一张poster引发的狂想1a

This poster is the one I like most of PTU, with a little bit mysterious and uncanny climate, in the meantime compromising the core elements of the film and providing the audience possible ways to analye the film.
（如有超读嫌疑，敬请原谅，并慷慨指出）
An unknown PTU-dressed male body's black outline takes the dominant proportion of the background, which implies the overwheliming masuclinity and the brotherhood in a specific masculine world-police crew. (The speaker of the masucline world in the film is Mike: a typical cop in HK gangster&cop films, dealing well with the gangster with a identity as a cop. Somehow, he is also a figure of authority as he can suppress the dissension among the crews and force the triad to follow his order---PRC?)The picutres below serve as signifiers of the film: a running crew---people in the film are always running for something; Sergent Lo's markable screaming in the end of the film, an enternalized outburst of inner conflict, even the schizophrenia. (He may not be schizophrenia at first, but through hislooking for the gun, the schizophrenia develops onto the surface. He embodies the situation in HK when it's facing losing an old identity but to post into an unsecure new one. The paranoid and panic before and during the Handover) Below him are the only two female figures appearing in the film. Both of them wear emotionless faces; however, they stand for different powers and with different identity characteristic, and also end up diferently. (There's also a conflict between the feminine force over male, but also the rejection of women into a masculine world and their inevitable failure) The most masterpiece-like and creative scene as I see it is presented at the left corner of the poster: Four punks following Ponytail are stripped to nothing, shaved all over bodies and locked in small iron cotages by Ponytail's father Bold Head. (Actually, I'm unable to articulate the exact symbolization of such a mise-en-scene, but it leaves me feeling a kind of returning to the very primitive insticts: both the vunerablity vs. cruelty of humanity with no evovlution, let alone education. Is it a sign of man's degradation? But what's it relation to the theme?)

This is alreadythe 4th time I watched PTU. The first two times I didn't understand it well, let alone appreciatng its deeper connotations. The other day, when discussing the handover films in HK after handover, it suddenly occured to me maybe the searching for a gun in PTU is a metaphor for searching for identity of HK. In spite of it, PTU is really a complicated film with various story lines developing simutaneously and so many symbols and implications in the film:
1.
a. The handover: gun. The dramatic losing and recovering the gun may imply the relocation of identity facing the handover and searching for a sure identity. The schizophrenia: unable to identify with past and have no future...
b. Identity crisis:cellphone---several scenes in which different cellphones rings simutaneously, people recieving orders from the technical devicethe mistake of taking the wrong phone, keep asking each other "who are you", but offering no answer, in the end of the film, all protagonists begin their report by identifying themselves. (postmodernism and postcolonism in HK culture: Fredric Jameson)
3. The masculine brotherhood vs. feminine "failure" in men's world: In Johnnie To's gangster/cop films, there rarely any female figures. In PTU both seem emotionless. Qi Jie is the only woman in PTU B2 Unit. It seems she has be harmonious with the other male partners. However, when it comes to how to deal with Lo's losing gun incident, it reveals that she is still outside of the masculine world. She is supposed to make different choice to report the truth, which goes against the unspoken rules and brotherhood in the masculine world. It is also a "JiangHu" among the cops although their representation is clear but identity is ambiguous. We should also notice that as the story goes on, Qi begins to comply with the rules. She shows the way when Lo's chased by the CID, which is led by Madam Zhang. As for Madam Zhang, dressed in a boyish way, she is the leader of the CID crew, and rather tough. She acts as the absolute authority and controls the other two crew in a dictatorial way,hiding or ignoring her weakness and insecurity as a woman. When she is investigating the mudur of Ponytail, she unconsciously shifts her aim to Lo, and attempts to surppress Mike and Lo in the same way. However, at last she is the one who loses all her pretension to the male world and reveal her characteristic as a natural woman. Her gender identity and role is still a women rejected by the male world. (Compared with the female figures in Mission and Exile; Judith Butler)
4. The posters: JAY CHOW: Back To the Past (a wish for returning to the coloinal situaltion); The mies-en-scene of the climax gunfire is set with a poster in which a sexy lady in Bikini lying down (female alleogry?)
5. The mise-en-scene in the film: specific light focuses on cars, and several spots on the empty street
6. The usual dipiction of cops in HK / Milkyway Image's gangster/cop films: Longest Nite (people's to the city's Schizophrenia).
TBC...