From the perspective of storytelling, this is one of To Qifeng's gangster or reasoning movies that I have seen, which is the most worthy of repeated viewing. Because no shot is superfluous, not even a sound is superfluous, many shots are the driving force of the plot or the prompt to solve the puzzle, and the content echoes. It's called a dark battle, and it's really exquisite. This is a battle in the dark. It's hard to understand the "dark" line of this show if you don't watch it carefully.
From the perspective of the spiritual core, this may be the only representative work of chivalrous spirit when Hong Kong entered the millennium commodity culture or the prevalence of money worship. It's not the street brotherhood of gangsters, but the romantic feelings of thieves and Taoism similar to Jin Yong's literature.
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The opening scene is Andy Lau's shot. He is seeing a doctor. The doctor tells him that you have four weeks left for cancer, and you will bleed to death at any time. And he left a roll of money to the doctor, saying to the doctor, it's okay. As soon as the camera turns, he is standing on the top floor of the Hong Kong building, overlooking the bottom, and the soundtrack plays a countdown (here is a foreshadowing). Another scene turned, the doctor said to him, we may not see each other again. Andy Lau said indifferently, it's just this life.
At this time, the title appears, dark battle. English name, running out of time. Andy Lau's "I'm out of time" just happened to correspond to this topic.
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Then came the lens of Liu Qingyun. He is a negotiator with strong reasoning skills. He is friends with Inspector Huang Qifa. In addition to activating the atmosphere, Huang Qifa's role highlights Liu Qingyun's IQ. During the negotiation of a bank robbery, Huang Qifa only had one trick, that is, "I am Chief Inspector Huang Qifa, please disarm and surrender" to threaten the prisoner. When the prisoner threatened to need a car, he also complained, "Why don't you want a helicopter?" As a result, the prisoner immediately changed his mind and wanted a helicopter.
When Liu Qingyun listened to the conversation between Huang Qifa and the robber, he listened to the recording repeatedly and noticed that the robber's voice showed signs of cold. When entering the robbed bank, there are two robbers, one of them has already begun to retreat, and the other is getting more and more emotional, and even wants to kill the hostages. Liu Qingyun continued to break through the psychological defense line of the robbers who wanted to surrender. When he was about to succeed, a plainclothes policeman appeared and shot the two robbers directly with a pistol. However, this is very strange. If the psychological defense line of the surrendered robbers is broken, then the probability of successful negotiation is actually very high, and it is possible that even the hostages will not be harmed. Then why did the plainclothes police shoot and kill the robber under such circumstances, but did not shoot the robber directly when he first shot and threatened the hostage, because the shooting of the robber at that time constituted the police killing the prisoner condition.
At this time, the plainclothes policeman took a breath and showed his police card. And the two robbers who were killed just now showed no signs of catching a cold. Then it is only possible that this plainclothes policeman is the one who negotiated with Huang Qifa using the walkie-talkie.
Liu Qingyun thought for a while, walked to the robber's body, and leaned down. Then he got up and said to the plainclothes, in fact, you are the criminal who led the bank robbery. The plainclothes policeman with a cold raised his gun and aimed at Liu Qingyun. When he was about to shoot, Liu said, "It's just that you are still too stupid. The robber died long ago. I was just testing you, and you are killing me with your gun now, wait a minute. It's hard to explain." After saying that, he walked out of the bank. As he walked out of the bank, he broke out in a cold sweat, because if the plainclothes policeman thought carefully and killed Liu with the gun in the hands of the robber, wouldn't it be easy to explain. . .
It's just that the plainclothes policeman probably didn't respond because he had a cold, so Liu slipped away.
He was sure that he was going to be convicted. At this time, there was a gunshot inside the bank, and the plainclothes committed suicide. He had nowhere to go, because the robbery and ballistic testing of the gun meant he was bound to face legal action.
Liu came out, ate breakfast, and made eye contact with Andy Lau in disguise. The "Dark War" is about to begin.
One is a negotiator with strong reasoning ability, and the other is a terminally ill patient who will die soon.
At this time, Andy Lau was disguised as an old man, and was taking a photo of Liu Qingyun with a camera. And Liu Qingyun nodded at him. I never knew why someone took his picture before, he didn't have any doubts, just nodded. In his logic, the most likely thing is that the robbery case is cracked, and a reporter comes to take pictures. In addition, there are many follow-up shots showing that Liu Qingyun is a person who has been in the newspaper many times, so he is very used to it and nodded to Andy Lau. The background music at this time is the theme song composed by Huang Yinghua, Dark War. Scottish bagpipes make it easy to bring into the British gentleman and chivalrous feeling. So this music is also very relevant to the theme.
The camera came to Liu Qingyun's office. From the fact that he always did all the work in advance, he could see that he was a full-fledged workaholic. Challenging personality.
In Andy Lau's shot, his work wall is covered with information about Liu Qingyun. He is obviously very interested in Liu Qingyun. But judging from the clues from the movie to the present, I don't know what the purpose is, but what can be known is that he is brewing a plan.
In the next shot, Andy Lau and Liu Qingyun were sitting in the cafe, and Andy Lau settled the bill for Liu Qingyun. Liu Qingyun asked, who got a note with 13 (foreshadowing) written on it. And Liu asked whether it was a man or a woman. At this time, I thought he was very cute. Asking whether he was a man or a woman was actually a matter of confidence in his own charm. If it is a girl, the motivation of the girl is self-evident. Hearing the waiter say that it was a man, he suddenly realized, um, it must have nothing to do with the ambiguity.
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Andy Lau entered a building, checked the trash can, scratched a glass-like window with something similar to metal, and walked into a financial company. Submit the information to the fat man opposite. Then the fat man opened the file bag and found a cartoon inside. . . At this time, Andy Lau took out a gun, threatened the staff outside, and threatened Fatty to open the safe of the financial company, took out two large rolls of banknotes, stuffed them in Fatty's breast pocket, and then took the rest money. If Andy Lau is a terminally ill patient and wants to make a fortune before he dies, he doesn't need to give Fatty money. From here, there is some deviation from the purpose of the characters. After reading my analysis of the whole article, at this time he gave Fatty money, and the first purpose may be to feel guilty for Fatty, because he may not want to cause trouble to others. Second, it was to cover up that after the robbery, while waiting for the police to come, he climbed into the air-conditioning tunnel and installed something on the pipe in the opposite company room. Andy Lau is equivalent to bribing this fat man.
Then, Andy Lau took the fat man to the rooftop. Hide in corners where snipers cannot. This rooftop is also the rooftop of the building where he stands in the title sequence. That is, since he knew his illness, he began to brew this kidnapping plan. He deliberately asked the Flying Tigers to come over, and he also had intentions.
Liu Qingyun came over.
Andy Lau said, you are here, I have been waiting for you for a long time. Because Andy Lau's goal itself is Liu Qingyun.
Liu Qingyun: "I'm sorry, I'm stuck in traffic. It's inconvenient to talk at such a distance. Can I talk to you from a closer distance? I don't have any weapons on me." The old skill of negotiating experts is that he tells himself that he has no threat and slowly approaches the prisoner. safe area. He went on to say, "I'm Inspector He Shangsheng, how can I help you?" In such a comparison, Inspector Huang Qifa actually has no negotiation skills. He will only say, "I'm Inspector Huang Qifa, please disarm and surrender." This is similar to a threat, which is not conducive to crisis negotiations.
Andy Lau said: "I think you know better than me what they want." At this time, they refer to ordinary robbers, and this sentence is to tell Liu Qingyun that I am not an ordinary robber, and I am also very clear about your routine.
Liu Qingyun said: "Some people want money, cars, planes, or to meet their wives. Do you have a girlfriend?" Then he complained. Sure enough, robbers want something very simple. . .
Andy Lau: "It doesn't matter, I don't want those things. I just want to play a 72-hour game with you." Huang Qiqi, at this time, spit out a groove and made me laugh to death, he said: "Damn. Stupid."
Liu Qingyun: "You are doing so much, just want to play a game with me? You want to play with me, but the hostage is innocent. You let him go, and I will replace him."
Andy Lau destroyed the hostage with one shot. Then the Flying Tigers rushed out. Andy Lau ran to a vent, saw Andy holding a pressure detonator in his hand, and said to Huang Qiqi, who was standing on the bomb, if you move it, or if I press the button, the bomb will explode. Huang Qifa was too frightened to move.
Liu Qingyun: "Take this piece of shit and make me believe you have a bomb?"
Andy Lau was full of confidence: "Don't believe it? Try it."
Liu Qingyun said directly: "If you don't believe it, let it go." Andy Lau did not respond, and Liu Qingyun said again: "Let go!" In fact, at this moment, it can be judged that the bomb is fake. If it is really a vicious criminal or an anti-social personality who wants to play games, it will definitely detonate the bomb immediately when stimulated instead of just sitting there unresponsive.
The most wonderful Huang Qiqi came again, he said, "Don't let it go! I believe it".
In this way, it created an opportunity for Andy to escape. He escaped through the pipe opening, breaking the glass he had previously scratched, and took out a gun from the trash can he had inspected earlier to protect himself. Why did he take another gun from the trash can when he had a gun in his hand?
At the same time, the hostage walked out tremblingly. It turned out that the colored paint bombs in the hostage were harmless. Andy Lau's purpose itself is not robbery. The gun he took out of the trash was a real gun. His purpose is the room next to the finance company, but until now I still don't know why he went to the room next to the finance company. At this time, Liu Qingyun took out a bomb from Huang Qifa's feet, which was a biscuit. . . Liu Qingyun's face turned pale at this time.
The movie is full of games and negotiations, and the best part is that the two Lius speculate on each other's actions.
Liu Qingyun speculated that Andy Lau would go downstairs in disguise as the Flying Tigers , which was difficult to identify, but it turned out that Andy Lau did exactly that. Liu Qingyun guessed that the only way to find a breakthrough is to find people at the exit. He went downstairs and found a place where there was no taxi parking space sign, and parked a taxi. The car was a certain distance from the exit, but it was just at the corner of the street, which was a place where it was easy to get lost after escaping. . Liu Qingyun requisitioned this car and really waited for Andy Lau.
Andy Lau fired a few shots out of the window, saying that it was a real gun, not a joke, and closed his eyes, threatening Liu Qingyun to continue shooting without stopping. He missed the shot before, and the next time he closes his eyes, he will definitely hit someone . When I saw this place, I also suspected that Andy Lau was really a bad guy, threatening Liu Qingyun's parking with someone else's life. In fact, if you think about it carefully, you can find that if he is trained to shoot with squinting eyes, he can also guarantee that he will not hit anyone.
This time, Andy Lau won the game. Win the thrilling.
During the intermission, Liu Qingyun kept wondering. . . Why are you looking for him? Why does it have to be a financial company? When Andy Lau did this, he must achieve a certain purpose, otherwise it would be impossible to hold on to these two doubts.
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He wondered for a long time, and planned to go directly to the financial company to ask about the situation. As a result, he received screws from Andy Lau that day. He came to the finance company and checked the places where there were vacancies for screws.
This place is very exciting, because Liu Qingyun relies on milk powder to blow on the password button, and the most commonly used numbers will be stained with milk powder, so there are A44=24 solutions, which is a good way to set a mechanical password. Then I found the air-conditioning duct that Andy Lau had been to. He entered the pipe and saw a camera. At this time, Andy Lau was sitting in the car, looking at Liu Qingyun's big face. He connected the cameras of the entire building to monitor in real time.
At this time, the camera exploded, and Liu Qingyun had to start running down, and all of this was Andy Lau's plan. His plan was to grab the diamonds of the underworld boss next door to the finance company. Liu Qingyun is his pawn, helping him attract attention, especially when he guides Liu Qingyun downstairs, this trick is very clever, Liu Qingyun opens the door with the alarm bell, which can attract the attention of the underworld.
Together, they escaped the underworld, including the shooting. . . The performance of the underworld is too mentally handicapped, and there is not much to analyze.
What's wonderful is the game between them when Andy Lau drove away and Liu Qingyun sat in the back seat. This conversation and the story behind it is extremely interesting.
Liu Qingyun asked: "What did you steal?"
Dehua: "Snatched by the bald monk (the bald big fish), a gem worth 80 million"
Qingyun: "Our positions have been swapped. I drove the car last time, so you have a gun. Does the nearest police station know?"
Dehua: "Old rules, you win at the police station." As soon as he finished speaking, he slammed the accelerator into the wall, and both of them were shocked, and they walked exactly like humans. As a result, the two fell to the ground and fainted at the same time, and then Dehua stood up and walked away with a box.
This time is still very exciting, mainly because the reasoning of the two people is very strict and decisive, and Qingyun also knows why Dehua wants to do such a thing through the investigation of others. He wants to avenge his father, that is, from the beginning to the end. The tail, the first time on the rooftop, the first game, and the second game are all within the layout of Dehua.
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A few days later, Dehua asked Liu Qingyun to meet in the coffee shop. In order to let Liu Qingyun cooperate with him, he caught the bald boss (internationally wanted criminal) and avenged his father. This paragraph is extremely exciting, because Andy Lau used various different moves within one minute to try to resolve Liu Qingyun's problems from a psychological point of view, trying to lure him to continue working with him from the pursuit of a person's life, which is wonderful.
Qingyun: "Give you a minute to convince me to help you (catching the bald monk). 59, 58..."
Dehua: "If you catch a bald monk, you can definitely be promoted and transferred." (This passage must be very useful to Huang Qifa)
Qingyun: "There are still 40 seconds." (Unfortunately, it is useless to Qingyun)
Dehua: "You are having so much fun, why won't you play for another day." (From Andy's own point of view, he prefers exciting things like playing games, but is not interested in external things)
Qingyun: "There are still 10 seconds" (this person does not like to play games, nor is he a pursuit of excitement)
Dehua: "In the past two days, you know what you look like. With a tail, you are a police dog."
Qingyun: "The back door is over there." (He is a person who is extremely eager to win, he thinks he has lost in the first and second games, he doesn't enjoy the process of playing the game, but he is very Enjoy the result of victory, so people with such a personality finally let Andy Lau go.)
The funny thing is, when Huang Qiqi asked him why he was angry for not arresting Andy Lau, he told Huang Qiqi that he could be promoted by arresting the bald monk, and Huang Qiqi immediately said, I'm sorry just now.
This play presents three different outlooks on life through three different characters. Next is the most exciting last game.
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Who would have guessed that Andy Lau came to the bald monk wearing a women's clothing, handed the diamond to Liu Qingyun, and then let Liu Qingyun trade with the bald monk. The sly bald monk asked if Andy Lau, who had just greeted Liu Qingyun, was Qingyun's girlfriend, and Liu Qingyun said yes. In order to make the transaction smooth, the bald monk asked Andy Lau, who was wearing women's clothing, to go and get money from his subordinates, while Liu Qingyun stayed in place and waited for the inspection of the diamond.
Here comes my favorite scene,
Since Andy Lau had been gone for a long time, Liu Qingyun motioned to Huang Qifa to take a look, and looked at the place where the money was taken with his eyes. Huang Qiqi shrugged and said he didn't understand. Liu Qingyun touched his nose again and pointed at the place where they took the money, then his eyes widened, and he almost shouted out ~ look ~ look ~. Huang Qiqi thought that he had eye mucus, so he took off his glasses and rubbed them. And Liu Qingyun looked at him. . . Very speechless.
But at this time Andy Lau was already very serious, and his life was hanging by a thread in the toilet. But he still stole the money, put on men's clothes again, and then came to the lobby and said that he was the person sent by Zhang Peter to trade, and that the diamonds in Liu Qingyun's hands were fake and were really in his suitcase. The wise man understood in an instant, Liu Qingyun said, "Are you playing tricks?" Then after seeing the gem (the gem in his hand was real at this time), he immediately rushed to Andy Lau and said, "You and my girlfriend colluded to lie to me?" (At this time, he did this in the hope that the bald monk could feel that the diamond in Andy Lau's hand was real, but he was actually cheating him in partnership), and then the two of them were subdued at the same time.
At this time, the bald monk snatched the diamond and recognized that they might be cheating him in partnership. At this time, Huang Qiqi saw that the bald monk had a handbag in his hand, so he surrounded the entire trading crowd as instructed. The bald monk saw that the handbag that Andy Lau brought over was just a bowling ball, and was so angry that he broke the bowling ball. Surprisingly, the entire bowling ball was filled with diamonds stolen by Andy Lau in the first game. He successfully put the blame on the bald monk. People loot and get it.
And in the end, it was the familiar scene. Andy Lau got into Liu Qingyun's car. It was the familiar game. When it was sent to the police station, Liu Qingyun won.
Liu Qingyun: "It's almost here, why don't you do it?"
Andy Lau: "No regrets, I have done everything I wanted to do."
Liu Qingyun: "I'm not. If I didn't send you to the police station today, I would have regrets in my life."
Andy Lau: "It's a pity that you will remember me."
Liu Qingyun: "Don't worry."
At this moment, Andy Lau spit blood on the car window, and Liu Qingyun was silent for a while. At this time, Andy Lau took out a bomb, and Liu Qingyun pressed it down in disbelief. As a result, the bomb started to count down. In fact, Liu Qingyun may know that it is fake at this time. Because Andy Lau never thought about hurting other people's lives from beginning to end. Andy Lau said at this time, it doesn't matter how he wants to die in the end, as long as he doesn't die in the police station. And he lowered his head directly at this time, making Liu Qingyun feel that he had been in shock or died. (playing emotional cards)
Liu Qingyun actually knew that the bomb was fake, because if he thought the bomb was real, he would take Andy Lau out of the car directly. Out of humanitarianism, it was impossible for someone to let a person, regardless of life or death, be buried with the bomb in the car. sea of fire. But he got out of the car by himself, which means that he gave Andy Lau a chance to escape. Although he wanted to win, he was also full of human touches.
As soon as the scene changed, Liu Qingyun found in the newspaper that someone had donated 20 million to the Children's Cancer Fund in his own name. At this time, Andy Lau may or may not have died, and it will become an eternal mystery.
The end.
This is the best Hong Kong gangster movie I've ever seen.
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