Vengeance - Killer unter sich

In Macau, a family is attacked by three killers and only the wife survives severely wounded. Her father, the French chef Francis Costello (Johnny Hallyday), travels to Macau to visit his daughter in the hospital and steals the photos of his daughter, her husband and two children from the police department to seek revenge against the killers. Costello stumbles with the independent hit-men Kwai (Anthony Wong Chau- Sang), Chu (Ka Tung Lam) and Fat Lok (Suet Lam) that are under contract with the mobster George Fung (Simon Yam) at his hotel and he hires the trio to hunt down the killers of his daughter's family. They locate the killers in Hong Kong and they travel to kill them. But they have a surprise when they discover who ordered to kill the family.

"Fuk sau" is a silly and funny action movie that follows the style of the "spaguetti" westerns, with killers killing each other. The amnesia of Francis Costello and the situations created by his mental problem are so ridiculous and unbelievable that spoils the entertaining story that becomes a comedy. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Vingança" ("Revenge")

"Vengeance" ("Fuk Sau") turned out to be quite nice. This is another great Johnnie To movie, and he is definitely in his right element with this movie.

The movie is driven by a fairly good storyline, but also by the drama and action sequences, but ultimately it is the powerhouse performances by the actors in the movie that carry the movie most of the way. And here I must especially point out Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (playing Kwai), Ka Tung Lam (playing Chu), Suet Lam (playing Fat Lok) and Simon Yam (playing George Fung). I didn't care one bit for the performance put on by Johnny Hallyday (playing Costello), and I think the movie would have been just that much better had they cast someone else for that role.

The storyline in "Vengeance" is about Costello who hires Kwai, Chu and Fat Lok to get revenge on those who killed his daughter, her husband and their children. It is a race to track down the culprits ranging from Macau to Hong Kong.

Aside from my own personal dislike against the lead actor in the movie, then "Vengeance" is a definite watch movie, especially if you enjoy Hong Kong cinema.

Oh my - When Billy The Kid met Memento met Tokyo Eyes met The Limey on steroids… The only film ever in which I enjoyed watching Johnny Hallyday. Anthony Wong is just bloody amazing, as in everything I saw with him - not much I concede, according to his length impressing filmography on IMDb.

I discovered Johnny To a few years back when The Mission came out, and since then, I am trying to watch anything he did. I skipped this one when it came out, being frightened by the infamous French/Belgian 60's idol presence - I just can't stand him as a public person. I was so wrong. Even though the first Hallyday's dialogue are just plain dreadful (the hospital scene at the beginning), Johnny To managed to take control and silence him. And the miracle works out.

When you forget even about the meaning of the word, what does vengeance means ?

If Daddy's little girl got hurt, you know darn well that Daddy will spare no effort in hunting the perpetrators down, especially when the police is inept, and turning to the other side of the law for revenge seem all the more attractive. Cost isn't a factor too, since everything has a price, especially with a dad willing to sell everything just to see his brand of justice get exacted.

Welcome to Johnnie To's world of hit men and a tale of vengeance, set in the cities of Macau and Hong Kong, with his regular Milkyway cast and crew set to deliver an all too familiar premise, now joined by French actor Johnny Hallyday as Costello, a chef who's naturally more than meets the eye, being able to assemble a stripped handgun blindfolded and in record time compared to seasoned veterans. His daughter and her family got gunned down in cold blood, and working against time and with only an injured ear as a clue, he capitalizes on a chance encounter with the hit men trio of Kwai (Anthony Wong), Chu (Lam Ka Tung) and Fatty Lok (Lam Suet), who for plenty of Euros, a watch, a restaurant and an apartment in Paris, take up this assignment for quite the good deal as it is.

Only of course for Wai Ka-Fai's story to put them in a dilemma of sorts, when they have to consider whether to honour an agreement with someone they know little about, or to do so with their long time contract employer (played to evil delight by Simon Yam), fully aware that crossing the latter will briing about some drastic results, akin to biting the hand that feeds you.

And of course with such consequences come plenty of room for some balletic shootouts, only that the initial big one, with Eddie Cheung, Felix Wong and Ng Ting Yip turned out to be a dark affair under a moon shadowed by cloud cover, with black leather jackets not helping much in knowing who's shooting who in the dark. Otherwise, there were some quirky scenes such as the innovating rolling of rubbish bales to act as sandbags in an open plain, and the finale which will see you rooting for just desserts to be served.

Johnnie To has included plenty of his signature style in this film, from stand offs to no holds barred shootouts with a myriad of semi and automatic handguns and rifles, it's like an education session with a firearms nut. Which of course entertains since the cast, already so familiar with his style, and familiar with what's expected of them, pulled this off oozing plenty of maschismo along the way. I cannot for the life of me think of any other non- resident actors who can waltz into a Johnnie To film and look and feel like his gangsters, though Johnny Hallyday comes close with a dogged mission, and a look that has seen better, glorious days.

There are some shades of To's earlier films such as The Mission and Exiled, which isn't too difficult to draw some parallels from since they start essentially a similar core cast, and with some scenes which I thought were uncannily lifted from Exiled with the enemy assault and flight from the fire escape, and there's almost always a scene in the rain with umbrellas, a throwback to other Milkyway productions like Sparrow and Eye in the Sky. There's a twist in the story involving a character in the film which I will not dwell or make references to (since you're likely to go Oh, that looked like a plot element from some other film), but suffice to say that that little wee bit that came unexpected, provided more gravitas to the title Vengeance, since it now takes on a whole new dimension altogether, with more action promised of course, but examining the notion of the act of Vengeance, on how different it will be altogether when one no longer remembers the purpose it's supposed to serve.

It's strictly for Johnnie To's fans who know what to expect from the master and now poster boy of Hong Kong cinema, and probably a good introduction too for those new to his films. Those sitting on the fence will wonder what the fuss is about with this film being part of the official selection at this year's Cannes Film Festival, but over here, this film is making a fuss, especially for me, and I'll give you a reason.

For once, we can watch a Hong Kong film with Cantonese dialogue left intact. While local film Blood Ties had Cantonese used as well, this film builds upon that goodwill extended by the powers that be. True, Vengeance has a chunk of dialogue in English, with the other chunk predominantly in Cantonese, and I'll take that. If this is an example of the rules being relaxed slowly, then I'm all for it because nothing, absolutely nothing, beats having to hear the cast emoting in their natural voices, rather than to have someone else step in to voice-over their roles. And of course, if we all don't turn into gangsters or start speaking Cantonese en masse, I think the film would've made the point that not everyone will be negatively influenced by such baseless concerns to begin with.

I smell change coming already, and let's hope it really does with Vengeance being that small step taken in the right direction!

As a Johnnie To fan, I have to say, that this is one of his weaker works. But it sill has a standard that some others may never reach (in my opinion that is of course). While there are themes of some of his other movies here too (loyalty etc.) and there are some nice character beats, as a whole there seems something lacking. But not only that, even small details have been done better.

One scene for example, where our main character puts a gun together has been done with much more style and class in the Korean movie "A bittersweet life". Also the ending of that scene feels rushed and somehow wrong. The main actors sometimes have to speak English (although it seems that some of them have been dubbed, they still learned phonetically, so it doesn't appear as dubbed) and you can tell, they are not feeling good doing this.

While our main character has a flaw, there are still quite a few things that shouldn't have happened quite like they do in the movie (pictures for example, and you will know what I mean, if you watch the movie). And while the flaw is a nice touch, it also almost works against the movie.

Again, a good movie in my book, but still quite a bit off ... what I came to expect from Mr. To!