Vingança

It is not very often nowadays that you will get to see Johnnie To's new production frequently in the cinema, compared to his heydays with his working partner, Wai Kar Fai. Both had churned out several box office hit and flops during the early decade of the 21st century, and it is believe that good things are worth the wait. Vengeance is the answer to To's long awaited latest action thriller, after directing two previous productions beyond his normal scope of story line.

With his usual suspects (Anthony Wong, Simon Yam, Lam Kar Tung and Lam Suet), To recruits French rock star Johnny Hallyday to be the leading actor in the Hong Kong – France production. Nominated for Palm D'Ors in Cannes Film Festival 2009, Singapore has the opportunity to get the release of Vengeance in its original Cantonese-English version, since Hong Kong productions are barred from releasing in Cantonese version due to Singapore censorship regulation. This gives Singaporeans a true blue experience of the idea and message To wants to bring to his audience. And yes, it is a must to catch it in cinemas.

Vengeance begins with Costello (Hallyday) seeking revenge for the massacre of his daughter's family. He recruited three professional assassins, namely Kwai (Wong), Chu (Lam Kar Tung) and Lok (Lam Suet). While Kwai, Chu and Lok helps Costello in hunting down the killers responsible for the massacre, the investigation leads them to the mafia boss and employer, George Fung (Yam), who is behind the massacre.

Vengeance marks the last chapter of To's gunman trilogy (The Mission, 2001; Exiled, 2006), where the trilogy shares the same trademark of a mass gunfight, and stories revolving professional killers force to stand on the side they believed in, or made to believe in. While a mass crossfire between both conflicting sides is inevitable in To's trilogy, he never fails to surprise the audience in presenting the gunfight. Just like the mass shootout at the hotel in Exiled, Vengeance shows us with the crossfire at the garbage recycle center, where large cubes of compressed old newspaper becomes the shield for the gunmen.

Also, expect several scenes without any dialog, as To wants the audience to watch the body language, so as to do the interpretation themselves. The movie lives to the genre of an 'action flick', where body language is an action to tell the story.

Hallyday takes the leading role of Castello, which is something fresh that an audience can look forward to. Here, he is a chef with a past, where being a former professional killer, he had a short lived memory as a bullet was left in his brain. This creates a Memento like scenario, where he tracks down the people looking for using Polaroid pictures. He has the support of the three killers, who assist him in tracking down the killers behind the massacre. While there seems to be some kind of mirror reflection from Exiled, we do not see the fun elements that exist in Exiled. A sense of sorrow replaced the fun in Vengeance, where the killers do not kill for brotherhood (which explains why the fun elements steps in at Exiled), but for the sense of obligation, which slowly developed to personal revenge.

While Wong and Lam Suet were portraying similar roles in Exiled, Lam Kar Tung was given more opportunity to explore the role of the killer, compared to his minor role as a gang leader in Exiled. Similarly, Simon Yam was reprising the same role he had in Exiled, which makes no differences in both movies. Michelle Ye and Maggie Shiu, as the two leading actress, ends up being a sidekick in Vengeance, where Ye plays a pregnant woman taking care of Costello, while Shiu as the police inspector handling the massacre. This can be deduced that Vengeance is more of a masculine thriller.

In overall, Vengeance is one of the few thrillers in 2009 that must not be missed. If you love an action thriller, don't miss it. If you think that all Hong Kong thrillers are the same, Vengeance is something new that you can look at.

Vengeance is about a Frenchman who travels to Hong Kong and Macau to avenge the murder of his daughter's family. The Memento-like riff is that he is losing his memory and so needs to take photos of people to remind himself who they are. It takes a long time before the filmmakers find a way to use this idea creatively, and then they use it really badly. What's annoying is that the movie doesn't need the memory loss lead at all, the whole movie still would work well if the guy was compos mentis, you still have a fish-out-of-water lead character, and you still have lots of material about loyalty and brotherhood.

Bloodthirsty vengeance is obviously a really bad idea, and so if you're going to make it the theme of a movie, you need either a strongly pulpy feel to the movie, or you need really stupid characters; maybe make it a samurai movie, as the sort of moral codes that existed centuries ago would make sense of the characters and their motivations here. As it is, this movie just doesn't make sense. Some of the narrative conceits are weak, like how the lead character comes across some assassins for hire randomly in his hotel. The movie also had really bad CGI, you could see the blood spurts each time someone got shot were amateurish.

I ended up being pretty annoyed, it just felt like someone had torn a first draft script from a scriptwriter's hands and just started shooting with it. Johnny Hallyday (rest in peace), is a picture of pain, but because he's been worn down by age and strife, not because he's acting it, there's nothing expressive about what he's doing in this movie. It comes across like he's involved so that the movie still got co-production money. According to Roger Ebert he was a last minute substitution for Alain Delon.

I won't deny that the movie has effective moments, the set piece at the barbecue spot at night is really good, although even that has a really stupid moment (improbable boomeranging Frisbee). I've recently watched Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy, and this effort from Johnnie To is absolutely light years behind those excellent movies in terms of quality. Somehow this was accepted in competition at Cannes in 2009.

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")

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!

"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.