Film Review – The Mobfathers by Kwan Long

The Mobfathers is a local Hong Kong film published in 2016. It is typically categorized as a crime film when the police party and the gangster party oppose to each other in the film. The police party is depicted as the “bright” side the ways in which they execute and operate rightfully under the law. Their objective is to arrest the “bad” guys in the movie like the gangsters or someone who violated the law in order to serve with justice and equality. By contrast, the gangster is depicted as the “dark” side which their operations are practically illegal. They do not obey the law but they rather do things in their own way. Since the film is classified as category III, some scenes are penetrated with violent acts and vulgar language. The gangsters internal fight scenes, for instance, are portrayed with blood, broken limbs, extreme wounds and so forth. When the members are wielding their knives in those scenes, the scenes are full of cruelty and violence. In terms of language, the gangsters are delivered in a vulgar tone and manner. There are swearing in almost every conversation the gangsters have participated in which swearing does fit to shape the characteristics of gangster.

There are dialogs in the film which have made reference to real life political issues and they are particularly memorable to Hong Kong people. Here are some of the examples. “You’re lying” (你呃人), is a reference to Mr. Henry Tong Ying-yen once used this phrase to accuse his competitor Mr. Leung Chun-ying in the 2012 Chief Executive Election. “I could not help gasping” (我倒抽一口涼氣), can be referred to Ms. Regina Leung Tong Ching Yee once used it during a public interview regarding to her daughter’s issue. These dialogs in the film are straightforward to the audience which they can easily understand and recall their memories. Such references used in the film aimed to provide a sense of humor and to be ironical to the society. The reason why these dialogs can easily bring out sympathetic response is that these dialogs are collective memories for Hong Kong people. As examined by Halbwachs (1992), memories bond together not because they have contagious effect, but rather because they are part of the common thoughts in a certain group. People in the same group tended to have strong relation with particular issues. Since those phrases are particularly memorable to Hong Kong people, it is a practical way for the film to make direct reference to them so as to catch the audience’s attention. Another crucial theme in the film is that it produces political metaphor which is satirical to the current democratic system. By Hall’s discourse in 1973, we can analyzed that the film encodes ironical elements such as “two candidates” (兩個候選人), “One person, one vote” (一人一票), then packaged with gangsters’ boss election and constructed a crime film which is acceptable for Hong Kong people. For decoding process, audience responses will vary depends on their political preference which Hall divided them into three positions (1973). People who hope to live under the universal suffrage system, for instance, are under the dominant position which can fully decode the whole meaning from the film. People who are under the oppositional position, in contrary, they will alter the meanings to fit in their social situation or political preference even though they understand the real meaning of the film.

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Reference:

Halbwachs, M. (1992). (Ed. & translated by Coser. L.A.) Chapter 1-4. On Collective Memory. (pp.41-53). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Hall, S. (2000.) Encoding/Decoding. In P. Marris & S. Thornham (eds.). Media Studies: A Reader. (pp.51-61). Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press.

Kwan Long

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