The Chinese New Year martial arts blockbuster 19 years ago, the highlight is Andy Lau's interpretation of the two masters of Gu Long's works

The "Best Partner" founded by Liu Weiqiang, Wang Jing and Wen Jun is a small-scale film company, but when Hong Kong films first began to slide into the trough, it was this company that made a series of Comics-based movies, special effects martial arts movies, and action movies supported the Hong Kong movie industry at that time.

From the end of the nineties to the beginning of the new century, the "Best Partner" has launched a special effects masterpiece every year, and has never been "absent" for four consecutive years: 1998 was "Wind and Cloud Dominates the World", 1999 was "Chinese Hero", 2001 is "Legend of Boxing God", so when it comes to the "Best Partner" blockbuster in 2000, of course, it is "The Battle of the Forbidden City".

The story tells the story of Ling Yunhe (Xu Shaoqiang), the head of the Tianshan School, after stealing the emperor’s ancestral jade seal in the name of "the robber and ghost king", attracting secret agents in the inner world The investigation of Long Longjiu (Zhang Jiahui).

In the process of fighting Long Long Jiu, the despicable Ling Yunhe used an innocent female disciple as a shield to kill him.

At the critical moment, Long Longjiu's friend Ximen Chuuxue (Ekin Zheng) arrived, and the two together defeated Ling Yunhe and saved one of his disciples, Qing (Yang Gongru).

At this time, Yu Xi has been stolen back by Kong Konger and handed over to Baiyun City Lord Ye Gucheng (Andy Lau).

When Ye Gucheng asked Long Longjiu to pass the jade seal to the emperor, he also asked him to tell Ximen Chuuxue-the Lantern Festival, about to fight on the top of the Forbidden City.

The emperor (Tan Yaowen) was very happy after he got the jade seal back. He heard that Ye Gucheng and Ximen Chuuxue were about to duel, so he ordered Long Longjiu to issue eight-sided gold medals to the outside world.

Anyone who wins the gold medal at last will be able to enter the palace to watch the battle.

However, before the duel began, there was already turmoil in the arena.

First, the two brothers Tang Fei (Jinggangshan) and Tang Ao (Yin Xiaotian) of Tangmen, Sichuan, fought Ye Gucheng in the restaurant in order to avenge their brother killing. Ye Gucheng was wounded with hidden weapons.

has always admired Ye Gucheng's Princess Feifeng (Zhao Wei), not only helped him in secret, but also fell in love with each other.

Later, a Tianshan school disciple was killed for no reason. Three mud puppets carved with the appearance of three murderers were found on his body, but one of them had a blurred face and was unrecognizable.

Just as Long Longjiu set out to find out the truth based on clues, Brother Ma (Wu Zhixiong) and Director Liu (Liu Wei) in the mud puppets died unexpectedly.

As a last resort, Long Longjiu could only ask for help from the skilled craftsman, "Natural Craftsman", in order to restore the appearance of the last clay puppet. Unexpectedly, the craftsmanship was eventually lost. Killed by mysterious people.

The killing technique of "not leaving a drop of blood", the mud puppet's appearance is very similar to Ximen Chuuxue... Various factors seem to point to who the "murderer" is.

After investigation, Long Longjiu and the other disciples of the Tianshan Sect discovered an obvious flaw in these murders, that is, the dead were killed by poisons, and This kind of despicable trick was not done by a master like Ximen Chuuxue. In addition, You Ziqing came forward to prove his innocence for Ximen Chuuxue, making everyone more convinced that Ximen Chuuxue was framed.

On the night of the decisive battle on the top of the Forbidden City, the battle between the two sides is about to start. At this time, Tang Yong from the Tang Sect used a hidden weapon to calculate Ye Gucheng, only to discover that the Ye Gucheng in front of them was originally pretended by Tang Fei. The real Ye Gucheng had already broken into the emperor's palace and was preparing to take the throne, and everything finally came to light.

It turned out that Ye Gucheng, who had royal blood flowing on his body, had always been dissatisfied with the saint who had not given him any title.

So, first he deliberately spread to the outside world that he would fight Ximen Chuuxue duel, and then let Tang Fei and Manager Liu feign death, and then he killed Ma Liuge and Qiaoduotiangong who were likely to tell the truth. He put the blame on Ximen Chuuxue, so that everyone's attention was shifted to this duel, so that he could smoothly enter the palace with the help of General Liu to kill the incumbent emperor.

But what Ye Gucheng did not expect was that when he handed over a fake jade to the emperor as a stolen jade seal, the latter had already suspicious of him. Fearing that Ye Gucheng would rebel at any time, the emperor had already placed heavy troops around the palace.

Seeing that the carefully laid out plan failed completely, Ye Gucheng had realized that he was a capital offense this time, so he asked the emperor to grant him a decisive battle with Ximen Chuuxue.

In the final duel, the two had a feeling of hero cherishing each other. Ye Gucheng knew that he would rather die under the sword of master Ximen Chuuxue.

At the end of the film, Ye Gucheng died with a sword. When he was dying, he sat on the dragon chair to fulfill his long-cherished wish to be an emperor. After announcing that he would marry Princess Feifeng as his wife, he closed his eyes.

This "Decisive Battle on the Top of the Forbidden" is jointly produced by China Film Group Corporation, "Best Partner" and "China Star". It is also a series in 2000 Lunar New Year movie. The cooperation of these film companies has also brought about the integration of actor resources, making the film star-studded. Of course, its most special significance is to help movie fans realize the expectations of Andy Lau and Ekin Cheng's "Two Heroes Club".

Strictly speaking, the protagonist of the film is Long Long Jiu played by Zhang Jiahui. This role plays an important role in connecting all the story clues in the play. However, for commercial reasons, the film is either a promotional poster or a leading trailer. The films both put Andy Lau and Ekin Cheng in the "dual protagonist" position, and finally with their strong box office appeal, they sold for more than 20 million Hong Kong dollars after the release, and successfully entered the list of "the five most popular Hong Kong films" of the year. .

We all know that this film is adapted from the Gulong martial arts novel "Before and after the battle of the legend of Lu Xiaofeng", but in order to make it look more like a New Year film, screenwriter Wang Jing and Wen Jun When dealing with the whole story, the suspenseful color of the original was preserved and the comical reprocessing was carried out. This is particularly obvious in Long Longjiu: the prototype of the character is actually Lu Xiaofeng, but he has to bear the film almost All the jokes of, so had to be "changed name and last name." In the play, he can be said to be an ancient detective's existence, and in his dress, he wears very modern sunglasses and holds a "high-tech umbrella". This character design is all to enhance the film’s sense of comedy. At the same time, the identity of Long Longjiu also made people see a little shadow of the Baolong clan in "The Secret Detective of the Great Internal Detective". In fact, Wen Jun and Wang Jing both participated in the creation of this movie.

In terms of special effects, although there are not many special effects shots in "The Battle of the Forbidden City", the effects are not at all comparable to " Wind and Cloud,"Chinese Hero" is inferior. For example, Ye Gucheng fell from the sky to the imperial city, and later the sword battle on the top of the Forbidden City, and the sword qi rushing into the sky, etc. are all full of the typical characteristics of the "best partner" special effects film. The scary thing is that, although the special effects of today's Chinese movies Compared with this period, there is indeed a great progress, but the special effects of many martial arts dramas are no more than this.

Many people think that the story of this film is relatively average, even if it is Divided into the ranks of "bad movies" is also reasonable.

may be due to the poor evaluation of the film for a long time, so that many people regard it as a "fan-oriented" film and can't attract any interest in watching the film. However, the author believes that although the film has various shortcomings, it still retains the composition and taste of martial arts. The narrative structure and technique are also excellent, and it can still play many blockbusters today. I wonder what you think?