Chapter 237: A Man in the Martial World (4) With his experience…
It must be said that although He Nan in the play is incredibly cool and stylish, Cheng Erjian in real life is quite soft and cute.
No matter how much Li Sishi tried to pull him out of it, he remained indifferent except for a moment when he felt guilty about the comment that "he wore more clothes than the female celebrities when filming bed scenes."
"My dragon over my shoulder is painted on, it's so easy for it to smudge, I definitely have to protect it, otherwise it will take forever to touch up the makeup..." he weakly argued.
"Do they want to see your dragon? They just want to see your body!" Li Sishi looked at his self-justification with a mixture of amusement and exasperation.
Although the film criticizes the practice of selling sex appeal to boost box office revenue, that criticism only applies to Category III films that primarily use this method in their production.
Under normal circumstances, given the censorship standards and production practices of Hong Kong films, apart from Category I films which are completely unrestricted, Category II films, whether they are Category II which are "not suitable for children" but have no age limit, Category IIA which has "parental guidance," or Category IIB which is "not suitable for teenagers and children," will always contain more or less profanity, violence, horror elements, as well as subtle descriptions of love, desire, and sex.
After all, most popcorn commercial films in Hong Kong fall within the Category II category, and if film production is too correct, the end result will only be a bunch of model films.
Therefore, apart from Category III films, which must be strictly restricted to viewers aged 18 and above, Category I and II films only have a duty to advise and not a right to enforce them. In other words, warnings such as "not suitable for children" and "parental guidance is recommended" are merely encouragements and suggestions, not mandatory requirements.
The movie "The Gangster" is a standard male-dominated film. Even though a lot of romantic scenes were added because Li Sishi, the original author, was chosen as the female lead, the ultimate purpose was to complete the life of the male lead, "He Nan". Therefore, among the elements that affect the rating, the most important are not love and sex, but violence and vulgar slang that are bound to appear because it describes a gangster theme.
Given that the female lead, Li Sishi, is meant to portray a pure, innocent first love, this path is not feasible. Furthermore, the "seduction of the sister-in-law" plot is likely to provoke public outrage and cannot be explored in detail. Therefore, the only option for this film to use suggestive content and sexual appeal to "seduce" the audience is a handsome, well-built male lead…
And you know what? In movies where male characters are particularly prone to standing out, male characters showing off their bodies are more popular than female characters doing so—it's like how excessive fitness attracts the same sex, and a cool, stylish male lead going shirtless, showing off his upper body...
When the male lead, He Nan, showed off his well-developed muscles, many of the young gangsters in floral shirts, who already idolized him, cheered wildly...
Cheng Erjian, witnessing such a scene for the first time, stared wide-eyed. He glanced at himself on the screen, only his upper body visible, then at the group of men in floral shirts below, their faces beaming with the delight of hungry wolves eyeing a piece of meat.
He was speechless and frustrated: aside from the painted dragon over his shoulder, they had everything he had, so why were the people downstairs so happy to see it?
“You don’t understand—” Li Sishi, who was sitting on the side watching the show with amusement, drew out her words, “Let me tell you, this is called ‘substitution’.”
One of the key factors that made "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" so popular after its release was that the actor playing the male lead was handsome and stylish.
Those gangsters watching the movie, after subconsciously identifying themselves with the characters, easily develop the illusion that they look just as good as Cheng Erjian...
When people feel as stylish as He Nan in the movie when they take action, how could they not like Cheng Erjian, the actor who plays the male lead, as a role model?
There might even be a desire to get as close as possible to the image of "He Nan"—thinking of this, Li Sishi secretly made a note of it in her mind: black, leather, rivets, and chains are some of the hottest elements in the next few years. Whether it's for her cousin Zhou Huichang as a reference for menswear design or for the future direction of the collaborating company "Theme", this needs to be arranged in advance.
While watching the play, Cheng Erjian, who was sitting next to Li Sishi, noticed that she had suddenly fallen into thought and did not dare to disturb her. So he sat quietly next to her and automatically returned to his normal play-watching mode.
At this time, the male protagonist He Nan in the movie was also immersed in the peaceful and leisurely life of a small boss. It wasn't until the struggle between Boss D and Liang Heng became more and more intense that Boss D couldn't help but come and contact He Nan, wanting him to come out of the underworld and help him fight against Liang Heng, who had become more and more arrogant after becoming the temporary leader.
He Nan declined Boss D's proposal, citing his bad reputation and expulsion from the gang. Boss D didn't press the issue and even paid special attention to Sisi, who was tidying up on the other side: "Sisi's mother didn't want me to go down this path back then, but I had no choice. Now that you have a choice, I don't want you to repeat my mistakes..."
Everyone knows that being involved in a gang is a difficult path and hard to escape, but it's easy to get in but hard to get out. It's actually a good thing that He Nan has the opportunity to quit.
Anyway, he just
He's been staying in Hong Kong for the past few months. Shang Sheng stepped down almost a year ago. He's still resentful of Liang Heng's rise to power and his immigration application hasn't been finalized yet, so he's stayed in Hong Kong a little longer. Once his immigration application is approved, he'll take his whole family to immigrate abroad, retire from the underworld, and live out the rest of his life in peace.
But whether in reality or in a play, things are always most likely to go wrong when you're about to leave the stage.
The storm is brewing, and everyone, both on and off screen, knows the plot is about to take a major turn. However, depending on where you are in the story, your feelings while watching will naturally differ.
Ordinary gang members, the kind of thugs in floral shirts, see their idols' boss about to face the villain's revenge. So, before anything happens, they've already built up their hatred and resentment towards the villain.
As for those who hold slightly higher positions in reality, and viewers who have read the original comic, they can glimpse a realm of struggle that the "newcomers," including the current male protagonist, cannot reach in this movie plot, which has been modified to a certain extent based on the original story.
The plot of this movie is based on the "Leung Heng" chapter of the comic of the same name "The Gangster". The comic mainly describes how the high-ranking bosses of the Hong An Society needed a scapegoat, so they allowed the obviously unruly Leung Heng to "usurp power and become the temporary leader". When Leung Heng and the external forces fought to the death, they could reap the benefits and take back control of the gang that had been purged.
Such a high-level power struggle requires a lot of groundwork and a certain level of understanding, so the length of the film certainly cannot be as detailed as the comic. Instead, the secondary plot of the underworld's newcomers wanting to rise to the top is turned into the main plot. The story of He Nan and other newcomers in the gang striving to upgrade and rise to the top is used to attract the audience's attention from the start. Then, the original main plot is laid out in this route of upgrading and counterattack, which improves the completeness of the script.
Therefore, from the broader perspective of the Hong An Society, this film primarily tells the story of Shang Sheng, the second-generation leader of the Hong An Society, who, by exploiting the ambitions of newcomers to rise in the ranks, uses a proxy to eliminate the increasingly restless "powerful minister" who has long controlled the underground business.
Liang Heng.
From beginning to end, the gang leader Shang Sheng didn't need to exert much effort to eliminate Liang Heng, his unruly subordinate, clean up the gang's shady businesses, and regain control of the entire gang from a high vantage point.
As for the loyal but impatient Boss D, he would never participate in such a deep struggle, so he only...
It's a variable that's optional; it won't help much if it's there, and it's basically fine if it's not.
After Boss D once again sabotaged one of Liang Heng's drug sales channels, Liang Heng finally couldn't hold back any longer. She seized the opportunity to capture Boss D's wife and children, and then used the vulnerable young girl as bait to lure Boss D to a deserted area to kill them.
They even went so far as to bury Boss D's wife and children alive next to him, determined to make Boss D's family "rich and prosperous" and "well-off" in order to hinder his business.
Such ruthless methods intimidated his subordinates, but they backfired on He Nan and Si Si, causing one of them to appear as the "successor" and the other as the "orphan" at Boss D's funeral, giving Liang Heng a good blow for thinking that he could rest easy after sending Boss D's whole family to the afterlife.
However, even though Sisi received a lot of support from Boss D's old subordinates as an "orphan," He Nan's past as a member of the gang, who was expelled for making a mistake, inevitably made his status as "successor" less orthodox. Therefore, after He Nan raised his voice, not many people were willing to submit to him or cooperate with him to deal with Liang Heng.
It wasn't until Crazy Chicken returned from his struggles in Taiwan with a large amount of money and his underlings that the two former brothers reconciled, giving them the strength to fight Liang Heng head-on.
In front of the food stall, Crazy Chicken, who had returned in style with a group of his underlings in a fancy car, tossed the well-preserved Rolex gold watch into He Nan's hand. The smiles they exchanged became a classic scene that countless passionate young people would never forget.
With all the elements of revenge prepared, He Nan and his group devised a plan to launch their revenge at Liang Heng's mother's birthday banquet after paying their respects at Boss D's tombstone.
Using the birthday banquet as the final battle is another brilliant touch by screenwriter Wang Yunjun, who combined the original characters with their personalities. Although it is a fast-paced Hong Kong film that can be described as poorly made, the plot's excitement and completeness, as well as the richness and expressiveness of the characters, are all top-notch and ahead of their time.
Positive characters like He Nan also have blood on their hands due to their roles, while negative characters like Liang Heng, in addition to being cruel and vicious, also have a filial heart towards their biological parents.
Human nature is complex, but the occasional acts of kindness by good and bad people with flaws can still "survive" in this era where most viewers are obsessed with the main characters, preventing the mad phenomenon of "good people needing to go through eighty-one tribulations to become Buddhas, while bad people only need to lay down their butcher knives" from occurring in later generations.
Therefore, He Nan and his group's plan to avenge the D family, orchestrated by Liang Heng at the birthday banquet, received unwavering support from the audience on the first floor. When they saw Liang Heng being deliberately cornered in an alley and attacked from both sides, the audience on the first floor cheered loudly, expressing their empathy and saying that only by having one person and one knife cut down Liang Heng, this scoundrel, could they vent their anger...
So, after finally getting his character killed off and finally sitting up straight to welcome the revenge he was taking, Wu Jinru, seeing and hearing the reactions of the audience downstairs, immediately curled up into a ball again.
However, screenwriter Wang Yunjun's revenge design was truly ingenious. Instead of having He Nan or Si Si, the two biggest victims in this incident, take the initiative to seek revenge, he deliberately arranged for Liang Heng to snatch the revolver from one of the main characters, allowing him to first show a smug and triumphant smile.
Then, his aimless pointing of the revolver caught the attention of a patrolling policeman, who instinctively fired a shot to protect the safety of nearby citizens. This policeman had a bit of a backstory: when Liang Heng was at his most triumphant, he parked haphazardly, and the policeman, following regulations, came up to issue a ticket. As a result, Liang Heng severely humiliated and mocked him, saying that the policeman had no future, while a big shot like him had a bright future.
In the blink of an eye, a promising triad boss was shot in the head by a lowly patrolman with no future. Such a contrast is truly ironic.
Having been shot in the head by this nobody he had once humiliated, Liang Heng didn't even have time to wonder why the revolver he had snatched was empty, preventing him from retaliating. His eyes, brimming with resentment, were already wide open as he fell heavily to the ground.
At this moment, the camera pans across Liang Heng's unseeing eyes, then across the complex expressions of the main characters around him, and then gradually across the homeless people on the roadside, the flickering lights in the distance, and the throngs of pedestrians who don't know what's going on. The sense of melancholy that no matter how glorious you are in life, you can't take anything with you when you die, suddenly replaces the pleasure of getting revenge.
It was as if in that instant, this brief moment of life and death made people truly feel the truth of "when you're in the martial world, you're not in control of your own destiny".
If this were merely an art film depicting the underworld of gangsters, it might have ended there, at most briefly explaining the subsequent fates of the main characters, and then continuing along this path of "being unable to control one's own destiny."
The theme of "you can't take anything with you when you die" paints a realistic picture of a power struggle within a triad—the one who laughs last is always the player in the upper position.
In the course of this game, who will become the short-term winners and enjoy temporary glory, and who will ultimately prevail?
Winning but paying a heavy price... these are not issues that top players need to worry about.
Once a person enters this world full of strife and conflict, they can no longer control themselves and become a pawn used by those in power.
The lives of chess pieces are as insignificant as grass or ants, and not worth cherishing at all.
However, since this is not a realistic film depicting club life, there is still a short, inspiring ending after this part of the story to allow the audience who were a little depressed by the ending to release themselves.
So after He Nan and his group devised a plan to eliminate Liang Heng, their mortal enemy, and avenge Boss D, they walked leisurely down the bustling street, like victorious lords inspecting their territory.
And ahead of them was Shang Sheng, the gang leader who had returned to the organization and was once again in charge.
"From today onwards, He Nan officially succeeds Boss D and becomes the head of this district." With a single order from Shang Sheng, the leading figure, the main characters successfully upgraded and turned the tables, and this youth idol film with a dark exterior officially came to an end.
The image freezes on a street bathed in a dim, yellowish light.
With his sworn brothers and beloved girlfriend by his side, this realistic portrayal of a newcomer's dream in the club won endless praise and applause from the audience, who felt a deep sense of shared experience.
Seeing the lively scene downstairs, Li Sishi wasn't the only one who felt confident that things were going well. The chubby producer, who had rushed back after negotiating the terms of the additional screenings and had heard about the audience's reactions from his old friends, the director and screenwriter, was even more overjoyed.
This is far more than just a simple, overly simplistic adjective like "it's a sure thing"!
Based on his experience, this game is definitely going to be a disaster!
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