Fong juk

Exiled is what i call a stylish film, it doesn't strive to be realistic it simply wants to entertain the audience. So if you're expecting a constant barrage of action, you'll probably be a little disappointed, however the high drama and acting make this film very enjoyable.

The film has some well known faces like internal affairs Anthony Wong and Ip mans Simon Yam, both of these actors are great but i'd have to say Anthony Wong put on the most memorable performance in Exiled. Some of the action sequences are incredible, with dozens of extras in nearly every scene.

A précis of this film is, Very Dramatic and a nostalgic eastern action movie, I really enjoyed it and i think you will to.

With this tile Johnny To has succeeded in having an original perspective on the action / crime genre. He seems to be playing around with his gangsters in his movies. Have them act slightly different from what you expect. Perhaps making a little fun of them with their code and ethics. Or he genuinely thinks the world of them.

Anyway the gangsters in this movie are on a mission to kill an ex member who was exiled. After a intense shootout they clean up the place, cook and eat dinner. As they were all friends once they offer "Wo" the exiled one a favour. He wants do a last job in order to provide enough income for his wife and baby. The way things play out is a bit abstract and not much is said. Through the dynamics of the main characters it is obvious though that they share a bond. And that is all you need to know. Of course matters don't go like they planned which makes events rather compelling. All of the main characters are marvelous but in particular Anthony Wong. (Come to think of it, I don't think I ever seen him do poorly.) They show emotion without having much of a expression. As always Simon Yam is wonderful as the bad guy. Something about his look and charm that makes his characters even more evil than they already are. It is like second nature to him. Let's face it if it weren't for these actors this movie wouldn't work. It would have been average, dull even. The pace of the movie on the whole is moderate but when the action begins the pace is real fast. The action scenes are beautiful as they are stylish and intense. The finale is short but a real treat. Heroic bloodshed with a lot of blood.(Only this blood isn't fluid but some sort of red powder. Very nice effect nonetheless. Clearly CGI, but not bothersome.) Overall Exiled is an excellent crime drama with high tense action that I can truly recommend.

Good luck trying to make any kind of sense out of "Exiled," a largely incoherent Chinese mob drama that at least boasts exquisite photography by Cheng Siu-Keung and uber-stylish direction by Johnnie To to hook and enthrall us. In fact, so riveting are the movie's visuals that you won't even mind that you can't tell who's who without a program or figure out how any of the characters are related to one another in the context of the narrative. It all has something to do with a gang of assassins trying to protect one of their own from the very mob boss who has sent them on a mission to take the man out - but I'll be damned if I can explain anything more that happens in the movie.

Suffice it to say that with its meticulously composed, wide screen framing, its stylized action scenes - kind of a cross between Quentin Tarentino and Robert Rodriguez - its visual correlatives, and its dark, velvety colors, the movie makes it hard for us to tear our eyes off the screen for a single second.

Almost a textbook case of style triumphing over substance, "Exiled" is a true cineaste's delight. And hang the story.

I saw this film at the Toronto International Film Festival. Among lovers of Hong Kong cinema, Johnnie To is legendary. He had three films showing in this year's festival (Election (2005) and Election 2 (2006) screened together, as well as this film) and this was my first experience seeing one of his films. I'll be seeking out some others. Exiled is an incredibly well- constructed film. It's like a Swiss watch, with every scene precisely set up and choreographed and nothing wasted. To has created a self-contained world and set his characters loose in it. Set just around the time of Macau's reversion to the Chinese government, it concerns a group of hit men who come together when their boss orders a hit on one of them. Two pairs of men arrive at the target's new home. The first to warn him, the second to kill him. After a kinetic set piece involving three shooters, precisely 18 bullets, and the target's wife and infant son, the group ends up helping still-alive Wo move furniture into his new place, before settling down to eat.

The mixture of action, comedy, and sentiment is probably a staple of Hong Kong gangster films, but I found it fresh. The plot continues when the assassins agree to give Wo some time to carry out one last job to make some cash for his soon to be widowed wife and orphaned child. Things don't go as planned, however, and the film bumps along from set piece to set piece until an inevitable but satisfying end. Each choreographed set piece is set up in such a way as to heighten the anticipation, and you almost don't mind that none of these trained killers seems to be a very good shot. It's enough that they're all ludicrously macho, swilling scotch from the bottle and smoking as they fire bullets at each other.

Seeing this one on the big screen is a must, just for the sound. The musical score, by Canadian Guy Zerafa, veered between James Bond and spaghetti westerns, with a bit of mournful harmonica thrown in. It worked perfectly, as did the fact that the viewer can hear every single shell casing hit the ground throughout the film. Even the gunshots themselves seemed different from those in American films, with less blast and more metallic sounds. It certainly helped create atmosphere. While this and the choreographed gunplay never let you forget you're watching a created thing rather than any semblance of reality, that actually made me more appreciative of the creator. He's certainly created another Johnnie To fan.

Mainstream Asian cinema owes as much to Hollywood as mainstream cinema anywhere in the world. Hollywood perfected cinematic storytelling in the 30's and 40's and its influence is still present in practically everything we watch. The transition from Hong Kong to Hollywood has elevated (or destroyed, depending who you ask) the careers of many directors and actors: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, John Woo and Tsui Hark to name a few. To his credit, one director has avoided the calling of the West and remained in Hong Kong not only to buoy HK cinema, but also to redefine himself as perhaps the most interesting of all mainstream Asian filmmakers.

Johnny To may be the only HK filmmaker who possibly owes as much to Jean-Luc Godard as he does to Hollywood. As such, the similarities between To's films and Tarantino's are impossible to disregard and, like Tarantino, To elevates the tired clichés and conventions of genre pics (the same traits John Woo is (sac)religiously married to) into revisionist works of art. But To's influences don't begin and end with Godard and Exiled hammers this home since it is crammed full of references to Leone's famous Spaghetti Westerns and also to the classic John Ford Westerns that made John Wayne a household name. Make no mistake about it, Exiled is a Western and even though it masquerades as a HK triad shoot em' up, every single detail on the screen is cherry picked from Westerns.Exiled is a good example of how a film can, at first, smack of familiarity before taking off on a fresh, uncharted flight of fiction. Despite a few clunky sequences and some thin writing, Exiled will not only be hailed by To fans as one of his best films, it will also find converts thanks to its Triad trimmings (and those in search of a post-modern Western).

In Exiled, the premise of a typical gangland hit evolves into a blossoming character study of five friends whose pasts unfold in increments alongside the growing chaos of present circumstances. While gun play cracks throughout, To's style is nothing like Woo's, where, instead of making the action the proud centerpiece, To uses it sparingly as an infrequent catalyst to propel our protagonists story arc from one escalating situation to the next. That's not to say the action isn't palpable, but the action is merely a flash of style that's deliberately trumped by the predominant substance throughout. Exiled makes a strong case that if John Woo were to permanently abandon the West for his homeland, he'd have some catching up to do with the current king of Kong.

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