Value of a film content is often, for the sake of profit, swapped with the needs of the market. This explains why we have so many “bang! bang! bang!” Hong Kong films. In the long run, such overflowing gunfight films will dry up our film industry.
Stereotypes are fast and easy. In the gunfight films, bad guys kill good guys, and good guys kill bad guys. Bad guys pretend to be good. Good guys, as undercover agents, pretend to be bad. Policemen and criminals are the two indispensable components. At the end, justice is either done or undone.
The recent star-studded movie and high-budget movie Cold War 1994 dashes towards a higher goal. It wants a gunfight film to elevate to a high philosophical level: “The biggest enemy of the Police force is within the force itself.”, “There will be no violation of the law if we are powerful enough to re-write the law.”, “Black and white are not two opposite forces because they fuse and melt together.”, “In order to survive, you have to learn the right as well as wrong ways.”, “Only extreme measures can solve extreme problems.”, and more and more…Such film dialogues are all cliches and honestly, have lost their original impact. These maxims in this film are “teaching the audience to suck eggs” as we already come across too many of these from gunfight films, if not from our life!
The plot of the film also attempts to be profoundly philosophical too. The political handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to China occurred on 1st July 1997. In 1994, all kinds of greedy people were working ruthlessly and brutally on the power reshuffles in 1997: The nouveau riche wanted to take over the old rich in the business sector, the young wanted to replace the old in the Police force, the different gangster organisations wanted to rule the criminal world of Hong Kong and the British wanted to retain their influence in Hong Kong after 1997! Such numerous tropes in the story are confusing and become unnatural affectations.
Nevertheless, the drawback of the film is compensated by endless shootout scenes and countless superstars. They include Chow Yun Fat(周潤發), Louis Koo(古天樂), Aaron Kwok(郭富城), Daniel Wu(吳彥祖), Leung Ka Fai(梁家輝), Terrance Lau(劉俊謙), Karen Mok(莫文蔚), and more and more…Enjoying this film filled with a varied range of big stars, the audience really feel that the entertainment of this film is worth the 100-dollar ticket!
I was told that Hong Kong gunfight and action films are very popular overseas. It is profitable to export such films to the international market. Yet, we should be careful about that too much availability of these films can kill the value of Hong Kong’s motion pictures. Many of us already feel bloated by the gunfight films. Too much of a good thing can end up being a bad thing!
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