text | Linghu Boguang
The recent Taiwanese movie " Weekly Remove Three Evils " has indeed become a small hit in the domestic film circle. Whether it is the initial reputation or the Douban score of 8.4, except for the box office performance, it is far behind. This movie is really popular in the film industry. Moreover, when it first became popular, a lot of netizens used it to criticize mainland movies, such as Spring Festival movies.
If I want to give my personal evaluation, the quality of "Eliminating Three Evils" is almost the same as " Article 20 " and " Speeding Life 2".
These three movies have different themes, and it is actually difficult to compare them. If you look at the completion of the movie, the film and television industry, and the core expression level, they are actually not that far apart. It still seems to be better than " hot " and " Mr. Red Carpet " ("Shake the Sun" was withdrawn too early, so I won't comment if I haven't watched it).
As for the fact that this movie has such good reviews from netizens, there are two main reasons.
First, it is very consistent with the line in the domestic drama "If Running Is My Life" released during the Spring Festival at the same time: You are really hungry
Since the 2024 Spring Festival release was scheduled, netizens have argued that there are too many comedies and a lack of industrial movies. and diverse themes. Several movies have the same theme + comedy (and some movie comedies are very abrupt). From the core, "Hot and Furious" is almost the same as "Flying Life 2", "Mr. Red Carpet" mocks the niche entertainment industry, and "Shake" "The Sun" had to be withdrawn early at worst.
In the end, there was only one "Article 20" left. The core of this movie is still profound, the degree of completion is also high, and the movie is still good-looking, so the box office will eventually counterattack, but the mixed comedy elements have affected the reputation. In the end, the entire Spring Festival stalls are highly homogeneous, and there is not much worth discussing.
The second thing is that "Zhou Chu Removes Three Evils" is a typical movie that movie fans will like. It has scale, breadth, and depth, especially in the second half, where there are various metaphors. In contrast, "Article 20" does not discuss many heavy topics, and "Flying Life 2" does not discuss much other than dreams and energy.
When "Hot and Spicy" was first released, there was a lot of discussion about dreams, feminism and reality. However, due to the overwhelming marketing of the movie itself, its reputation plummeted as soon as the Spring Festival release was combined with online word-of-mouth. It was basically dominated by criticism. It is a model of Chinese marketing movies in the new era.
And a movie like "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils" is of high quality, scale and breadth, especially with many metaphors, and is naturally popular.
The three evils are a metaphor for "greed, anger, and ignorance"? "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Pests" still has two brushes
This movie has three religions, three poisons, three pests, three meals, three shooting executions, three women, three transformations... All of these are not one-to-one correspondence, but they can The whole movie was finally completed. This is not a realistic film, but a metaphorical film, it can even be said to be a semi-religious film.
The cross he drew when shooting, Guandi's Holy Grail, and the Three Poisons of Buddhism all represent that the male protagonist is not a person in the normal sense, but an aggregate with a mission of religious sublimation. This is his authority and also His mission, and the method of sublimation, has been made clear long ago, which is to eliminate the three evils, not only three people, not only the three thieves in his own heart, but also the thieves in everyone's heart.
It is even more normal for it to break out of the ground. Jesus was resurrected after being buried, Taoism has corpses that became immortals, and Tang Monk was reborn at Lingyundu. If you look at it from this perspective, it makes sense. This is also the reason why Indian films are always outrageous. Almost all Indian films will be designed according to this logic.
That Hong Kong guy is angry. The external expression of anger is not violence, but uncontrolled emotions. Because of the bullet that cannot be removed from the brain, the Hong Kong guy has lost the ability to control his emotions and will get angry for no reason, so those subordinates will I dare not go in to check if the lights are not turning on and off normally. The order of
's most wanted list is greed, anger and ignorance. Greed is desire and dissatisfaction. People try every means to get what they want, which in modern society is money, fame and fortune.Chen Guilin wanted to live. He really didn't care about life or death. How could Chen Guilin join the religion? No one can truly have no desires or desires.
Insanity is not obsession, but ignorance. Chen Guilin has been ignorant since he started to walk into the murderous way. Insanity is the sign of all living beings, and all troubles arise from ignorance. It can be said that if anyone wants to be free from insanity, he can only accept life and death calmly. When everything didn't matter, when Chen Guilin finally got off the plane and surrendered, he still felt that he was famous and great, which was a sign of ignorance, until he realized that he was not actually sick. Xiaomei gave him After seeing him off and shaving his beard, he cried calmly, realizing that the world was beautiful and the evil he had done was meaningless. Only when he accepted that he deserved to do evil would his obsession be eliminated.
Useless police, recurring gun? Details of "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Palaces"
In addition, like the "gun" that appears repeatedly in the movie, at the beginning Chen Guilin was entrusted by someone (or refused to accept the death order issued by the underworld boss), accepted the entrustment of the underworld, and shot the underworld. Boss, this gun came from the underworld. The gangsters used the gangster to execute the execution, and finally lost the gangster's gun.
Later, he fought with the police officer, blinded the police officer's eyes and defeated the police officer. Therefore, he was not executed by the police officer with the intention of using a gun, and he could seize the gun of the police officer (Baidao) and received Baidao's commission at the police station. The subsequent shooting was by Chen Guilin carried out the execution with Baidao, except for the two evils and finally returned the gun to the police (Baidao).
The gun is not only a ritual weapon, but also a righteous judgment. Guns taken from police officers are an extension of justice. Its judgment is broad when extended, not only for sin but also for ignorance. Zhou Chu's harm can only be eliminated by his introspection. The people's comments at first had no effect on him, which is why the police could not hit him. He reflected and let the gun hit him, and it would hit him, and the harm would be eliminated.
In this movie, the police are the ultimate law enforcers of the law of heaven projected into the human world. Chen Hui is the representative of the police. It means that Chen Guilin will eventually be punished by the law of heaven. The bullet fired by Chen Hui will fly to the end of the movie, which is what we already know. Zhou Chu let the bullets fly for a while to get rid of three evils, but finally found that the third evil was himself, and completed the story of self-salvation.
They happen to have the same surname, so Chen Hui here also represents Chen Guilin's conscience. He has done evil before, so his conscience is covered with dust, and his conscience has been blinded by the knife of greed, anger and ignorance. The knife or spiked metal in the movie is related to the movie On the contrary, the gun inside is a symbol of human desire, greed, anger and ignorance.
Therefore, the three evils all use the sharp points of knives to harm people. Chen Guilin also used sharp thorns to blind one eye of Chen Hui, the conscience, but he was not completely blind. So in the end, Chen Guilin surrendered, called Chen Hui, and returned the gun to Chen Hui. Even though Chen Hui was so injured and disabled, he would reconcile with him so kindly, because Chen Guilin's conscience is back, and his conscience will Capturing him very gently was Chen Guilin's way of self-salvation.
The final outcome was also executed by the police with a gun, and the heart was hit. Greed, anger, and delusion all come from the three poisons of the heart that are confused by lust and lust, greed, anger, and resentment.
Chen Guilin's own perspective on abstaining from greed, anger and delusion is really thought-provoking. Many people think that he is just a symbol of delusion and do not pay attention to his greed, hatred and delusion. After watching it in the theater, I thought that the deletion of the auditorium seriously weakened the evil side of Chen Guilin (it is not bad to understand it as anger, because he left and then came back. Some people think that he has done his duty of eradicating evil, but he leaves the life and death of others to you. gun, in fact, it was no different from the Venerable’s deception). The final awakening was not in surrendering (he was still triumphant in front of his uncle and the media), nor in the tears shed while shaving, nor in seeing the repaired I think the crying while wearing a suit was his last words before execution, to calmly face and accept his own ending.
However, one thing needs to be added. The fundamental motivation that allowed Chen Guilin to eliminate the three evils was not the doctor and her lies. It was just a deadline for Chen Guilin to take action.After the doctor lied to him that he had lung cancer, he said he wanted to do something big. There are two reasons for this. First, he has always been greedy for fame. Secondly, the main reason why he was greedy for fame was to prove it to his grandma (although grandma may not know that he He may not want his grandma to know about what he did before).
Grandma is gone, and he wants to do something big, and then the doctor deceives him and hopes that he will surrender. His surrender is not based on the doctor's words, but on the nine revelations of Guan Sheng Emperor and Chu Yan.
The popularity of "Zhou Chu Removes Three Evils" has taught mainland movies "a lesson"
Finally, I feel that the movie "Zhou Chu Removes Three Evils" is not as good as the current netizens say. After all, it is not a Spring Festival movie. It has swept all the mainland movies, and to some extent it just fills the gap of boring Spring Festival movies, but the main problem is that it is a vacancy in the current mainland movies.
Although some netizens said that if this was a mainland movie, it would not be able to pass the point where the protagonist is a killer or a cult murder project is established.
I think this is indeed true. There are indeed too many regulations in the mainland. This is an objective reality. This standard is really unfair in the review process. The simpler truth is that last year Cao Baoping's " Crossing the Angry Sea " and " Solid as a Rock " were really deleted in a mess.
compromised too much in order to be released, reshooting, deleting, and eventually caused many problems. You said that there were problems with the movie itself, but this difference in "censorship standards" does also affect the quality of the movie. This is a fact.
"Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils" is indeed a good genre film that takes into account all aspects. Because of the review, it is still a film that is very lacking in our market. The director's previous work "江湖", his award-winning work, the narrative structure, pictures, music and symbolic metaphors in the film are all presented.
"Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils" not only continues to deepen these, but also innovates the theme. There is also Hong Renjiu, played by Andy Lau in "Jiang Hu", who appears on the wreath at Zhou Chu's funeral at the beginning of the episode (where Guilin Tsai eats lunch), which can be considered a linkage. Director Zhou Chu is the person who awakened to life after filming Jianghu: Where is the value of a person? Get rid of greed, anger and ignorance, and find your true self.
