In 30th April, 2015, there is a Hong Kong movie Helios (赤道) released. Its name is 'Chi Dao'
in Chinese, and the word 'Dao' means thief. The genre of this film is action.
The story talks about 'Helios', the most wanted criminal in South Korea . With
the help of Helios's assistant, 'the messenger', they have successfully stolen a
destructive weapon which is invented and developed by the South Korean
military. Afterwards, there is an underground trading will be held in Hong
Kong, and the police forces of Hong Kong, South Korea, and China were being noticed,
so they set up an emergency response team in Hong Kong. This team aimed to
trace the weapon and get it back. Although each member of their own country
have different objective, they have the same target.
After some strategic hunting and fighting, the 'Messenger'
is arrested, and the weapon has finally went to the Hong Kong Police Force.
While the Chinese Force and the Korean Force were fighting for the right to possess
the weapon, 'Helios' finally appeared. He showed up in Macau, planning to get
back the weapon and trying to take action to retaliate. At last, it turned out
that one of the member of the emergency response team's real identity is
Helios, and his action of revenge is succeed, he turned his back to the
response team and tried to kill all of them. In the end of the movie, the true
identity of Helios is unfolded, only the deaths and the audiences know who is
Helios.
The history of Hong Kong movies industry was indeed
started from 1913, but it took off until World War II. The industry has
gradually transited from some classic black and white Cantonese movies to
mostly Mandarin movies in the late 1960s. However, in the late 1070s, there was
a come-back of Cantonese movies, but it was soon declined in the 1990s, due to
the rise of the Hollywood in United States. Afterwards, Hong Kong movies
Industry keeps trying to find its way to make their own success by not only
bringing out more about the local stories, but also trying to become more international,
a more professional way of speaking. The movie 'Helios' is an good example of
seeing hoe Hong Kong movies industry struggle its way to make it more international.
They invited not only local and Chinese movies stars, Korean movies stars are
also invited. Different languages are being used, and the story background does
not only focus on Hong Kong, but also indicated with some of the Chinese and
Korean background. It was just like how Will Wright (1975) described the
Western movies industry, he said Western has evolved through 3 stages, the
first one is ''Classic', the second one is 'Transition theme', and its final
stage is 'Professional'. Hong Kong is now fighting its position to earn the name
of being a professional movies industry. Like the director of 'Helios', Longman
Leung and Sunny Luk, they have once successfully directed a movie call 'Cold
War', which is a local Hong Kong action movie, then they wanted more, they
dreamt bigger and try to make their professional way through a local movie from
a more international casting. Therefore, this is how I see this movie, it
represented some of the Hong Kong movies which trying to become more
professional, more international, and more likely Hollywood.
References:
1. Hong Kong Film History. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15,
2016, from http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/newsite/INDEX/COUNTRIES/HongKong/HongKongFilmHistory.asp
2. Storey, J. (2003). Film. In Cultural Studies and
the Study of Popular Culture (2nd ed.) (pp. 72-86). Athens,
Ga.: University of Georgia Press.
Student Name: Lam Ho Ki
Student Number: 21620569
Dear Ho Ki, The writing differentiates itself from others in this blog in regards to its approach to examining a local film. Rather than textual analysis, the discussion is more about the business of local film industry. This is nice. The weakness is why you would jump to the conclusion that Hong Kong film industry has entered the era of "professionalism" based on one single film. And how professional the film production is? These are not explained very clearly. Otherwise, the writing would be inspiring.
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