Do you know the allusion of "Every week eliminates three evils"?
"Book of Jin: Biography of Zhou Chu" and "Shishuo Xinyu" both have records: The young Zhou Chu used his strong martial arts to run rampant in the countryside and was called the "three pests" along with the tigers and dragons that harmed the area. The villagers advised him to get rid of the tiger and the dragon, but in fact they hoped that he could die together. He suddenly came to his senses, put down the butcher's knife after getting rid of the two evils, and corrected his evil ways.
The Taiwanese movie " Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils " released last Friday uses this historical allusion to tell the story of the modern version of Zhou Chu.
The film once set off a movie-watching craze in Taiwan and won 7 Golden Horse Award nominations and an Academy Award nomination for "Best Asian Film". After a small-scale screening, the Douban score rose from 8.1 to 8.3, which is better than 86% of crime films and 78% of action films, confirming the reputation of this film. The "most evil Chinese-language film in film history" and "high-scoring suspenseful action film" in the
trailer are not false claims. It is indeed a ruthless gangster crime film with "villain protagonist and all villains" rarely seen in mainland theaters.
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Chen Guilin (Ethan Juan) is a vicious criminal who intimidates both black and white. He does evil with the attitude of playing games with the world. Four years ago, he killed the gang boss in public and blinded the detective Chen Hui (Li Liren) His right eye became a wanted fugitive.
Four years later, he unexpectedly learned that he was suffering from lung cancer and would soon die. He accidentally saw the list of wanted criminals and found that he was ranked third on the list, so he made up his mind to kill the second-ranked Aberdeen (played by Yuan Fuhua) and the first-ranked Niu Tou (played by Chen Yiwen) before surrendering.
The two of them have long since disappeared from the criminal world. How does Chen Guilin carry out the plan to eradicate the evil? Will the girl Xiaomei (played by Wang Jing) he met during his desperate journey become his fetters and concern? Where will the fate of evil people who pursue evil to fight evil go?
"Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils" has an obvious three-part structure: the first part foreshadows Chen Guilin's criminal past and changes in concepts; the second part is full of the interest of Hong Kong gangster movies and tells the story of his fierce fight with Hong Kong Aberdeen; The third part is his adventure story of exposing the disguise of the bull head, which belongs to the absurdity and black humor of Taiwanese local films.
The English title of the film is "the pig, the snake, and the pigeon". The greedy and complacent pig, the insidious and vicious snake and the pigeon that is good at disguise correspond to Chen Guilin, Aberdeen and the cow head respectively. The tattoos of the latter two also imply its corresponding animal. On the other hand, pigs, snakes, and doves are the three poisons in Buddhism, symbolizing the roots of all evil karma in life—greed, anger, and ignorance.
As a film that mainly focuses on crime elements, "Three Evils" also unequivocally contributes to the action scenes full of design and large scale, allowing people to experience the long-lost adrenaline surge in the theater.
Close combat and street chases are considered small scenes for this film. Tense and thrilling scenes such as jumping from a building, headshots with incense burners, headshots with guns, and cutting throats with a knife appear from time to time. There is even a scene with strong irony in the climax. , there is no lack of comedy in the venue massacre scene. Epilepsy, indeed epilepsy, this is the true meaning of "killing people crazy".
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Friends who are familiar with Taiwanese and Hong Kong movies may get more unexpected surprises in "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils".
starring Ethan Ruan interpreted the crazy and ruthless desperado very well, and also captured the softness and warmth that still existed in his heart, and gave the most amazing performance of his career.
In the production special, Ethan Juan defined Chen Guilin as "crazy" and said with a smile, "The crazy director wrote a crazy script and hired crazy people to act in it. Even if Chen Guilin was beaten to the point of vomiting, he would not show any timidity." cowardly".
The 42-year-old Ethan Ruan has successfully completed the tough guy transformation from " chasing " to "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils". The Golden Horse Award for Best Actor nomination is also an encouragement for his transformational performance. If actor Wu Kangren's "Fudu Youth" was not too strong, Ethan Ruan would be a very competitive dark horse player.
14 years ago, Ethan Ruan won his first Golden Horse Film Award for his role as the affectionate and righteous "monk" in "Monga", which happened to be a crime action film with gangster elements. "Monga" describes the vigorous youth of a group of underworld young people. New actors such as Chao Youting, Feng Xiaoyue, and Ke Jiayan used in the film have all grown into the backbone of Taiwan's film industry in the future.
Let’s talk about the actors of the other two evils in "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils".
"Aberdeen" Yuen Fu-wah is a late bloomer. In his early years, his most famous role was the villain brother in Stephen Chow's "The King of Kung Fu". He shouted the famous line "You are not a takeaway".
won the Golden Horse Supporting Actor Award for his role as a transgender Cantonese opera actress in " Tracey " in 2018. In 2019, he was nominated for the Golden Horse Best Actor for his role as an elderly homosexual in "uncle·uncle".
Chen Yiwen has appeared in almost all popular Taiwanese movies in recent years: the tough gangster in "Bon Voyage", the sanctimonious and wretched politician in "The Big Buddha", the hard-working elderly father in "The Sun Shines", Director Chen, the "second spring" of Alyssa Chia in "Waterfall"... is both solemn and humorous, has superb acting skills, can be retracted and released freely, and has a wide range of acting options.
Xiaomei, the heroine of "The Three Evils" is played by Wang Jing, a rising drama star with great momentum. She is pure and lovely and has excellent audience connections: she is the star of "That Time A Ghost and I Became Family" The hot policewoman, Luo Yunong, the young man in "The Lights Come on", and Alyssa Chia's daughter in "Waterfall", every character is quite lovable.
Li Liren, who plays the detective Chen Hui in "Zhou Chu Destroyed Three Evils", is Tao Jingying's husband. He has always shown himself as a tough guy and an elite. He is also the Biao brother in "The Lights Come on", as well as Jia Jingwen's ex-husband and Wang Jing's biological father in "Waterfall".
(Taiwan Film and Television is a circle, and if you string it together, you will be an acquaintance)
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Although "The Three Evils" is a Taiwanese movie, the director Huang Jingfu is from Hong Kong.
Around the millennium, he opened the door to the mainstream film industry with his witty short films "I Love the Faucet" and "Tang Dog and Pekingese", and received the help and support of Eric Tsang .
The 2004 gangster action film "江湖" is a star-studded film, gathering together popular stars such as Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Edison Chen, Shawn Yue. Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung play the first and second leaders of the gang respectively. The former heard that someone was coming to assassinate him, and he couldn't help but start to doubt the good brother who worked hard with him to get high. Edison Chen and Shawn Yue play a pair of gangsters at the bottom of the gang. They receive the task of assassinating the boss and are eagerly looking forward to this opportunity to change their destiny.
Even today, the carefully planned reversal of the plot of this 20-year-old movie still makes people feel twists and turns and shocking. The movie is based on the fate of people in the world of Jianghu who do not end well, which adds a bit of tragedy.
The 2005 "Sister-in-law" is a literary gangster film starring Lucy Liu, Karen Lam, Simon Yam, and Alex Fong. Eric Tsang personally plays the role of a gangster who raises an orphan girl. Compared with "Jianghu", "Sister-in-law" is no longer a purely men's drama. Liu Xinyou added bright colors with green hair around her fingers to the movie.
The 2010 "Avenger's Death" is a gimmick. It invited the audio-visual amphibious development, Mak Junlong, who is known as "Hong Kong's most talented second generation" and the Japanese topical actress Sora Aoi. The script was written by Huang Jingfu Co-written with Junlong Mai. Revenge stories are fertile ground for violence and abuse, and pure love stories full of blood are extremely visually impactful.
Huang Jingfu is a mature director who is well versed in the formulas of action genre films. He is good at blending his own B-level taste appropriately and maintaining a balance between commercial blockbusters and personal weird tastes.
Although he is a popular and talented young director, Huang Jingfu's career in the past ten years has not been smooth. He only produced one co-produced online drama "Tianmu Crisis" with a Douban score of 4.5.
did not expect that when he went to Taiwan to film for the first time, he would turn in such a successful answer as "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils".If nothing else goes wrong, this crime action movie will be a good start for theaters in March, and Taiwanese actors such as Ethan Ruan will also be able to effectively gain popularity in the mainland. As for how much stamina the film will have, we might as well wait and see.
24th floor cinema poster said:
"The Three Evils" contains some violent scenes and sexual innuendos. When it was released in Taiwan, it was rated as "auxiliary level 15". Although nearly 30 seconds were deleted from the mainland version, it is still recommended to be 15 years old. The above crowd watched the movie.
Amy
editor-in-chief Chen Lingling
