, then "Everywhere" can also be touched with taste.
It can be seen that the success of "Everywhere" in the mainland is not accidental. However, is such a good-looking ** enough to be a god?
Compared with "Scorching Sun", which also focuses on wanted criminals, or Ruan Jingtian's other masterpiece "Mong Ka", it seems to be so breathless.
Not up or down, is the biggest regret of "Everywhere". The whole film is always advanced in an extreme atmosphere, but in the end, it seems to lack a force, a kind of madness, so in the end it fails to reach a certain dumb extreme shock.
It's not because the director didn't express it, but because there were too many of them. As a friend asks 30 minutes after the end of the film, "What the hell is it trying to say?" ”
Is the prodigal son going back and not changing? Or is the retribution of good and evil God watching? Is it a cult that is really scary? Or is Wang Jing really good-looking? It seems to be both, and it doesn't seem to be, with a huge and complex theme intertwined throughout the 134-minute film, sometimes complementing each other, sometimes contradicting each other.
Therefore, trying to dig deep into the meaning in "Around" is like diving in a children's pool, taking a deep breath and plunging down, only to find that you have touched the bottom of the pool with a kick.
Taking the behavior logic of the protagonist Chen Guilin as an example, it is very coherent in most parts of the film, but there is an abrupt change at the end.
Chen Guilin's original intention to eliminate the three evils is very simple, in order to be famous, so that someone will remember after death. Killing was his means of making a name for himself, so he never regretted firing a shot, and even if many of the dead were killed, they might not be legally killed.
When he was arrested by the police, the reporter asked him: "Do you regret it?" ”
Instead of answering the question directly, he raised his hands with great satisfaction and happily repeated aloud: "My name is Chen Guilin!" Old! Cassia! Forest! ”
He felt joy, pride, and peace in his self-preacher.
However, before he was sentenced, he suddenly showed shame and remorse, and said in his last words: "I'm sorry for everyone and society." ”
The sudden remorse of such an existence, which has never entered the mainstream social order from the beginning to the end, is not only shocking, but also confusing: what does this apology point to?
If Chen Guilin thinks that all the people he kills in his life are the people who should be killed, then why is he sorry?
If Chen Guilin finally repented and repented of his murder, then why did he greet the end with such a peaceful and joyful expression?
The inconsistent logic of behavior finally makes this character an unknowable and unsolvable mystery, and a certain divinity that the film stacks up in two hours returns to mediocrity.
This is true for more than one character:
The policeman Chen Shen was blinded in his right eye when he was chasing Chen Guilin in the early years, so he has been tracking Chen Guilin for many years and fighting for his life. However, when Chen Guilin finally turned himself in, Chen Shen suddenly became familiar with Chen Guilin, and treated him as gently as an old friend.
This may be interpreted as a kind of reward for the "vigilantes", but for a criminal police officer who has adhered to procedural justice for many years, this unexplained change is not abrupt.
As a result, any attempt to read the film is mired in contradictory motives and logics, and it is lost before finding a main thread throughout.
In fact, with a little more background information, these awkwardness can be explained to some extent.
For example, why did Chen Guilin say, "I'm sorry for everyone, I'm sorry for society" before the execution?
This is probably because Chen Guilin is not a character created out of thin air, but has his prototype. The prototype is the famous Taiwanese killer Liu Huanrong.
Liu Huanrong, nicknamed "Nerve Liu" and "Cold-faced Killer", is a deacon of the "Bamboo Union Gang", who is wanted and fled for committing a number of gun-machine murders. Although he is a killer, Liu Huanrong is quite chivalrous, and most of his life, he only kills people in the underworld. On weekdays, he was even more righteous and squandered money, and once robbed a casino just to help rebuild a dilapidated orphanage.
After the case, Liu Huanrong reformed his ways, initiated donations many times in prison, anonymously supported poor families, and donated the proceeds from the auction of calligraphy and paintings in prison to women's rescue**.
I'm sorry everyone, I'm sorry for society" are his last words before his execution.
If Chen Guilin is brought into Liu Huanrong's identity background, the logic of his behavior will be much easier to understand. Although Liu Huanrong is separated from the social order, he still yearns to return to order.
His derailment was not so much that he was born this way, but rather that he was forced to be helpless. At the age of 17, Liu Huanrong wanted to apply for the military academy after graduation, but was rejected because he had left a criminal record when he was young.
Immediately afterwards, Taiwan issued the "Regulations on the Prosecution and Suppression of Hooligans", and when the KPI of catching hooligans was not completed, they would find Liu Huanrong, a person who had a history of "injuring policemen", to make up the number.
came and went, Liu Huanrong wanted to take the right path but couldn't, so he had to go to the dark on the evil path.
A plausible explanation for Chen's apology is that he was not a pleasure offender who was just indulging in killing people to make a name for himself, but was always eager to return to "normalcy".
It's just that at this time, the director gave too little to the audience.
There is no mention of Chen Guilin's experience of becoming Chen Guilin, nor does it show Chen Guilin's other desires other than "seeking fame". He is like a monkey popping out of a stone, with no origin, no desire, and no destination.
Maybe the director acquiesced, Liu Huanrong's story is a household name, and there is no need for more pen and ink.
But audiences outside Taiwan obviously need creators to be more attentive.
On the other hand, success is also a metaphor, and defeat is also a metaphor, which is an excessive amount of metaphors and symbols, which ultimately exposes the ambiguity of the idea of "Zhou Place".
If in Chekov's play, a gun appears in the first act, the gun must go off in the third act.
Then in "Around", many "guns" are silently dumb.
They may not be as conspicuous, but they do dash some hidden expectations.
In the scene of the cult **, the camera is shown again and again to the female lover of the cult leader, who stands at the top of the altar, staring indifferently at the killing in front of her with divine indifference, as if hinting that there is some greater reversal behind it.
However, no, nothing, the only memory point for the female lover is that the singing is so good.
Another example is the English title of the film "The Pig, the Snake, and the Pigeon", pigs, snakes, and pigeons are regarded as the three poisons in Buddhism, corresponding to the three evils of "ignorance, hatred, and greed".
Chen Guilin has a pig watch given by his grandmother, and he is obsessed with fame.
The second big brother on the list, Aberdeen, has a thin snake tattoo, and he is the most brutal "hat".
Lin Luhe, the eldest brother on the list, is a tattooed pigeon, he is insatiable "greed".
It seems that the theme of "eliminating the three evils" has added another layer of deep meaning to quit greed and hatred, but the film does not take out pen and ink to speculate on greed and hatred, and the symbol of greed and hatred does not help to advance the plot and deepen the logic.
The reason why Zhang Guilin wanted Aberdeen and Lin Luhe to die was not because the other party was angry or greedy, but because the other party was at the top of the wanted list.
Whether there is a symbol of greed or hatred or not, it doesn't matter if the film advances.
It's more like a "clever package" than a "clever expression".
It doesn't have to be really advanced, but it can make the film seem meaningful enough.
And this "decorative gun" that failed to be buckled made the dilemma of "Everywhere" more and more conspicuous, and it seems that the director deliberately restrained and hid the most energetic east.
If we talk about the prodigal son turning back, then the prodigal son is like a tree without roots. If we talk about following one's own self and being happy with one's hatred, then the final recognition of social discipline is a kind of frenzied loss.
In the end, I wanted to say something, but I didn't understand anything.
In fact, the box office of "Zhou Chu" in Taiwan is quite compatible with its state, with a good reputation, but it only has a box office of 10.71 million yuan.
Needless to say, its explosion in the mainland market is an outlier.
"Around" exploded in the mainland, and the "scale" contributed a lot, and these days, the most noisy on social platforms is the scale of "Around".
Indeed, whether it is a sex slave, a cult, a collective**, or a pure villain, it is a rare landscape on mainland screens in recent years.
When the film was announced, it also boasted of being a "worst movie in Taiwanese film history", and everyone wanted to go to the theater to see how *** this film is
However, after watching the movie, you will find that to say that "Around" is bloody and violent, for audiences who have eaten it, it is not enough.
Chen Guilin's gnawing kill when he was fighting with Aberdeen was seen in "Hannibal".
The neat shooting of the believers in the church has been seen in "Ace **".
The bloody battle and mutilated limbs are not as good as "Operation Red Sea", and the actual shooting of the death penalty is not as direct as Deng Chao in "Scorching Sun".
The real scale is still in the plot: a person who is extremely evil can also see his true self and achieve a certain divinity through extremely evil actions.
Most of the time, there is no remorse, no order, just a strange man's search for self-meaning.
This kind of crazy process is like turning the fantasy of ordinary people who usually grit their teeth at the most tooth-gritting punishment of the wicked into reality, so that the pleasure and revenge outside the judiciary are allowed.
And this obviously somewhat evil way is the real rarity in mainland film and television.
At the end of the film, Chen Guilin's reform and righteousness were used to complete the social order's recruitment of "people who are chivalrous", and also let the "scale" return to the bottom line that can be tolerated. This is certainly true and reasonable, because the story archetype is exactly that.
But for a film that goes crazy from beginning to end, this is undoubtedly a kind of derogation, pulling the reins hard, making the madness that is about to turn into a long roar into a breath of air.
In the end, the film slides into the ordinary world with a gunshot from the executing police, leaving an empty face in vain.
The ending is too certain, and at the same time it eliminates more room for chewing and imagination.
Compared with this, there are more slightly occult scenes in the film, but they are more charming.
Before turning himself in for the first time, Chen Guilin threw a basket and asked Emperor Guan if he should turn himself in, and Emperor Guan gave the Holy Grail of one yin and one yang 9 times in a row - the.
Chen Guilin, who had no intention of turning himself in and hoped to escape by the will of heaven, was sweating profusely and trembling in the throwing of the Holy Grail, and finally recognized the will of heaven.
And in the final battle against the cult leader Lin Luhe, he once again handed everything over to "Providence", but this time the god representing Providence was himself.
He pointed his gun at Lin Luhe and said, "If the next 9 bullets in my gun are jammed, I'll go." If not, it is providence, that is the will of God, that is God punishing you for playing with the common people. ”
The first shot, the stuck bullet, the second shot, the stuck bullet, even Lin Lu and himself couldn't help but show a trace of whether I was really ordered by the heavens, but the third shot, the gun rang out, Lin Luhe fell in response, and returned to the west with his life.
Since ancient times, it has been difficult to ask about the will of heaven, but at this time, it seems that the will of heaven has some kind of connection with the retribution of good and evil.
This kind of religious and fatalistic empty gun setting is not the first time that Huang Jingfu has used it in his own works, and he also used the same setting in his previous work "The Death of the Avenger".
So thinking about this, I can't help but feel a little regretful, will there be some more interpretive expression of the ending execution, which can give "Zhou Place" the last breath of fairy breath on the road to becoming a god?
For example, a gunshot after 9 bullets in a row?