Hi, I startedseeing this movie halfway through it, and was quite surprised to hear dialogue in spanish. Why is it used? It is not spoken in hong kong as english is, so I thought maybe the mafia band had something to do with southamerican or spanish people, and that was explained in the first half. Any clues?
shareIt's an attempt to represent the whole world in one film that has no borders among people, everyone speaks different languages and mingling together. The whole intention of all of this is to create a pure "chaos", confusion, and then the redemption.... also bring up the main issue of the story in this film which is the difficulty to understand the complexity of our time and what's currently happening in the world. As usual in any Tsui Hark film it's a social satire of its time that's bringing the resolutions for the new beginnings of the new millenium. There's alot of hidden messages in the film that's showing the backdrop of our society. And the breaking of the barriers between the languages is one of them.
shareOh, so the explanation is metaphysical? Then why did he only include this non-hong kong language? Because the others (cantonese, english, mandarin) are all hong kong languages.
shareHard to explain, again, maybe you could see it as an attempt to represent the Europe. I think it's quite effective detail. Let me say that all these different languages and countries spliced in one film is i think also just a device to demonstrate a tight line between the past & future or just a responsibility to the influence of the activities of both two main characters's lives (Tyler and Jack)...
1. N.Tse's character dreams of the ("foreign") place where he could escape to and leave behind his responsibity for his future child.
2. Wu Bai's character wants to leave behind his responsibility for his criminal past with the gang that's just getting back for him in Hong Kong like a bloody karma. So again, it's about the ending of responsibilities of many characters's lives in this film and starting a new life. As i said before, it perfectly sums up the end of the last millenium, and just a hope for the new beginnings. These messages are beautifully and subtly laced through this film.
btw, nearly all of T.Hark films have a metaphysical effect. It's up to the viewer to choose if he wants to see it or ignore it and then lose any awareness of the radical philosophical messages of this film.
Hey, I rewatched the film. The explanation is quite "physical", the hitmen band is from latinamerica, working under a man named Salvador or from El Salvador, don't remember quite well now.
share
it's not that confusing, Wu Bai's character Jack was the frontman of a band of mercenaries from a south american country. all of them spoke spanish, even Jack, what's insteresting is Jack and the other guy are actually Chinese, but they were part of the gang.
they are drug dealers from hong kong who do their business overseas in south America. i would assume that they are selling in hong kong because of jack (wu bai) has a wife from there, how else would they have met?
and they screwed up a HUGE deal with a major drug lord and fled the continent immediatley and went back to hong kong to start again.
the leader might have gotten shot in the screw up...
anyway i think that the biggest inscentive for them to speak spanish in hong kong is kind of a secret language thing. no one in china really knows spanish.
I started to watch this movie today but I had to stop after about half hour. It was pretty confusing because Nicholas Tse was looking at a traveling pamphlet of Aracaju, which is a BRAZILIAN city, and the next scene everybody was speaking SPANISH. Now, where did he travel to? People speak Portuguese in Brazil, not Spanish. Was it a horrible mistake or did he go to another South America country?
shareNo one was speaking in Spanish - they were speaking in Portuguese as the Angels came out of the barrios of Brazil. It would also make sense that Portuguese would be used because in the area of Hong Kong and Macau (relatively close by) the three main languages spoken are English and Cantonese (in Hong Kong, as it was a British colony) and Portuguese and Cantonese in Macau (as Macau was a Portuguese colony)
shareI am Portuguese and I can assure you ni portuguese was used. in fact they made the Brazilian language be.... Spanish. major movie fail.
shareThey were a south American crew that just so happened to have some asian members and thus had the HK connections.. How *beep* difficult is that to understand? This thread = epic fail