Vengeance: Or Why I Love Johnnie To

Johnnie To's Vengeance hinges on the edge of perfection. Like most films by To, there is a flawless mix of action, comedy, and brotherhood. Vengeance not only exposes To's cinematic prowess, but shows that he can direct characters with rich complexities with minimal dialogue. With every glance or subtle twitch of the eye the audience already knows what the character is thinking. Vengeance relies on this because the protagonist is in a predicament. His daughters family is killed by a hit squad and he is charged to avenge them.

There is a problem though: his memory works in spurts of a few hours and sometimes minutes. Costello, played by Johnny Hallyday must take polaroids of people and write notes about them like Nolan's Memento. For a while Costello even forgets why he is even in China, which calls into question what is vengeance for? Costello doesn't even remember his daughters family being slaughtered. So why should he avenge them?

To's Confucian themes of brotherhood and fatherhood answer this question throughout the movie. Vengeance is not a personal vendetta or selfish action, it is an action which carries the weight of justice. Whether one remembers why they must avenge matters not. The importance relies on the fact that debt must be paid. Johnny To could have taken a nihilistic approach like most Hollywood films and had the thirst to kill be inspired by a relative and emotional based sense of justice. Instead To reminds the audience that our actions carry weight in the world and vengeance in a sense needs to be done to balance the world. A sort of blow your brains out karma.

Watching Vengeance is yet another breath of fresh air in contrast to the state of action films coming out of Hollywood. Instead of over budgeted messy action sequence's, To gives the audience a graceful dance of well thought-out shots and perfect visual storytelling. To trades the frantic, hand held nauseating style of y2k's action films for a reserved style, which holds on shots and lets the audience react instead of constantly guess what they just saw. In Vengeance there is a gun fight in a park which seems like a violent ballet with mixed slow motion, extremely wide shots, blended with a dance of bullets, and mist filled exit wounds. To's visual style continues to evolved and inspire awe in those who watch at his craft.
Overall I must say get out there and buy all of Johnnie To's films, skip the rental, but they are hard to find so please rent them and support pure and true action at its finest.

Exiled

So my soon to be wife sees this trailer on one of her Asian horror flicks and adds it to my netflix. Probably one of the best things she has ever done for me. It opened me to the world's new and improved John Woo; one of the coolest directors ever, Johnny To. I quickly added all To's films to my queue and let the Hong Kong asskicking commence.

Exiles is still my favorite film by To. It's about a guy who returns to a gang infested town with a bad past with all factions. So of course they send some goons to kill him. Well when the killers show up they have a show down that ends in a meal and sleep over. Reason being, they don't kill him yet because they want to help him do some jobs to get money for his soon to be widow and bastard child. The film is filled with this Confucian sense of duty, which makes these men's brotherhood top notch.

The Good: This group of badasses.

They know how to work together to get some killing done and they are pretty funny too.

The best part of To's Exiled is how its shot. It's not like half the franticly handheld crap that comes out of America in our current "action realism" age. No this film has finesse. Beautiful dolly moves and steadycam work that could make a first year film student rethink shooting his action scene handheld. This guy is a solid filmmaker. He's not quite the Asian version of James Cameron yet, but he is on his way.

The Bad: Asian gang stereotypes! Yes that's right there is a dude they call Boss and he's the bad guy. He actually doesn't come off as that bad of a guy, just a guy who wants shit done.

The Beautiful: There is a scene in a blackmarket hospital, which explodes into a Mexican standoff at point blank. To works the scene perfectly and it is one of the most beautiful dances of death I've ever seen. Slowmo dolly shots with 12 guns blaring as a room full of curtains dance to the hail of bullets.

The Badass: This guy here is a complete badass. He gave me that feeling I got when Chow Yun-Fat slides down the banister with two pistols and a tooth pick in his mouth in Hard Boiled. It's that HOLY SHIT AM I REALLY SEEING THIS? feelin. Basically the guy has a sniper rifle, aviators, and a cigarette. I don't want to ruin how incredibly cool this dude is and what he does, but you have to see it.

Basically find this movie, buy it, rent it, download it. It's a must see.