大军阀

 影片改编自真人真事。讲述了1960年代美国黑人社团黑豹党历史上的真实事件，故事聚焦于Hampton之死，他于1969年被杀，死于芝加哥警察局和FBI组织的一次突袭行动。警方开了80枪，而“黑豹党”成员一共只开了一枪，这一枪还是来自于一位成员被警方打死后的肌肉收缩。Hampton与怀孕的未婚妻正在睡觉时，头部被近距离射杀2枪，他当晚被下了药，根本没听见任何警方的动静，死后尸体被拖进小巷中，年仅21岁。经过审讯，他的死被判定为“正当杀人”，后来在1982年，以185万美元的赔偿数额，达到了民事诉讼的庭外和解。

 一个临时演员被召去在一部关于俄国革命的电影中扮演一名将军,然而,他并不是一位普通的临时演员,他就是谢尔盖·亚历山大,尼古拉斯沙皇时期的一位前将军。他在1917年共产主义革命后从俄国军队里逃到了好莱坞。现在,为了使电影的导演,一个也曾参加过俄国革命的人满意,他被迫要去重新 经历那一段曾带给他无穷苦痛的生活。这一次,这个倒霉的将军有机会去“赢得”那曾经一败涂地的战役。电影闪回到亚历山大在俄战中的艰难生活。他感到无论他怎样努力,似乎都无法阻止历史的车轮滚滚向前。但是有一个女孩理解他,因为他的强烈的爱国精神和正派的行为,这个女孩爱上了他……

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

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