To Qifeng's "Drug War", the title is as simple and neat as the plot, almost rude. The story begins with the accidental explosion of a drug factory. The audience follows the drug dealer Cai Tianming played by Louis Koo and the anti-drug captain Li Lei played by Sun Honglei, and goes deep into the huge drug kingdom of drug production, drug transportation and drug trafficking. In this process, people from all walks of life have appeared one after another, and the truth has become more and more clear. However, just as the police tried to catch everything in one go, the story took a sharp turn for the worse.
The single-line narrative, the simple characters, and the complexities of playing tricks are not seen, but it makes people feel unfamiliar and almost at a loss. The film is real in every sense. The pictures are not fancy, and the story is not deliberately extravagant. The characters are depicted in a few rough strokes, coupled with the real life background, which fits perfectly. The realism is so realistic that people can go from the initial comfort to the final fear, showing an unusual explosive force.
So the story is always told with restraint. The stern style, the simple picture, the language that is not at all tricky, and even the psychological struggle, try to erase the external performance as much as possible, but focus on mobilizing the tense atmosphere. The film does not deliberately create a big scene of confrontation between the police and the bandit, or the suspense of life and death. The police and criminals are always in a delicate state of putting long money and catching big fish. This dangerous balance runs through the entire film, and viewers have absolutely no clues about the next step. They can only follow Li Lei, who is also in urgent need of information, and keep going back and forth on Cai Tianming. There are naturally many plots that can be written into such stories, and only these can be seen by the viewer.
Dao
Qifeng does not intend to speak big truths, nor does he intend to impose moral judgments on the incident. There is no entanglement between right and wrong, no entanglement between good and evil, everything is simple and clear. He stripped off all the other symbols on the police and bandits, but just made a story of capture and escape. The vague story has no whereabouts, no place, only a process. His intention not to provide space for discussion of righteousness and evil is fully revealed in the debates about identity issues and betrayal within the police and bandits in the first and last two paragraphs. The police are the police, the drug dealers are the drug dealers, and their identities are as clear as cat and mouse. No betrayal, in the face of victory, the rest is irrelevant.
Therefore, viewers do not have the opportunity to experience those complex grievances and grievances. There is no gray area between good and evil characters here, and there is no clue to provide any profile of past experiences. In a limited and no longer limited range, repeated tracing on the existing impression. It was not until the appearance of Haha, a big brother in the Northeast who intended to join the distribution, when they were forced to tie their fate in a fraudulent scheme with two ends, the rigid mask-like image of the two showed signs of loosening. After pretending to laugh, the tension behind the event has gradually been adjusted to the point where the arrow is on the string.
Active and passive are constantly alternated in this field. Just like in the cup changing room on the wine table, the camera carefully arranged by the police was blocked in every possible way, but was actually played by the opponent in his hand, but it was difficult to pick out the opponent's handle. It was during this process that the dominance was quietly transferred to Cai Tianming, who secretly accumulated competition capital. From this moment on, in this battle between the police and the bandits, the police have actually completely fallen behind.
I have to say that this is a rare and stern film, especially in the attitude towards the police. The heroic image of the hero has always been portrayed as a disgraced person. In my memory, it seems hard to see the police so embarrassed and so tragic that they didn't leave a real survivor. To Qifeng did not deliberately elevate the image of any party, nor did he hide his attitude. Many people will smile knowingly at the "prohibition of extorting confessions by torture" in the interrogation room, and will be shocked by the "drug-trafficking" fishing boats covered with five-star red flags in the port. The irony of reality is obvious.
Because Du Qifeng's cherishing of ink is like gold, there are few scenes, and the details are very fine. In this confrontation between the two heroes, there are many similarities between the two people - accurate enough, cruel enough, and cold enough. However, Li Lei is not poisonous enough, no matter how accurate his judgment, no matter how ruthless he is with himself, and how calm he is with the outside world, he still lacks imagination for people's hearts. Although Li Lei was cold-faced, he did not hide his heart. For Cai Tianming, it is poisonous enough, and it is like a tiger with wings, leaving no room for others at all. The climax at the end is just his one-man show, and everyone can only be reduced to his background, using their corpses to set up a gorgeous stage. Only in this way, his forbearance all the way, has an angle enough to vent, giving the audience a reason to suddenly realize.
The line "Both can only live one", in fact, should be, for the purpose, unscrupulous, irrelevant to justice. When the police have such and such constraints and weaknesses, justice is difficult to fill. Cai Tianming, who had nowhere to escape, used his calmness and ruthlessness to earn a chance to escape and survive. Li Lei, who had nowhere to ask for help, used his persistence to handcuff the prisoner to his corpse when he was about to die.
It really fulfilled Li Lei's original sentence, "I will accompany you in life, and I will accompany you in death."
In a war, no one has the last laugh.
Extremely evil
has to be said, viewers may easily guess the beginning of the story, but they may not be able to see the ending of the story with such certainty.
From the very beginning, viewers are easily confused by the image of the strong-willed and upright police officers and the image of drug dealers who are greedy for life and fear of death. Unexpectedly, the further the story is dug down, the image of the police becomes closer and closer to the hero in memory, while the opponent becomes more and more confusing.
This man is used to hiding everything.
What Cai Tianming won't show you, Li Lei really can't see anything in the drug empire under the ice floes. In the same way, change the sentence pattern. What the director doesn't show you, the audience really can't see anything. Compared with Li Lei, who is naked in front of the audience, Cai Tianming not only reserved Li Lei, but also reserved the audience. In this sense, compared to Li Lei, Cai Tianming is the real master in the story and determines the direction of the story.
As said in the play, "Without me, you won't get anything." The audience can only work with Zhang Lei, revolving around Cai Tianming's scenes and lines, subverting the prediction of the next plot.
When he almost fooled the audience, his cruel side was revealed.
The last battle is the drug battle that the title wants to express. In the brutal shootout, the evil of human nature has been fully expressed. The chaotic situation of the three-way battle is bloody and cruel, and every second counts, and there is no room for delay and procrastination.
It's almost a total annihilation. It's not just the tension of the scene that takes your breath away, it's the humanity revealed in this ever-changing scuffle. To Qifeng was merciless in the movie, letting the police retreat, causing countless casualties. Both the police and the bandit have a moral bottom line, at least when they retreat, they all know that they need to rescue the injured woman. As soon as Cai Tianming made a move, he drove straight to the child, knocked the policewoman who rescued the child into the air, and then repeatedly crushed to stimulate the others to get out of the bunker, hunting and killing her comrades who were trying to rescue her. He drove to pick up the house, but just as people were running to the road, he drove away, instantly exposing both the police and the bandit to each other's firepower. When the accidental encounter with the apprentice on the way to escape was thrown into chaos, the apprentice was immediately exposed to the pursuers behind him. After it came to an end, he shot at his two apprentices mercilessly. Even after being accidentally handcuffed by Li Lei, he smashed his hand with the car door, trying to artificially create a fracture to break free. This kind of ruthlessness seems to be unexpected. Looking back, it actually has a foreshadowing.
He doesn't need a lover, so he can leave his wife and run away alone; he doesn't need relatives and friends, so he can put his adoptive father and righteous brother as a bargaining chip in the chess game; he also doesn't need a brother, so in the choices made again and again Choose to put others at risk first. This also explains why when Cai Tianming returned to the center of the drug dealers, he was not revealing the layout of the police at all, because he had long since saved the heart to let both parties die together, and used the most dangerous way to obtain the greatest benefits.
He is not afraid to betray, because except himself, everyone else can be betrayed. In order to survive, everything can be given up. Zhang Lei is actually Cai Tianming's contrast. The more obvious the difference between the two, the stronger the final effect. Only in this way can the slogan of the film be expressed: the human heart is more poisonous than poison.
It is quite different from the usual forms of such stories: the undercover identity is exposed, or both perish or retreat; the police are successful in the bureau, and the police and bandits fight in a decisive battle in the big roundup; "Does not write about justice, but about human nature.
Hide all the poisons, and at the end will show you how bad people are.
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