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【中文标题】中国在《老炮儿》中的变化和停滞
【原文标题】In ‘Mr. Six,’ China’s Changing and Staying the Same
【登载媒体】中参馆
【原文作者】Jonathan Landreth
【原文链接】http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/culture/mr-six-chinas-changing-and-staying-same
冯小刚主演《老炮儿》。
作为《老炮儿》中的主角，冯小刚扮演一个与绑架他儿子的“小混混”作对的老流氓——一个嗓音嘶哑、雄风不再的治安联防队员。单枪匹马的救援行动让他陷入与比他自己曾经熟悉的、更加广阔、更加复杂世界的碰撞。
很难相信导演管虎的这部长片（137分钟）在第一天沿海城市的部分影院首映之后，是否还会吸引北美的大批观众。纽约AMC Empire 25影院在上周日（12月27日）的首映座无虚席，几乎都是中国观众。尽管如此，就影片内容而言，如果有哪位眼光独特的电视制作人可以让美国中产阶层一窥这个世界第二大经济体的首都中，一个普通居民在贫富差距悬殊、政府严厉打击腐败的环境中的感受，将是一个不错的选择。
管用优雅、真实的镜头捕捉到了冬天的后海街区——迷宫般的胡同、穿着睡衣的居民、围绕着冰冻湖面的酒吧嬉笑声。冯扮演的六爷滑冰时，腰上别着一个收音机，一个男人用比他更加嘶哑的声音播讲评书。他需要这一切。北京灰蒙蒙的街道上拥挤了太多的汽车，玻璃钢高层建筑物拔地而起。人们更加富有、更加孤独，市中心平房里的老居民彼此明争暗斗。
在胡同里，六爷不疾不徐地踱步，人们对他点头哈腰，他这里出主意，那里调解纠纷。他命令一个小偷把钱包里的身份证给失主寄回去，还让一个被城管殴打的无照摊贩回击城管。在他的朋友看来，也包括那只老北京居民喜爱的八哥，他唾弃社会道德的沦丧。不离嘴的那支烟掩饰了脆弱的内心。
他的儿子晓波（由演员、歌手李毅峰饰演）因为划坏了一辆酒红色的法拉利车漆，被美男暴徒小飞（加拿大裔中国演员、歌手吴亦凡饰演）劫持。他们索要十万元人民币的赎金（大约1.54万美元）——远远超过普通北京居民一年的收入。由于害怕报警会导致小飞的高官父亲的报复，六爷向他的老朋友们筹齐了钱。他的怒火在那张让克林特•伊斯特伍德都相形见绌的扑克牌脸孔下燃烧。（56岁的冯是中国顶级导演之一，曾经执导过2003年的影片《手机》。因为在《老炮儿》中的表演，他被提名为11月份台湾金马奖的最佳男演员。）
影片的前半部分非常好，但是当赎金交易演化成一个由年轻、肆无忌惮、名车车主的黑帮与一批脾气暴躁的老家伙们展开的斗殴之后，整个故事结构变得松散了，似乎主题是强调财富不能带来一切。在第三场戏中，黑帮世界里唯一没有被老套的俏皮话淹没的角色似乎来自友情客串的许晴，她扮演的角色的绰号是“话匣子阿姨”。
编剧董润年和出品方华谊兄弟对于恶棍小飞的创作灵感来自2012年底的一篇新闻报道，一位高官的儿子高速驾驶一辆法拉利汽车，出事故后身亡。让正处于政权交接期的共产党高层震惊，并引发了公众对于权力精英阶层子女的放纵的愤怒。
《老炮儿》中20多岁的恶棍开着法拉利，试图隐藏巨额的海外账户存款。尽管冯扮演的低调黑帮角色赢得了尊重，但这种情节基本处于中国电影检查者的容忍度之内。十年前，这种题材的影片不会被允许公映，也就是涉及当代警察施暴和官员腐败的问题，但这部影片高调地上映了。但是我们依然要看到，冯所扮演的角色最终决定让当局介入此事，因为他相信政府可以解决一切问题。
原文：
Feng Xiaogang as the title character in Mr. Six.
Playing an aging gangster railing against the “little punks” who kidnapped his son in Beijing, Feng Xiaogang gives a solid performance as the title character of Mr. Six: a gravel-throated vigilante shaken when his go-it-alone rescue effort puts him on a collision course with a world that’s much bigger and more complex than the one he’s used to.
It is doubtful that director Guan Hu’s overly long film (137 minutes) will draw much of a crowd in North America beyond its first days in select big-city theaters on the coasts—the screening at the AMC Empire 25 in New York sold out on a recent Sunday afternoon (December 27) to an almost entirely Chinese audience. Still, for the atmosphere alone, it would be a great service if television programmers had the vision to offer Middle America this peek at what it might feel like to be a regular resident of the capital of the world’s No. 2 economy as the wealth gap grows ever wider and the government intensifies an ongoing crackdown on corruption.
Guan beautifully captures Beijing’s Houhai neighborhood in winter—the labyrinth of hutong, or alleys, stocked with pajama-clad old folk, the merriment in bars encircling the frozen lake. Feng’s Mr. Six ice skates to relax, a transistor strapped to his waist playing old radio dramas read by guys even more gruff-sounding than he. And he needs that downtime. The byways of sooty Beijing have come alive with too many cars, glass towers are springing up, people are getting rich and isolated, and the old locals are pitted against one another in the low-lying city center.
In his neighborhood, Mr. Six commands respect as he walks a slow beat, offering wisdom and meting out justice. He orders a pickpocket to return his mark’s identification card by mail, and insists a local cop who has struck an unlicensed peddler allow the peddler to strike him back. To his friends, including his talking myna bird (a staple of Old Beijing), he spits quiet contempt at society’s lack of a moral compass, all between deep drags on his ever-present cigarette, smoked to spite a weak heart.
When his son Bobby (actor and singer Li Yifeng) is caught keying the candy-apple red Ferrari belonging to pretty-boy thug Xiao Fei (Canadian-Chinese actor and singer Kris Wu), the gang’s ransom for Bobby’s freedom is set at 100,000 RMB (roughly U.S.$15,400)—well above the average Beijing annual wage. Afraid to involve the police and trigger greater retaliation from Xiao Fei’s high-ranking-official father, Mr. Six scrapes together the money from old friends, his anger seething just beneath the surface of a poker face that would make Clint Eastwood proud. (Feng, 56, one of China’s leading directors and the man behind the 2003 classic Cell Phone, was named Best Actor for Mr. Six at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards in November.)
The first half of the film is very good, but once the ransom exchange sours and is replaced by an extrajudicial plan for a mob fight between the gang of young, spoiled, souped-up exotic car owners and the crusty oldsters just trying to get by, the story unravels into loosely connected scenes seemingly designed to emphasize, repeatedly, that wealth does not result in bliss. In much of the third act, the only lines not scanning like hard-boiled quips from a gangland caricature came from the underutilized actress Xu Qing, playing the appropriately nicknamed love interest “Auntie Chatterbox.”
Writer Dong Runnian and producers at Huayi Brothers drew inspiration for the villainous Xiao Fei from newspaper headlines from late 2012, when news leaked of the death of the son of a high-ranking official in a high-speed Ferrari crash, scandalizing the leadership transition at the top of the Chinese Communist Party and sparking public outrage at evidence of long-suspected excesses of the children of the power elite.
That 20-something villain in Mr. Six drives a Ferrari and is hiding information about a fat offshore bank account, but nonetheless gains respect for Feng’s humble gangster character, conforms with the tidy vision of conflict resolution that China’s film censors typically abide. While it’s notable that the film was approved for release in China and deals nearly head-on with topics that were verboten on screen a decade ago—e.g. modern day police violence and official corruption—it’s just as notable that Feng’s character chooses, in the end, to involve the authorities in his dispute, trusting that there lies a solution in trusting the government.
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