2009 (Hong Kong / France)
Director: Johnnie To
Viewed: November 17, 2010
Format: Theatrical Print (Hi-Pointe Theater)
For half a decade now, prolific Hong Kong director Johnnie To has been quietly establishing a lustrous reputation among Western cinephiles for his vigorous, dazzling works, which regard hoary crime thriller convention as a sandbox rather than a straightjacket. His latest feature, Vengeance, is a Hong Kong / French co-production filmed partly in English, and it proves to be the director’s most unfussy film in years, a straightforward genre exercise pitched in To’s peculiar key and seemingly formulated to lure fresh converts. The story is familiar: restaurateur and retired gangster Costello (weather-beaten French megastar Johnny Hallyday) searches Macau and Hong Kong for the killers who gunned down his daughter’s family, recruiting a trio of Chinese hitmen as his local allies. Characteristically, it’s the enthusiastic, slightly arch manner in which To presents familiar tropes that delights, as does his eye for memorable visuals: a landfill awash in shredded paper, a toy boomerang sailing silently through a picnic area, a flurry of girl scout stickers marking an execution target’s trench coat. The film has its flaws, chiefly an unfortunate scene of mawkish drivel and a weakly conveyed plot device stolen from Memento. On balance, however, it’s another fine illustration of To’s enviable talent for transforming stale formulas into beguiling cinema.
Well, I’ll be sure to see this at first available moment.