This is a new movie released last year. The title seems to belong to a suave, polite drama, but it's not.
It tells the story of drug dealer Mitch Pearson. Mickey started as a small gangster with a ruthless heart. After years of adventure, he gradually built his own cannabis empire. After becoming rich, his appearance, demeanor, and demeanor have naturally changed a lot. Raymond, his most powerful man, said: "He has become a gentleman now." Not only Mickey, but also Raymond, his rival Matthew, the Chinese drug dealer Sir George, etc., all of them are well-dressed and elegant. Make friends with the nobles and the royal family, just like a gentleman in the upper class of the British society. Time flew by, and when he was middle-aged, Mickey suddenly thought: "I followed a muddy road and climbed to today's height. My beautiful hands are stained with blood. If this industry is legal, it will be regarded as respectable. Under the umbrella of the industry system, such a business would need an agent with a clean past. Sadly, I don’t have one.” So he planned to sell his dozen or so secretive cannabis plantations and retire himself. What the audience did not expect, but Mickey had already thought about it, was that this idea of quitting the arena would also attract a bloody storm. This group of "gentlemen" has revealed the true colors of the past.
The film shows us a very different character, Mickey Pearson. Generally speaking, a rich man, especially a rich man from the underworld like Mickey, is always greedy and never satisfied with the pursuit of money. Once you have dug the first pot of gold, you will think of the second pass, the third pass, and even infinite. But as Mickey himself said: "I'm not a greedy person." When his drug business was booming, he retreated bravely and chose to retreat. From "making enough money" to not making any more, this is very rare in the behavior of today's business tycoons or underworld bosses. This makes those mediocre people very incomprehensible. What kind of mental journey did Mickey go through?
A businessman, an underworld boss, has three purposes for grabbing money: 1. In order to consume, to satisfy a life of luxury; 2. Personal interest, counting money is his hobby, so he needs to earn a few sacks of money, Counting money for his entertainment; 3. As long as he does things, he must become the king of this era in this field. Mickey is just such a king. To ascend to this throne, he relied on being ruthless and ruthless. He was never soft-handed when confronting his opponents. He cleverly used different means to deal with different opponents. For the rebellious dry eye, he killed him with one shot; for George who violated his own territory Sir, he put medicine in his tea as a warning; Dave, the editor who loves feathers, told him to sleep with the sow; and Matthew, who loves money like his life, forced him to pay 270 million. At the same time, rely on his knowledge and wisdom to run his own business. He actually built a cannabis manor underground and used ultraviolet lamps to implement soilless cultivation. At this time, no one can compete with him, and he can easily handle the few powerful opponents who coveted his property. After his throne was established, he saw the trend of the future with his keen eyes, and got out in time when he reached the peak of his life. It must be said that although he is a villain and a drug dealer, he is also a rare wise man and hero.
In the film, Mickey has a motto, which the director deliberately asked him to repeat twice: "If you want to be king of the jungle, it's not enough to pretend. You have to be king without hesitation. Because hesitation brings chaos and personal Perish." This is Mickey's experience in the British jungle. Then according to the law of the jungle, all means must be exhausted to eliminate other competitors. Entrepreneurs as we know them, at best, figure things out in the circle of business rules and legal realms. Mickey is different. After he has experienced many risks in the arena, his ideas have far exceeded business rules. He has seen through and contempt the law from the bottom of his heart. In dealing with Matthew, George, Dave, Dry Eye, all his actions are underpinned by illegal means, the threat of arbitrary life. He said to George, who had drank Ma Boiling Soup, "I can come into your kitchen at will, what else can't I do?" This reminded me of a Jack London novel "The Poisonous Sun" that I read in my early years. . When the protagonist, Poison Sun, used the money from the gold rush to get into business, he was defrauded of all the money by legal means by two banks. The poisonous sun was not in a hurry, and even invited two bankers to a banquet. After three rounds of drinking, the poisonous sun pulled out the pistol, causing the two bankers to transfer the money back immediately. The banker complied. Although the method is bad, it is very effective. Like the poisonous sun, Mickey also clearly sees that although Western society seems to have progressed in civilization, it is actually still a jungle for wild animals to walk. You and others can dress up as gentlemen in everyday life and look like aristocrats. The first thing you say is the stock market, the fashion season, but when it comes to the real thing, you have to become a beast, and you have to face the world in ways that kind people can't imagine. And Mickey is the lion king in this jungle.
There are some descriptions of Chinese people in the film. Such as George, dry eye and so on. In this regard, Fletcher made it very clear that they are "the offspring of the dirty dragon". This may be a very common view of the Chinese in the Western world. I think that might be the case in reality. This is the truth of "southern orange and north citrus". After a lot of hard work, there are very few people who can succeed in official career and technology. If you want to live a serious life, you can only starve to death, so you have to open a casino, open a smoke shop, and smuggle drugs. There are not many Chinese genes left on them. They have become wolves in the jungle. In the film, the dry eye tries to get past Matthew, who whispers to him: "You've only been in this shallow pool for two minutes, I've been swimming with sharks in the ocean for 20 years. I'll tell you. What is the ending, you will drown." As expected, he said.
When watching movies, I have always only cared about the content, and seldom paid attention to the technology and performance of the film. But this film is different. Director Guy Ritchie continued the technique of his "Two Smoking Guns", using various means fully and skillfully, inserting flashbacks, mixing relevant unrelated scenes, and taking the audience to the scene. Jump one pit after another. Steady control of the rhythm, but also steady control of the audience. The style of the lines is also interesting, less like real-life dialogue and more of a fable. When the audience chewed and swallowed slowly, they had a stronger viewing experience.
A friend said that there are some flaws in the film. Regrettably, I am the least willing to explore these flaws. There was an experience in the early years. Play an open-air movie, Hong Kong's "Ma Ling Road". The plot is good, and the actors' performances are okay, but when the performance is halfway through, there is a background music suddenly, listen carefully, it turns out to be "On the Road to Delivering Grain", which reflects the people's commune members paying the public grains, and fighting against Sun Pang in front of him. Horses and cattle are irrelevant. Immediately, it was like eating a fly, which was disgusting. So after watching all the films in the future, I didn't think about it, didn't watch it, and didn't think about those "hard wounds", so as not to affect my feeling. Leave the digging to the professionals.
There is a line in the film. Mickey's wife said, "The law is what guides crime." This is a bit of an interesting statement. Think of a metaphor. In the past, we built the wall, and after repairing it, we had to insert some glass ballasts on the wall to prevent thieves from entering. So someone said: "Putting glass ballast means to tell the thief that the wall can be turned over, but be careful not to let the glass cut your hand." This analogy, like the above sentence, sounds absurd, but it is not without reason.
The actors in the film are all excellent, especially Matthew McConaughey, who plays Mickey, and Hugh Grant, who plays private detective Fletcher. I didn't like Grant's films before, always felt very creamy. This time, I imitated Sean Connery and grew a beard, which is very good-looking.
My rating: 7.8.
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