A French co-production, Johnnie To’s superb (partly) English debut pays homage to Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic Le Samouraï…

Francois Costello (Johnny Hallyday) comes to Macau to get revenge for the ruthless shooting of his daughter and her family, from which only she has survived.

By chance Costello comes across a hit carried out in his hotel by Kwai (Anthony Wong, Infernal Affairs, Exiled, Beast Cops), Chu (Lam Ka-Tung, Ip Man, Mad Detective, Infernal Affairs) and Fat Lok (Lam Suet, Breaking News, One Nite In Mongkok, The Shinjuku Incident). It turns out there’s more to Costello than meets the eye, he himself was once a hitman.

He employs the trio to find out who killed his family, which soon pits them against there own boss George Fung (Simon Yam, S.P.L., Triangle, Full Contact, on top form as the villainous triad leader).

There’s only one problem: Costello has a bullet in his brain from his former career that affects his memory, and soon he won’t even remember what he wants vengeance for…

Originally inspired from a conversation between ARP Sélection founders Michèle and Laurent Pétin and Johnnie To in Cannes, while distributing many of his there, the Pétin’s quickly fell on the idea of co-production with To, spouting the possibility of getting Alain Delon to star.

From that nucleus came an idea not to simply create a mainstream repeat of his previous works, but rather a fully fledged homage to a film that inspired so many Hong Kong action thrillers – Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic Le Samouraï in which Delon starred as the fated hitman. He even names his lead after Delon’s character Jef Costello and dressing Hallyday in an identical, if black rather than white, overcoat and hat.

(Ironically Le Samouraï was released in 1967, the same year as Seijun Suzuki’s Branded To Kill, which pulled on many similar 60s influences and style.)

Most famously, of course, it was John Woo’s The Killer that made references to that film, but there’s something of Le Samouraï in the approach of every Hong Kong film to the premise of an assassin’s life – even if much of that comes from the influential work of Woo and his peers Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam in the mid 80s. Bizarrely it started something of a love affair between Hong Kong and France and, in particular, films about hitmen.

This interplay is best illustrated in Luc Besson’s Nikita and Leon, the latter pulling heavily on The Killer picture of a ‘kind-hearted killer’ for inspiration. Another example would be Christophe Gans live-action adaption of manga Crying Freeman, which also included a helping hand from HK editor supreme David Wu.

Here To, with regular writing collaborator Wai Ka-Fai, imagines a world where Jef Costello’s character survived, and left the world of the assassin behind him – but not far enough. Of course it’s a shame that Delon turned down the role, but Hallyday makes a fair stand in.

So does that make the film a little too introspective? Perhaps. It’s true it’s laden with references to delight HK film fans, which might account for it’s somewhat mixed critical reaction. Yet personally I don’t think they impact on enjoyment of the film. Instead it stands up to repeated viewing, beautifully shot by cinematographer Cheng Siu-Keung with a great if slightly Goblin-esque score by Lo Tayu, there are several iconic scenes – the showdown in the rubbish dump being just one standout.

It also handles repeated viewing well, as we learn the reason behind Costello sometimes odd behaviour, his fading memory, his reactions become clear. This intriguing premise, a little reminiscent of Momento, echoes Park Chan-Wook’s revisionist look at revenge in his Vengeance trilogy – essentially robbing the idea of all it’s power. Lok asks wouldn’t you choose to forget if you had a chance, Kwai replies that it wouldn’t stop him.

Full of To regulars, the cast once again shines: from Anthony Wong’s performance as a jaded hitman no longer satisfied to follow his bosses whims, to Simon Yam’s delicious villain, for all purposes a less fruity but still highly enjoyable version of his Full Contact character. Lam Suet is on fine comedic form as Lok, Lam Ka-Tung fine as a brooding but fiercely loyal meber of their gang, not to mention solid support from Cheung Siu-fai (Breaking News, Murderer) and Michelle Ye (Accident, Murderer).

As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s part of an interesting stab at an international market for Media Asia, with their similarly To inspired Russian/Swedish co-production Newsmakers. In English and Cantonese in equal parts, with French thrown in, it’s a pretty effective effort at bringing new audiences to Johnnie To’s work – which makes it odd that Optimum didn’t attempt some sort of limited theatrical release as they have for some of To’s other movies.

No matter, it’s here now. Highly recommended…

Vengeance is released on Blu-ray and DVD by Optimum Home Entertainment today.

DVD details

Distributor: Optimum Home Entertainment (UK)

Strong clear master of the film, even on DVD. Minimal extras (considering the two-disc French release) but includes a fascinating if all too brief 'making of documentary'.

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This entry was published by Andy H on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Action / Thrillers, Films, France, Hong Kong, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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