This is a very literary and artistic gangster film. There are no fierce battles and bloody massacres, but gurgling warmth and sadness in a killer's heroic fate elegy.
Killer Michael is a professional and ruthless killer, as well as a gentle gentleman. He can kill without blinking an eye, but in the face of his wife and children's love, tolerance and sense of responsibility, and in the face of suffering people's heart-wrenching compassion, he draws a vivid arc of characters. Like Leon in "This Killer Is Not Too Cold", his heart is soft and warm. When little Michael first saw his father's murder being discovered, he huddled by the door in fear. Although Michael was angry and complaining at first sight when he saw his son, the blame immediately turned into concern and tolerance, "Are you hurt? (Are you hurt?)" was the first sentence a father said to his son.
Little Michael asked his father if he liked his brother more, and his father said that Peter was like his mother and Michael was more like himself. He hates his blood-stained hands, his inability to express his emotions and speak directly, and he hates himself for fighting to the end no matter what. Little Peter is indeed cuter and more innocent, but it also revolves around the theme, "Natural Law": the more docile animals are, the easier they are to be eliminated.
In the film, in the scene where little Michael witnessed his father's murder for the first time, the camera shot through the crotch to present a child's perspective, and the upgraded shot of the shooting made little Michael's surprise. While the photographer was suffocating the first victim, the train passed by, implying that the killer had appeared and was on his way. Using three cut shots to show three scenes of the same picture one by one makes the picture more dramatic, implying that a good show is about to start, and also makes the characters more eerie and terrifying, reflecting the cruel distortion of the characters' hearts. Killing in Michael's rain at the end, using upgraded shots, and eliminating the gunshots and amplifying the sound of the rain, is the presentation of the climax of the plot, pushing the emotions to the extreme, and also the pinnacle of the characters' destiny. Full of restraint and sadness in the brutal killing, the silhouette in the heavy rain makes the audience not feel that this is a very bloody scene, but in the silent rain, feel the inner pain and struggle, loneliness and helplessness of the characters.
The story of the film father and son begins and ends in a rainy night. In the car, little Michael and his father were separated into two spaces by the car frame, which reflects that little Michael's heart began to resist and stay away from his father since then. But after the father completes his revenge, the shot shows two small spaces within a large space, a hallway and a room. The father slowly walked into the room from the corridor, and little Michael was sitting on the bed, showing that the father began to enter the son's heart. In the end, the father and son embraced tightly and reached a reconciliation between father and son. At the beginning of the story, the father defended his son's words: "He is my son." The son's words of tribute to his father at the end of the story are: "He is my father." More and more like, maybe in the near future, little Michael will become big Michael.
In the ending, when the father finally finished his revenge and was about to put down the butcher knife and return to a peaceful life, he was murdered by the photographer. The cruel laws of nature tell us that we can not hurt people, but we cannot lay down our weapons. In the end, the son raised the gun at the photographer, but he still did not press the trigger. The father killed the photographer from behind, like a food chain with links. "I thought that my father's only fear is that his son followed the same road (the only time I saw my father's fear was to see his son follow in his footsteps)" The father didn't want his child to repeat his life, which is full of insidious, cunning , a life of violence, even if little Michael had the courage to pull the trigger, his father would kill the photographer before him. At the end of the film, little Michael's monologue says, "This is the last time I have a gun." But is it really the last time? In a society of survival of the fittest, if you don't pick up a gun, you will either become a consumer or someone else's prey.
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