Movie Review SSJ

“In China they eat dogs!” This is a fact that appalls the Danes, yet this statement is no big deal to the Chinese.

Dogs are just part of the food, and only some people eat them, but those who don’t are nothing to make a fuss about. Although in recent years many people who have had their fill of other meats have also run around the streets blocking people who are good at this from eating dogs. But those who regard it as a delicacy still continue to eat it, and those who find it disgusting still do not eat it. Dogs have never occupied an important place in the hearts of Chinese people, but instead they are a word of abuse or derogatory.

But what amazes viewers, including the Chinese, is that the Danes have made such a film. Good intentions are included in the bloodshed, while the purpose of killing is for love; those who kill go to heaven, while those who are killed fall into hell for petty sins. The angel and the devil are betting that the father of the murderer is the angel’s best friend, and things are just that simple.

This is a black humor film, fast-paced story to make people laugh outside the plot, but with cruelty and viciousness; this is also a subversive film, it confuses the audience for the judgment of good and evil, it emphasizes a principle, the rules are set by people, which is what is born or ordained moral law? You don’t have to be surprised if you eat a dog, it’s just a Chinese diet; you don’t have to think if you can kill someone to go to heaven, it’s up to the angels to decide.

A small matter leaves countless corpses, and you end up losing your life. And all of this, in fact, all started from the good intentions of a bank clerk. If you ask Avid if he regrets, maybe he really can’t answer. He has a heart of gold, but has the most stupid judgment.

He is at odds with his live-in girlfriend, who has moved out of everything and left him with a spare room; he is yelled at by a customer at work for taking out a loan. Avid’s life is really dark. As if that wasn’t enough, he comes to work in the morning and is exchanging pleasantries with his colleagues about the racket when he encounters a bank robbery. I don’t know which of his tendencies moved him, but he picked up the racket and knocked the robber to the ground by hand. He becomes a hero, and troubles arise from that.

His pitiful compassion brings things to an unendurable conclusion. An impostor wife, a robbery is to get money to give birth to a test-tube baby, let Avid heart suddenly feel sorry for the heart, so try to rob their own bank carriers, to the robber’s “wife” to do compensation. So another of the film’s most glamorous characters makes an appearance, and they plan the robbery. On the one hand, they seem to be doing a good deed, who does not have much interest in it, purely to help, on the other hand, but in the process of violence and bloodshed, killing countless people. Life is often so paradoxical.

Harold is Arvid’s brother, and the brothers are far apart from each other from the outside. Harold is a gangster at first glance, currently running a restaurant he won. He hates his father, but he has two hearts for his brother. His approach to solving problems is simple: two words: violence. Clean and crisp, never showing mercy. Often, he shot people down with his hands, but he tolerated his brother’s mother-in-law. Like him in the mob, his moral bottom line is of course that strength is king. However, at the time of his appearance, the film always sounded a strong sense of religion music, so that it has a holy and sublime feeling, and its behavior to form a huge contrast.

In the end he died for his brother, died in sorrow and anger, but also very relieved, after all, he also went to heaven. Of course, not because he killed a lot, but because his father, whom he hated, gave the angels a trust. And who are the people going to hell? Another gang of gangsters, from messy countries, apparently all illegal immigrants, they do not go to hell who go to hell? Secondly, two bank employees who were shot down indiscriminately, they were both colleagues of Avid, just came to the bar for lunch and were killed in a shootout. And their reason for going to hell? The man, because he was a homosexual, actually cried on his knees in front of the robbers during the robbery; the woman, because she had committed adultery with a colleague, was of course also a tenth evil.

Who actually gets to go to heaven? It is as much a pseudo-question as asking whether eating dogs is a crime in China. Eating dogs is just a Chinese custom, at least in China is indifferent to right and wrong, so whether the killers can go to heaven is really not something remarkable, not to mention that their purpose is so pure, robbery is to help people, just forced to kill. Some people can be forgiven for eating dogs because of custom, so why can’t they be forgiven for killing for noble reasons, or for missing the mark in doing a noble thing?

In the film, the director subverts your values with interesting details of a good-looking story. Although the movie has a funny element, and the examples given are too extreme, directly taking the killing as a game, joking about religion, a little bit of heresy. However, the issues reflected in the movie are worth thinking about. Is there a universally applicable value? Is there a unified moral standard? And who sets such common values and moral standards? Is there an inherent logic or inevitability to their implementation?

The film emphasizes one aspect while ignoring the other. Partial standards must conform to the standards of the whole, and small principles must conform to big principles, which is a guideline for the development of human society. We can respect the customs of different cultures and tolerate many habits of individuals, but we must do so with a common understanding of humanity. Some principles can be compatible, while others must be abandoned by the particular party in favor of the common principle. Eating a dog may be morally unacceptable to most of the world, but after all, it is harmless; killing someone is not, no matter what your reasons are.

There has to be a general standard for everything, and the standard itself is the result of compromise. If we doubt all standards and feel that all morality is really just a reflection of the culture of the region or the time, we actually fall into the trap of relativism. In fact, there are quite a few examples of such relativism in modern politics. Always resisting universal values with national or cultural uniqueness is bound to lead to the absurd conclusions in the movie.

Of course, these words are actually far from the subject of the film. This kind of thing is actually difficult to discuss a subtlety. Whether dog eaters can go to heaven is still to be determined, but killers will never go to heaven, no matter how good your heart is, and no matter how many angels you know in heaven. Otherwise, the building of human society will collapse in an instant.