Strictly speaking, this is actually a dialect movie, and the dialogue in it is not in the true sense of Mandarin. Therefore, there will be some strange situations in the movie theater. The combination of childish accents and slang words that sound very normal to northerners makes others laugh. To a certain extent, when they listened to Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Hanyu poker-faced talking about the game, beating, you, just like many people listening to Tianjin cross talk, the tone itself has a kind of alienation and cultural imagination. of natural joy. From this point of view, this seemingly very commercial film is actually quite bold, because at a time when everyone is trying to capture the national audience with farce, this film by Guan Huxiao may be Lost part of the audience because of the dialect. Beijing dialect is actually a role in "Old Pao'er", and for many southerners, if this Beijing film is not fully understood, the film will lose a large part of its charm.
Not long ago, Xu Haofeng used "Master" to describe the rules and changes of the times. To some extent, "Old Pao'er" is a contemporary version of "Master". Rules are the core of the drama that "Old Pao'er" has always mentioned. From this perspective, part of this movie is about the changes of the times and the flow of people's hearts. After the stars moved, some things were left on the surface, just like Feng Xiaogang slanting his waist and pulling the crotch every day to carry the bird in the cage, still living in the yard left by his ancestors, borrowing a green onion from the neighbor and eating a bowl of dumplings from the neighbor, but In fact, this is just a small utopia created by himself. When he left the yard, all the fresh smells came to his face, those neon bright and exaggerated bars, and a bottle of beer for 35 yuan. It is the genuine logo of this age of consumerism. The Fan Er that Sixth Master is holding, he always supports himself when he walks up, and the old neighbors just give each other a face. In fact, other people don't even mean to disdain him, because he has always been ignored.
Liu Ye's true identity is nothing more than the owner of a dilapidated shop, but he still feels that he is a stubborn owner in his heart. Because his son was involved in trouble, he was able to know that there are still stubborn masters in this era, but the dynasty has changed. Those who are either rich or expensive. Those people are polite, and they appear in the halls and on the TV, and they never raise their eyebrows with others, but they kill people not with knives and sticks, but with money and power. This is what makes Liu Ye the most uncomfortable. At the beginning of the film, an ignorant southern child asked Liu Ye for directions. He didn't even know how to say hello. Liu Ye was not happy, but later, he met a person who "knows good manners". The powerful thug asked him, "Can I ask for a way?" The etiquette was perfect, but it was fist and foot that greeted him in the end. You see, this is the transformation, everything is different, which is the "good guy" and which is the "bad guy"?
When Liu Ye and the others were young, they paid attention to white knives going in and red knives going out. Now, even killing people is invisible. In this Internet+ era, even the gangsters have iterated. The previous rules were nothing more than a mixture of awe for the human heart and a brute force competition. The current rules are more based on pragmatism. In the face of huge interests, the old rules are like a joke, and those who hold the old rules are more like a joke. In the refitting workshop where the luxury cars were parked, after doing some errands, Zhang Hanyu cried and said to Feng Xiaogang, "Am I going to fuck him? When have we ever suffered from this? It's so fucking aggrieved." Yes, this is not you. era. There are two most unspeakable pains of human beings: lack of energy in the heart and untimely birth. These two, Sixth Master rushed together. He crawled on Xu Qing, and suddenly he couldn't do it. He tried to shovel things in his own way, but suddenly it didn't work. He's a wreck - both biologically and socially. But he has his own dignity and a way to maintain his dignity, so the second half of the film becomes a story of a man regaining his dignity.
In this way, once stubbornness turns into obsession, those rules that only a few of their older brothers still believe in become a kind of belief. In the end, why is Feng Xiaogang rushing up on the ice lake carrying a saber, why is it so moving? Just because of belief. Liu Ye sacrificed his life for faith. In an age of pragmatism, this is admirable like a myth. There is almost no place for faith in Chinese big-screen movies. "Old Pao'er" allows us to see a unique and secular belief in China.
Except for the rules and the upheaval of the times. The film also talks about father and son, the separation and reconciliation of two generations. Liu Ye experienced a collapse of patriarchal power. He looked for his son and attempted to reconcile with his son, which was a reconstruction of patriarchal power. However, the fatherhood that was later rebuilt was fundamentally different from the previous one. Before, he had always exercised control in the name of his father. Later, he restored the meaning of his father's original meaning. Later in the development of this movie, another incident evolved from a dispute between young boys. If the former one was to help his son as the father and the sixth master, and to rebuild the patriarchal system in the sense of family, then the latter One, it expanded the patriarchy and turned it into something with a sense of justice. Just as Feng Xiaogang said, "Little common people, there are some things that have to be done." Of course, this is Feng Xiaogang's good grasp of the heat, and Guan Hu also restrained and did not push the sensational music at this time, so listen to it. It looks like a man, he didn't say anything about civic consciousness, he just said a word about civilian consciousness. Actually this is interesting. Although the heroes on the Chinese screen are separated from Gao Daquan, there are not many really decent ruffian heroes. Not to mention the kind of characters who are both good and evil, half black and half white, which are particularly suitable for the reality of China. For example, the tough-guy detectives in Lawrence Bullock's novels are a particularly interesting cosmopolitan product. These men are silent, cold, and keep things in their hearts, with a hard shell and a soft heart. This image, in Chinese, translates , that is the appearance of Liu Ye, who is particular about the situation, the atmosphere, and the outside world. He has his own rules and bottom lines. For example, if he sees someone pretending to be blind and begging for food, he won't break it. He even teases others. When he sees a thief, he educates him that he can take the money and leave. There is a way. But his bottom line is always there, sometimes even much higher than many people who seem to be kind. For example, watching someone jump off a building, those who seem decent but are wretched in their hearts, all booed, only he was filled with righteous indignation. Liu Ye has always been fond of talking about "good people" and "bad people". In this era, it is a kind of innocence to still use such a simple way to distinguish people around. He has an instinctive kindness that is carefully hidden for fear of being seen by others, but he is embarrassed to express his softness directly, he only knows how to reveal it in a manly way.
This movie is not without problems, the biggest problem is actually Xu Qing. The actor has a lingering sense of anger. She is not typical of the kind of "spiritual Beijing girl" that Liu Ye said. She had her hair disheveled and squinted talking in the play, and she failed to make herself a real milf Beijing chick. She is really too entertaining, and her image and temperament have nothing to do with Hutong. For the two little fresh meats, this use is actually a smart experiment. It goes without saying that Kris Wu, even if his role is exaggerated, can still make sense. Li Yifeng's accent has been cultivated a lot, but there are still a few things left, which can be considered acceptable. In fact, since the box office of "Intruder" was bleak and Wang Xiaoshuai complained, some people have put forward such a suggestion. They said that if those young people's roles were played by Lu Han, Li Yifeng and others, what would happen to the box office? , and what kind of damage will it do to the film. It is undeniable that Guan Hu's selection of roles must have business strategy considerations, but the results of this experiment are basically plus points.
Overall, "Old Pao'er" is really a surprise in recent years. Guan Hu used another angle and presentation to describe the changes to a city, an era, and a group of people's hearts. If Jia Zhangke's "The Old Man of the Mountains and Rivers" has a kind of thick and vigorous, people's fate rolls from the county town to the other side of the ocean in the future, then "Old Pao'er" is only in one city, and it is also impossible to write. The vicissitudes of speech.
It's a movie full of cigarette butts and dirty words. Sometimes, swear words are a kind of humiliation to the other party, and sometimes they are a tone of voice, and the swear words in "Old Pao'er" belong to the latter. These old men are talking about you, I fuck, they are actually using swear words to consolidate their fading hormones and gradually lost self-confidence. It may also be because of the understanding of this meaning, coupled with the influence of some big coffee, all this has not been cut off, which is really fortunate. Otherwise, once the dialogue of this movie is crepe, it will be completely meaningless.
To put it directly, China has a standard for evaluating a good movie, which is to see if there is a deliberate "bright tail" at the end that does not match the temperament of the movie. People are so praised that they can't pass the trial without adding that tail. So, we don't need to be demanding about that last little bit of stuff. In our own inner cut version, the sixth master died on the ice lake and the movie was over.
When Liu Ye's body died before the ice lake, he actually released himself once. He was pedaling his bicycle on the side road and saw the ostrich that escaped. In the early morning in Beijing, this scene is full of unique Beijing-style magical reality. This alternative pet, showing off its wealth, escaped from the cage surrounded by the courtyard, but was destined to be captured on the modern loop. This fate is like the sixth master. He decided to escape from his backyard in Houhai to find his dignity and inner stability again, but he is doomed to fail.
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