Black photography is not anti-black

In the past decade, it has become a general trend for Hong Kong directors to "eat in the north" in succession. It is also the only way to integrate the original pure Hong Kong film culture with the mainland film environment to form a brand-new China film. From Tsui Hark to John Woo and Peter Chan, and then to Du Qifeng, Jing Wong, Chen Jiashang, Chen Musheng, Li Rengang, Ye Weixin and even Liu Zhenwei, the number of Hong Kong-based directors going north is increasing every year, and integration has become an irreversible trend.

No matter what purpose these Hong Kong directors came to the mainland with, they did contribute to the prosperity of mainland films in terms of the quantity and quality of films. Among them, Lin Chaoxian is one of the most mature directors who use genre elements.

Chen Jiashang's three films all have half-blood star Wang Minde, and Charlie Hebdo starred Jackie Chan.

1997, 33-year-old Lin Chaoxian directed his first film "Agent G4" independently. Regardless of the quality of the film, we can see the sensitivity of the close connection between Lin Chaoxian's films and the whole social environment from the film title alone.

Actually, agent G4 has a long history. It is the common name of Group 4 of Hong Kong Police Security Department during the period of Hong Kong and Britain, also known as VIP protection unit. Its predecessor was a subordinate unit of the Political Department of the Hong Kong Police Force (an important detail was mentioned in "Chill 2", the "dissolution of the Political Department" incident of the Hong Kong Police Force), which was responsible for the security and safety of heads of state and important leaders. The filming and release period of this film coincided with "1997 Hong Kong's return", and its appearance just catered to the complicated international environment at that time and the focus of public opinion in Hong Kong.

In this film, Lin Chaoxian invited Hong Kong idol Qi Lamb and Carman Lee, who is famous for her role as the little dragon girl in The Condor Heroes, as the leading roles, while the best actor Huang Qiusheng and Hong Kong sister Chen Fayong played supporting roles, which not only attracted people's attention, but also made the audience remember the name Lin Chaoxian. Lin Chaoxian, a fledgling woman, has basically established the image thread of her films since then: the persistent, hot and self-help hero, the vase-like female role, which only exists as a foil.

Special agent G4 vs real G4 special police.

Lin Chaoxian really became famous because 1998 The Beast Interpol was co-directed with his master Chen Jiashang. Chen Jiashang is responsible for the specific story structure, while Lin Chaoxian is responsible for all the action scenes in the film.

During the filming period, the popularity of the youth gangster film "Young and Dangerous" series swallowed up the market of gangster films, and John Woo went to Hollywood, which aggravated the fact that Hong Kong gunfight films were not connected with each other. Chen Jiashang followed the story core of the "Flying Tiger" series of anti-gang movies inherited from "Playing truant", that is, the two protagonists commonly used in police films were transformed, and the police and other law enforcement officers became the main description objects of the film, thus creating this highly subversive film.

In this sensational gangster film, Chen Lin and Chen Lin jointly created a bloody black-and-white world. The brutal explosion of anti-hero and gangster wars is the feature that distinguishes this film from previous Hong Kong gangster films. In particular, Huang Qiusheng's bloody performance of revenge for his gang friends in the name of the police in "Evil Ghost East" is unforgettable at the end. Therefore, this film won five awards at the 18 Hong Kong Film Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

The criminal police of the beast

After directing two gangster films, Lin Chaoxian gradually mastered the procedural norms that this type of film should follow. It stands to reason that as long as he goes along this road, he will certainly make some achievements in this genre. But he likes to explore, but at this time he made a striking anti-type gangster film "Jianghu Emergency".

As we all know, anti-genre films have always been a new force in art films. The so-called anti-genre is the disintegration and collage of the original genre model and its system. Although this subversion is full of deliberate outlines, it is a re-exploration of the boundaries of film art.

Specific to this film, Lin Chaoxian uses irony, banter, black humor and even nonsense to restore the real life of the underworld boss and his gang members and tell the audience that the underworld is actually an ordinary person.

This film changed Lin Chaoxian's tough style in the past, and thoroughly deconstructed and subverted John Woo's gangster films and Liu Weiqiang's "Young and Dangerous" series. The audience exclaimed that "the original crime comedy can be easily obtained." In the film, Ren Yinjiu, the underworld boss played by Tony Leung Ka Fai, was threatened with assassination and made an urgent judgment. Therefore, the film shows the audience a different gangster by using Ren Yinjiu and the people around him.

Jianghu emergency

After 200 1 year, Lin Chaoxian's "Take the Road" received a dull response, and the following "Heavy Police" let the audience learn the action movie skills he inherited from Chen Jiashang, but the film lacks details and can only be regarded as a passing sight.

At this time, Lin Chaoxian, who was not satisfied with being surrounded by police films, began to try romance films, horror films and even third-rate films. Love Planet and Passion and Change are all his experiments.

Among them, the movie "Thousand Machine Changes" is a direct copy of the vampire movie, the originator of western horror movies, and makes up for the "fantasy kung fu movie" and "zombie movie combining local culture with foreign culture" made by Sammo Hung and Ching-Ying Lam. In this film, Lin Chaoxian's combination of magic color and his good action design became a highlight at that time, and its box office broke the record of Infernal Affairs.

As a member of Hong Kong film directors going north, Lin Chaoxian really entered the mainland market in 2007. According to everyone's imagination, at this time, what he should do most should also be the police movies and action movies he is good at. But to put it bluntly, he still has the spirit of exploration in his bones. The appearance of two cartoons, "Sparkling Red Star" and "The Decision of the Storm", directly refreshed the understanding of the audience and peers. Needless to say, the remake of the red classic "Sparkling Red Star", but as far as "Decision of the Storm" is concerned, this martial arts animation, which was all the rage at that time, was made with a very serious attitude and lofty aspirations. From its action design and martial arts scenes, we can see the shadow of Hong Kong classic martial arts films.

Storm knight

Since 2008, Lin Chaoxian, who has been in the business for more than 20 years, has finally ushered in the most glorious period of his career.

The two films "Witness" and "Informant", co-produced with Nick Cheung and Nicholas Tse, not only made Nick Cheung, who has been wandering in the second and third lines for a long time, win the best actor for the first time, but also pushed Nicholas Tse, who used to play handsome and cruel in action movies, to the position of best actor in the Academy Awards.

It can be said that these two films have since established the basic pattern of the core story of Lin Chaoxian's films, that is, two prominent main characters are set in the same film, both played by big-name stars, in no particular order, and the stories are unfolded separately through two clues strung together by two stars, which is also a common mode of "double hegemony".

In fact, this mode, as a narrative strategy of genre films, has already appeared in the history of genre films, especially police films and action films. The Firewire starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Donnie blasco starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, American Gangster starring Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. and russell crowe, Infernal Affairs starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Andy Lau, Black Gold starring Tony Leung Ka-fai and Andy Lau, and Dark Flowers starring Liu Qingyun and Tony Leung Chiu-wei all use this model to promote the development of the story.

The advantages of this model are: firstly, the multi-line interwoven storyline can make the rhythm of the film more compact, increase the suspense of the story and keep the audience in a state of tension all the time; Secondly, and most importantly, it is to play the acting skills of two or more stars at the same time, so as to attract more fans and create more box office for the film.

From the movie poster, we can see that "hegemony between two heroes" highlights the confrontation between two stars.

Personally, I prefer the movie Witness. Wai Lun Ng, the screenwriter of this film (he also cooperated with Lin Chaoxian the most), can hardly say that he didn't draw lessons from paul haggis's film Crash-a coincidence interpreted the story in three (or more), and used a lot of cross-editing or parallel editing techniques in editing techniques.

Although this storytelling strategy is criticized by many people as too flattering, too elaborate or too technical, it is still very difficult to really balance every part. The relationship between each story clue and the characters is a considerable challenge to the rhythm, editing and character relationship of the film.

Not only that, these methodological difficulties seem to have rules to be found, but it is even more difficult for directors to add their own reference to society or grasp the theme of the film. In this film, Nick Cheung, who plays the criminal, and Nicholas Tse, who plays the policeman, each lead a story. Nick Cheung self-destructs, playing a kind kidnapper, while Nicholas Tse plays a policeman who makes a mistake and tries to make amends. The research on the shaking hand photography technology of Bourne ultimatum, the clear figure atlas and the discussion on the theme of "redemption" are the three core features that finally moved me.

It is worth mentioning that after the movie Witness was released, many people criticized Nicholas Tse for acting too hard in it, which seems a bit too hard. But I thought to myself that Nicholas Tse played a very good role in this film, and it was not his problem to play too hard, but the requirement of the overall style of the film. He has to act like this. Unlike the role of Nick Cheung, it will be easier to act. And Nick Cheung's makeup and looks are preconceived, which makes people shine at the moment. This strange-looking kidnapper, who is intertwined with good and evil, is bound to have a strong impact on every audience, which is the same as the ugliness of Karen Mok in The Gourmet.

Imagine that if the roles of Nicholas Tse and Nick Cheung were reversed, Nick Cheung would not be better than Nicholas Tse. At the same time, Nick Cheung was an incompetent, lewd and cynical gangster in many previous Jing Wong films. This established image was swept away in this film. His truly mature acting skills swept through the China film circle in those days, and it was expected that he would be sour after winning the prize.

After cooperating with Bona Film, Evergrande Film and other mainland film production companies, I think the biggest surprise that Lin Chaoxian brings to the audience and China films should be the exploration of the genre of sports films.

According to the strict classification of genre films, sports genre films do not belong to a genre film, but should be regarded as a theme, which can also be divided into inspirational films, adventure films, biographical films and so on.

According to the past experience and the current trend, this kind of film is mainly similar to "a film at the bottom of the food chain of sports competitions, with inspirational spirit as the core element to implement the concept of movie characters and show hard work and positive values." For example, Farewell to Yesterday (also known as Breakthrough) won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, Loki for Best Director and Best Film, and Quidditch for Best Supporting Actor.

For Lin Chaoxian, Guild Wars and Breaking the Wind can be said to be an attempt and an effective supplement to China's film genre. When MMA competition and cycling competition, which only appeared on sports channels and live events, appeared in movies, Lin Chaoxian, with good reputation and box office, also completed further exploration of genre film elements.

Just a few days ago, his new book operation mekong was released. This film, adapted from "10.5 China crew killed in the Golden Triangle", still focuses on Lin Chaoxian's famous police and action elements. Different from the past, the film was not only adapted from a real case that sensationalized the world at that time, but also went abroad for shooting and production. The core values of the film are also the concrete embodiment of strengthening national consciousness in international actions with the story of police and bandits as the selling point.

To tell the truth, Hollywood has been ahead of us for many years, such as the World Trade Center in oliver stone, Black Hawk Down in ridley scott, American Sniper in Eastwood, Escape from Teheran by Affleck and so on. There are still too few such films in China, so with the support and encouragement of the national government, we still have a chance to catch up with Hollywood.

After all, there is no shortage of good stories in China. Fortunately, we now see such hope. At present, two films that Lin Chaoxian decided to shoot or report (Operation Red Sea and Moscow Mission) belong to this kind of international production. I sincerely hope that He, who has directed many kinds of films and is full of exploration and ambition, can bring more surprises to our future Chinese films.

On sale | Gege's new book "Scenery" has been on sale. Click "Read the original" and welcome to subscribe. The official number of "No.3 Wenhuiyuan Road" pays for the filmmakers' manuscripts. For details, please refer to "Seeking the Virtue".