The movie "Kowloon Walled City: The Siege" is currently being screened.
There is a line in the popular movie "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City": From now on, the Walled City will be the world of you young people. In fact, the director of this film, Paul Cheng, is also using this line to talk about Hong Kong movies.
This action crime film "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" starring Louis Koo, Raymond Lam, Lau Chun-him, Ng Yun-lung, Hu Tong, and Zhang Wenjie, starring Ren Xianqi and Huang Debin, and friendly starring Sammo Hung, was released nationwide on May 1. The film It brings together three generations of Hong Kong film actors, old, middle and young. When the story reaches two-thirds, the previous generation exits and the baton is completely handed over to the young actors, completing the 20 minutes of exciting action scenes at the end.
"Isn't it normal that Hong Kong films should be handed over to the next generation? We are all old, so why not leave it to them? If they are not good enough, we have not given them a chance. We are also taking over from the previous generation, one step at a time. We came here in one step," Zheng Baorui solemnly told the Beijing News reporter.
"The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" director Paul Cheng said that if the movie does well at the box office, he will also consider making a second one.
When filming "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City", Zheng Baorui wanted to do something different for the audience. "I don't have great ideals. I want to change the audience's view of Hong Kong movies, but we are looking for possibilities." If the movie The box office results are very good. He will also consider making a second film, but he will not continue filming. Blindly repeating and sticking to a certain theme and type will be a waste for both himself and the movie. He thinks Go try something new. In the future, he will have the opportunity to shoot two "water-related" movies in the Mainland, which are completely types that he has never made before.
In addition to the dirty style of the Walled City, you also need to find the emotions of life.
Hong Kong movies and TV dramas with the Kowloon Walled City as the background, such as the TV series "Heroes of the Walled City" and the movie " Chasing the Dragon " will basically have a logo. Sex scene: With a huge roar, a plane almost flew over the Kowloon Walled City. Cheng Baorui said that this is a scene that only existed in Hong Kong movies in the 1980s and 1990s. The airport (Kai Tak) back then was right next to the Walled City. Cheng Baorui still remembers that when he was flying back to Hong Kong as a child, when the plane was about to land, it would pass by the buildings of the Kowloon Walled City. "You can even see the clothes hanging underneath." .
The plane seen in "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" flies over the walled city.
For Zheng Baorui, this is a very magical picture. He reproduced this detail in "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City", with the plane flying over the walled city once at the beginning and at the end. After watching the movie, Zheng Baorui's classmate was most moved by this passage, as if he suddenly returned to his childhood, which had a unique flavor. Later, the Hong Kong Airport was moved to Lantau Island, and this scene was never seen again.
In fact, until the Kowloon Walled City was demolished in 1993, Cheng Baorui had never been there. "At that time, I was living in Mong Kok. There were already many things to do in Mongkok, and I rarely went to other districts." Cheng Baorui really came into contact with the Kowloon Walled City. It is through some film and television works, and even the art styles of some foreign movies, such as many Japanese movies, that draw on the feeling of the Kowloon Walled City.
Before the Walled City was demolished, a Japanese team entered the Walled City and produced a high-definition structural diagram of the Walled City. In 2005, in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, an ancient building "warehouse" that highly replicated the Kowloon Walled City appeared - Kawasaki Warehouse Game Park, which clearly restored the Kowloon Walled City in the 1970s and 1980s. Historical features.
Zheng Baorui wondered why even foreign countries were learning from the style of the Walled City. He searched for a lot of information and bought related books. "It's really cool, but I never imagined that I could actually take pictures of the Walled City." Paul Cheng really got to know Kowloon Walled City again because of the filming of the movie "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City".
8 years ago, Hong Kong Infinite Power Company bought the copyright of the novel "Kowloon Walled City" by author Yu Er. It wanted to adapt it into a movie. It approached Cheng Baorui once and asked if it could be made.After Cheng Baorui heard the words "Kowloon Walled City", he thought it was impossible and "how can we rebuild the Walled City", so he pushed forward the project.
Later, the producer Zhuang Cheng kept insisting on this project. After a few years, he approached Zheng Baorui again and asked him to think about it carefully. This time Zheng Baorui did not refuse immediately. Instead, he went back to sit down with producer Yip Weixin, artist Mak Guoqiang and others, "If we really build a walled city, do you think it is possible?" The answer was: it is very troublesome.
Zheng Baorui asked everyone to look for some information first. In the process of looking for information, we slowly felt that something different appeared, "I feel that you can't live without this place. It is very valuable, so we gritted our teeth and did it. Go ahead.”
The exterior of the Walled City in "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City".
The Kowloon Walled City shown in previous film and television works is a place where pornography, gambling and drugs gather. It is very chaotic and is in a "three no matter" zone. But this was not the style of Kowloon Walled City that Cheng wanted in the 1980s. He discussed with artist Mak Kwok-keung to get rid of the past flavor and try to find an emotion in the architecture and atmosphere of the Walled City. Many people who cannot live outside can find a living in the walled city. There are many unlicensed food processing factories where they can make a living.
In the view of Cheng Baorui (left in the picture), Kowloon Walled City has its own messy style and a unique human touch.
"In such a dirty environment, it doesn't mean that they have no feelings. I think there should be a relationship. This relationship has an impact on the protagonist. I think it can be added, and I slowly started to build it step by step, so we didn't Abandoning the dirty and messy style of the city, I think there should still be a flavor of human life in it. " Zheng Baorui liked this flavor very much, and he began to slowly fall in love with this place.
The action scenes should have a comic feel, but not too much.
The most talked about thing about "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" is its action scenes. The credit behind this is inseparable from the action director Kenji Tanigaki.
Kenji Tanigaki is Japanese. He liked Hong Kong action movies since he was a child. He came to Hong Kong to do martial arts in the 1990s and spoke fluent Cantonese. Later he joined Donnie Yen's martial arts team and became a member of the Zhen Family Class. He is also a Hong Kong action The only Japanese action director in the Stuntmen Guild. He has won the Best Action Design at the Taiwan Golden Horse Award and the Hong Kong Film Awards respectively for his movies "" and " Fury·Serious Case ".
Tanigaki Kenji (left in the picture) and Zheng Baorui (right in the picture) at the shooting scene.
Zheng Baorui and Tanigaki Kenji have known each other for a long time. When filming "Journey to the West: Havoc in Heaven", Tanigaki Kenji came to the mainland to help Donnie Yen design several scenes. In Zheng Baorui's impression, Tanigaki Kenji knew Hong Kong culture very well and thoroughly enjoyed life in Hong Kong. "I said, your Japanese food is really delicious. He said, if there is anything delicious, Hong Kong's tea restaurants are the best." The best in the world."
In Zheng Baorui's view, Tanigaki Kenji's greatest strength is that he can combine the advantages of the two places and add Japanese animation culture to Hong Kong action movies. When he returns to Japan to film, he also He can bring Hong Kong's unique action methods into Japanese movies, such as filming the popular " Rurouni Kenshin " series. Therefore, when Zheng Baorui was preparing for "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City", he immediately hired Kenji Tanigaki to be responsible for the action part. The first scene after the
movie was launched was a fight scene in a barber shop between Chen Luojun (played by Lin Feng), an outsider in the walled city, and Tornado (played by Louis Koo), the leader of the walled city. During the filming, Zheng Baorui tried two action points. One was tornado throwing up a cigarette. After fighting Chen Luojun, he jumped up from the ground and caught the falling cigarette with two fingers. Another move was a tornado punch, and Chen Luojun flew out and hit the iron flower cage. Zheng Baorui said that these two action designs determine the action style of the entire film.
"I told the action director that I wanted the feeling of a comic, but I couldn't get past that level. You won't know until you try it out."Zheng Baorui said that he tried many times for the scene where Chen Luojun flew out. At first, he crashed directly into the iron flower cage. The action was too real. Turning in a circle and hitting him was too exaggerated and unreal. After the final try, Zheng Baorui felt , turning half a circle is right. He wanted the audience to feel pain and strength during the action, but not too exaggerated. "We will use this scale as a reference for the subsequent actions."
Most of the action scenes take place in the Kowloon Walled City. The narrow space of the Walled City creates many difficulties for shooting action scenes, but it also allows Kenji Tanigaki's action design to be fully utilized in the limited space. Emphasized, "We did not deliberately widen the space of the walled city for the action scene, which would be unreasonable. We still did this in a narrow space, and it became a feature, with a bit of flavor in it."
said. For Kenji Tanigaki, the challenge in action design for this drama is that he often cannot predict what the scene will look like. Zheng Baorui said that the setting method of this drama is different from other dramas. There are drawings. There are drawings for the first scene of this play, but they disappear from the second scene. On the set, artist Mai Guoqiang often asked, can there be a staircase and a wall here? Confused, how to build it? Do you have any drawings? Mak Kwok-keung said, it doesn’t matter, you can build it however you like, because there were no drawings when building buildings in the Walled City before.
The fighting scenes in "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" are almost all cramped. The scene was shot in
, which created a lot of difficulties for the filming of the action scenes. In the scene where Chen Luojun entered the Kowloon Walled City for the first time and met Shinichi (played by Liu Junqian), Zheng Baorui told Tanigaki Kenji that he did not know about the scene. What was the scene like, but he wanted the two of them to fight from the second floor to the third floor, so Tanigaki Kenji thought of using force, because the walls of the wall were very close to each other, and people could use the walls on both sides to use force to bounce. Go up. In the action scene at the end of
, the "Four Young Masters of the City" and the villains fought from the ground to the rooftop, which involved different scenes. Zheng Baorui gave Tanigaki Kenji a brief introduction to the action process, and Tanigaki Kenji designed the actions. Then we make arrangements to turn it into the final required scene. “We give the action director a day after setting up the scene and let them arrange it here first. "Zheng Baorui said that the crew used this method to hone the action scenes step by step. In the
film, Louis Koo had a lot of action scenes. He complained bitterly at the premiere. Sometimes the actors fought all night, and in the end it was cut out with only Ten seconds. Zheng Baorui said with a smile that it is like this every day. Shooting action movies is very troublesome and takes a lot of time.
You can't fight just for the sake of fighting. Zheng Baorui knows that you can't fight just for the sake of fighting. , the drama also needs to be adequate. It would be difficult to do without dramatic conflicts. There are many characters in the film. It is quite difficult to make the audience remember the characteristics of each character and their relationship. He and the screenwriter spent a lot of time. Time communication.
The villain Wang Jiu played by Wu Yunlong did not have many scenes in the beginning, but he became an important role in the end. In fact, the film has a lot of details about the character, telling the audience how he rose to the top step by step. Zheng Baorui said that Wang Jiu and The relationship between the big boss and the boss was actually more interesting earlier, but it was later cut out due to space issues, but the audience can still feel how this character was established. OK's scene was the first time the four of them worked together on the set. On the first day of filming, Zheng Baorui felt that the effect was not very good, "Because they were not familiar with each other on the first day, and I knew how to push them. I'll force it out, OK, let's get through today." Two or three months later, Zheng Baorui re-filmed that scene, and the taste was completely different. The scene where the four played mahjong for the first time was also filmed twice.
The scene where the "Four Young Masters of the City" played mahjong was filmed twice.
"They know that I have to force them no matter what, but it's not like I used to force you on the spot. You can't force me to communicate emotionally." Come out and give them time to build a relationship. " Zheng Baorui said.
The 20 minutes of action scenes at the end of the film are very exciting, and Zheng Baorui is always thinking about incorporating some emotional scenes into the fast pace. First, Chen Luojun entered the walled city, then the other three brothers joined, and the four fought separately. Finally, they jointly dealt with Wang Jiu, showing the friendship between brothers who never give up. Zheng Baorui really hopes to make the audience feel their relationship, but if the previous drama is not done well, it will be useless to do anything here. "I also know that the previous drama does not have much space to explain this matter, but in the limited space, it is still Hopefully a relationship can be built.”
Two-thirds of the way through the story, it was completely handed over to the next generation
As a famous action actor, "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" is a work that Sammo Hung has rarely appeared in in recent years. He plays a villainous boss in the film, and his role is not too large. Zheng Baorui knew that when there was not much space to describe this character, he could only rely on the actor's personal power to hold on to the role. When he first started looking for an actor, he wanted to find an actor who would make the audience feel hefty, and he soon thought of Sammo Hung.
Zheng Baorui and Sammo Hung have collaborated many times. When he directed "Journey to the West: The Monkey King Three Fights the White Bone Demon" and " Killing the Wolf·Greed Wolf ", Sammo Hung was the action director. What impressed Zheng Baorui was that whenever Sammo Hung came to the set, he and all the staff would stand up immediately and be respectful. "When filming "Slay the Wolf: Greedy Wolf", Thai action actor Tony Jia knelt down when he saw Sammo Hung for the first time." Zheng Baorui said that the eldest brother has that kind of aura.
Sammo Hung is getting stronger as he goes, and he still has a strong aura and sharp movements in fighting scenes. In the film
, Sammo Hung has two fighting scenes. In recent years, he has suffered from old knee injuries and rarely appears in action scenes again, but he reminded Zheng Baorui that there is no need to accommodate him. When designing actions, just play the character how you want to play. Don't avoid it just because your legs are inconvenient. Lower body movements.
There is a line in the film: From now on, the Walled City will be the world of you young people. In fact, Paul Cheng is also using this line to talk about Hong Kong movies.
Many people often mention the glory days of Hong Kong movies, but in Zheng Baorui's view, those are in the past, and now it is time to hand it over to the next generation. Even though several young actors in the film don't know how to play, they are very interested and work hard to train, and Zheng Baorui will give them space. Because the power of young actors can impress people. After 10 or 20 years in this industry, this power will disappear. "Louis Koo works hard, but no matter how hard he works now, you still think he is a performer." It’s not real power, but young people have that kind of energy. When he throws a punch, the audience can feel his desperate effort, which is really something only young people have.”
He left the final part of the movie to young people, and the senior actors were also very cooperative. "Xiao Qi (Yen Xianqi), Louis Koo (Louis Koo), Big Brother (Sammo Hung), they all know exactly what my positioning is, and I have a few opinions." None, no one told me whether I was the one who ended it and why I died so early. I have never heard such complaints. "Zheng Baorui said that if we don't take this step, young people will never have exposure and will never be able to come out.
Zheng Baorui decided very early on that when two-thirds of the film's story is completed, it will be completely handed over to the next generation and the previous generation will exit. The role of the villain Wang Jiu is particularly important. If he was not powerful, the ending would not have to take so long. When choosing an actor, Zheng Baorui decided to find an action actor who knew better about fighting, but who had a different momentum.
The villain Wang Jiu played by Wu Yunlong is a crazy cult.
However, actors who are good at action may be relatively weak in performance, but Zheng Baorui did not want to give up, and soon Wu Yunlong, a former action actor, appeared in his field of vision. Wu Yunlong has played some relatively serious roles before, and also played Bruce Lee ("The Birth of the Dragon" 2016). But while chatting with him, Zheng Baorui found that he was "quite stupid", so he tried on his appearance and found that he could not recognize his original appearance at all.After that, Zheng Baorui and Wu Yunlong began to slowly develop the character, "You laugh a little, a little more, and a little crazier." Zheng Baorui used laughter to help Wu Yunlong find a way to get into the role. He felt that if this character often laughs like this, he may be a bit neurotic. Tell Wu Yunlong that he must let go and act. When
was filming, Wu Yunlong felt that he was Wang Jiu, and he was completely relaxed. Some of the reactions were not even thought of by Zheng Baorui. For example, in one scene, when someone called him a gangster, he made an impromptu gesture of giving a thumbs up and sticking out his tongue. Ng Yun-long is also very happy to play the role of Wang Jiu. No director has ever been able to tap out another side of his performance. In Zheng Baorui's view, many viewers have a stereotype of actors, but he likes to find a possibility in actors and help them build their confidence step by step.
To close yourself off is the scariest thing in creation.
At this year's Hong Kong Film Awards, Paul Cheng won the first Academy Award for Best Director for his movie "Homicide". Since the release of "Journey to the West" directed by him in 2018, Cheng Baorui has basically taken root in Hong Kong. He not only directed "Wisdom Teeth ", "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" and "Homicide", but also served as a producer and producer. Identity has participated in pure Hong Kong films such as "Mai Luren", " Disconnected " and "Tailed".
In an interview with the Beijing News, Zheng Baorui said that when it comes to creation, he will not limit himself to making only Hong Kong films or mainland themes. He is very afraid that he will only make one kind of thing, even if he stays in the same company for too long or works with the same people. People can't work together for too long. "Sometimes closing yourself off is the scariest thing when it comes to creation." In terms of creation, Zheng Baorui has a very open attitude.
Zheng Baorui said, "Sometimes closing yourself off is the scariest thing in creation."
If the results of "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" are very good, Cheng Baorui will also consider filming the second one, but he will not continue filming forever. "I have already experienced non-stop filming of the "Journey to the West" series (except for the previous filming "Journey to the West: Havoc in Heaven", "Journey to the West: Monkey King Fights Three Bone Demons", "Journey to the West: The Kingdom of Women", and may also direct "Journey to the West: Borrowing the Banana Fan" and "Journey to the West: The True and False Monkey King" in the future). It’s harmful to both me and the movie. It’s too exhausting. If you keep doing this thing, you almost have to slow down and do other things first. So “Wisdom Teeth” and “Homicide” are very important to me. With this important work, I began to get back the taste of making movies, the reasons why I like movies, and why I keep doing it.”
Zheng Baorui revealed to the Beijing News that there may be two movies shot in the mainland in the future, a costume movie and a modern movie, "both related to water", which are completely themes that he has never filmed before. If he only shoots one type of subject, he may retire after 30 movies. If he still wants to keep shooting, he can only keep trying new things. Even if it was a small-budget film with only 10 million yuan to produce, but it could express some of his personal thoughts, he did not give up and still made it.
Regarding the future of Hong Kong movies, Zheng Baorui still maintains a relatively positive attitude, "I think I will shoot if I have the opportunity. Just like spring, summer, autumn and winter, Hong Kong movies are experiencing winter. We hope to go slowly step by step and go forward." If you move forward, it will be spring, but if you don’t move forward, that spring will never come.”
Welcome audiences to watch the film "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" at Dolby Cinema in Paragon to enjoy the ultimate audio-visual experience.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao
editor Huang Jialing
proofreader Liu Yue
