"Chasing the Dragon" is the most classic Hong Kong movie I've seen in recent years. It uses a two-line narrative to describe the struggle history of two Hong Kong young people. Human desire, loyalty and kinship, violence and warmth, the tension of human nature is in Shown perfectly in the movie. This film is also a typical gangster film. It depicts the occurrence, operation and update mechanism of the underworld in detail from the point of view of the police and bandits, and presents the survival logic of the underworld in urban civilization with just two hours of footage.
To be honest, the screenwriter of this film is disappointing. The theme of the film is how two young men, a policeman and a gangster, started from scratch, but the explanation of the plot is illogical and unreasonable. However, what moves people in Hong Kong films is never the script, but the spiritual personality and Hong Kong spirit presented by Hong Kong films. The spirit of Hong Kong films lies in realistic narratives and strong emotional presentations. The most classic Hong Kong films have always been realistic, trying to render the good and evil nature of human nature and the unique urban temperament of Hong Kong in the narrative of real life. For this reason, the film has to exaggerate and distort life to depict some scenes that seem reasonable in reality but cannot really appear (such as Lame Hao driving a shovel to kill Henry) to support the emotional expression of the film. To watch such a movie, you must listen to Cantonese and Teochew dialect, enter the emotional and psychological world of the characters, experience the unusual scenes the characters face, and appreciate how the urban spirit of Hong Kong is manifested in the seemingly ordinary characters. .
The story of Lai Luo (Lu Le) is well known, and in the adaptation of "Chasing the Dragon", Lai Luo's emotional temperament overshadowed his peculiar life experience and became the theme of the film. Therefore, how Lai Luo gradually became a "500 million detective", how to be all-powerful in black and white, and how to insidiously establish a coexistence mechanism for the police and black in Hong Kong are not the film's concern. What the movie tries to present is the spiritual characteristics he showed in the history of struggle, especially in the interaction with Wu Shihao. Lai Luo spared no effort to pursue personal wealth, power and reputation, and for this reason he dared to enter the city alone; starting from Dustpan, he has been ambitious and calculating, planning a benign coexistence mechanism for the police and criminals in Hong Kong, in order to achieve social stability , under the appearance of prosperity to obtain the greatest benefits; but he is full of credit and loyalty, and is willing to risk his life in order to make the lame man rein in his horse.
What these plots show us is that Laidlaw is definitely not a bad guy in the strict sense, much less a good guy. This is a typical character in Hong Kong gangster movies. Laiduo is helpless in his eyes, but he insists on credibility and loyalty, and he is self-interested but not selfish. These are actually the ethical logic in the underworld. The premise of Lai Luo's ability to cross the line between black and white is that he accepts the moral code of the underworld and can be accepted as part of the social relations of the underground society.
Compared with Lai Luo, Lai Hao is more pure and simple, and is the most classic image of the underworld in Hong Kong films. The image of Lame Howe is extremely conflicted, he is ruthless towards his enemies and disregards law and authority. Lai Hao's lecture notes, be honest, and have a bottom line in doing things. This is actually the key to Lai Hao's success. Moral nobility is the primary criterion for the selection of members of the underworld. As mentioned below, the absence of law and authority has given special moral standards a supreme position in the cultural structure of the underworld. Furthermore, Lai Hao is not struggling alone, but a few good brothers are mixed together. As outsiders from Chaozhou to Hong Kong, the friendship between the Lai Hao brothers is very deep. Even the final destruction of the lame man was due to the revenge of his younger brother. Just like the "Young and Dangerous" series, the setting of "Chasing the Dragon" can just show the typical character of the members of the underworld. The five brothers are the core group of Laihao's fortune. Brothers rather than family are the highest ethical relationship in the underworld. The strongest moral concern and emotional expression must be presented in the interaction between brothers. And as the brothers die one by one, the failure of the lame man is also doomed - if the brothers are no longer, why should he fight and live?
Both Lai Luo and Lai Hao are examples of the spirit of Hong Kong. Hong Kong has grown from an ordinary small place to a world-renowned civilized city. The dreams she can carry far exceed her foundation. The pride of Hong Kong people is not in the prosperity of Hong Kong, but in the fact that Hong Kong started from a small and inconspicuous fishing village, started from ordinary individuals, burst out with infinite vitality, and progressed to the great achievements that seemed impossible to outsiders. This process is not a struggle history of individualism, and the basic ethics of family and friendship always occupy an important position in it. This is the true spirit of Hong Kong. Lai Luo and Lai Hao started from the most ordinary background among the police and underworld, and gradually climbed up to the position of Chief China Inspector and Underworld Leader, and they always adhere to the moral principle of faith and righteousness, which is undoubtedly a typical representative of the spirit of Hong Kong.
Appendix: Underworld Analysis from an Ethics Perspective
In fact, the underworld scene in "Chasing the Dragon" presents the survival logic of the underworld: first, the underground society is not an anomie of society; on the contrary, it is a normative system constructed with unique and strongly binding moral norms and ethical systems . The underworld is undoubtedly the reaction and destruction of the legal, institutional and moral principles in the mainstream social structure. In this sense, the underworld is a phenomenon of anomie. But in turn, the underworld itself is also a multi-subject social network. In order to maintain its own survival and development, it must establish its own set of social behavioral norms and ethical standards. This is reflected in the high emphasis on morality in the underworld. Therefore, the underworld emphasizes loyalty, authority, integrity, and bottom line far beyond the mainstream society, trying to maintain the operation of this society through moral constraints. This is the norm of the underworld. However, due to the lack of coercive means and ultimate authority, the logic of the underground society is often unworkable (such as dolls killing Ding Ye), so the underworld is fundamentally unstable in its social structure.
Second, the underworld is not and cannot be anti-moral or amoral. In Hong Kong films, underworld members are definitely not selfish individualists. He is cruel and cruel to his opponents, and he has no mercy for others' family members and friends, but he is the most tender in front of family members and friends. This tension between ethics and anti-ethics is the biggest conflict in the characters of underworld members: on the one hand, he retains basic ethical relationships such as family and friendship, and amplifies these relationships to an incomparable height; on the other hand, his own duties Ask him to be against the public, against the law, against the country, and to destroy the larger social ethics.
Finally, in a sense, the underworld is not a destruction of mainstream society, but a supplement. The premise of the rise of the underworld in Hong Kong is the chaotic governance of the British government, and the disordered state of society is the soil for the emergence of the underworld. The underground society accepts the groups rejected and abandoned by the mainstream society, reintegrates them into the new social network, and regulates and restricts them with its own logic. Whereas the public security system of the mainstream society has failed, the triad has rebuilt the social security order with its monopoly on violence. The usual method is to collect protection fees from merchants or individual families, and then establish their own "protection" for them. This kind of "protection" is naturally immoral, but it does play a role in maintaining order. We often see that in areas under the "protection" of a single gang, social order is relatively stable.
View more about Chasing the Dragon reviews
