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Vengeance

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:00:41 +0000

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.

Breaking News

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:00:03 +0000

A great thriller by Johnnie To and wry look at how 21st century news is broadcast all rolled into one – Hong Kong filmmaking at it’s best…

When a police operation to catch a ruthless gang of bank robbers goes wrong, live cameras broadcast footage of a police crying and begging for his life on Hong Kong television.

Deciding to turn the gangs capture into a public relations exercise, police Commissioner Rebecca Fong (Kelly Chen, An Empress and the Warriors, Infernal Affairs, Tokyo Riders), engages the press to watch Hong Kong’s finest successfully and efficiently bring down the gang, now hiding in an apartment block with father Yip (Lam Suet, Exiled, Election, Mad Detective) and his two children hostage.

Things don’t go to plan, though, as the apartment block also contains two assassins, soon holed up in the same flat, and the tenacious detective in charge of the original operation, Inspector Cheung (Nick Cheung, Exiled, The Beast Stalker), who refuses to give up even when ordered.

Soon the gangs’ leader Yuen (Richie Ren, Accident, Sniper) gets the better of Rebecca’s plan and starts turning the tables on the police’s version of events. In this game of wits, can the police win the publics confidence, let alone capture the criminals?

Undoubtedly one of Johnnie To’s finest works, shamefully it was the Russian language remake Newsmakers that brought me to it – a film that stands alongside Infernal Affairs as one of the best Hong Kong movies of the last decade. As fine as remake was, it really doesn’t compare to the original.

Utterly enthralling from the start, it’s in the sort of film that can totally engross you in moments, the kind that can make you forget where you are watching it in chucks on a tiny screen. (Trust me, I’ve tried!)

The infamous opening tracking shot beautifully sets the pace. Mellow music plays while To follows the action spiralling from a peaceful if lively street with cops staking our their intended arrests, to an all out gunfight and even a bazooka explosion.

All the time the camera weaves in an out of buildings, up and down the street, from above and below, in the sort of perfectly choreographed way that would make Brian DePalma jealous. He forces us, the audience, to be constantly one step behind, eternally a spectator.

(It also brilliant sets a core theme of one level of cops inadvertently stepping into larger operations, the beat cops step into Cheung’s operation as he does exactly the same later.)

A wonderfully wry observation of our modern consumption of news media, flippantly played out like a reality TV show, it’s hard not to draw parallels over the authorities inability to control the media with China’s own habit of wanting to control the Internet (an observation that can’t have been lost on its original Hong Kong audience).

With superb performances by the cast, including Johnnie To favourites Nicky, Suet and Richie, Breaking News is a superb thriller, even if you don’t like thrillers!

A genuine Hong Kong classic!

Murderer

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:00:36 +0000

Two/thirds effective, efficient thriller starring Aaron Kwok, one/third bizarre (and near ridiculous) revelation – you will never guess this twist!…

Pretty boy Aaron Kwok stars as Chief Inspector Ling Guang, found unconscious at the site of the work of a serial killer he was investigating whose trademark is to drill hundreds of holes into his victims. Ling wakes not remembering anything about the investigation, and the fact that the latest victim is his superior Tai whom he called to the location starts to through suspicion on him.

Ling can’t help but try and piece together the missing pieces of those weeks, despite his bosses and colleague Ghost’s (Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Exiled, Mad Detective, in a superbly understated performance) recommendations that he should spend time with his wife and adopted child. Every time he thinks he gets a lead, it points more closely back to him. Is he going mad? Is he really responsible, or os someone trying to frame him?

It’s hard not to look at the artwork for Murderer and confuse a very harried, manic looking Aaron Kwok for Choi Min-sik in Oldboy. As it happens the film isn’t a pale imitation of a Korean thriller – it’s well paced, nicely atmospherically filmed, and for the main part well-acted with little of the overbearing melodrama of late. It marks the debut of writer/director Row Chow, whose previous credits include crew roles like being assistant director on Lust, Caution.

And a pretty impressive debut it is too, but that comparison to Korean movies comes to the fore in the seeming need from Chow and his co-writer Christine To Chi-Long (Jiang Hu, Fearless) to find a startling revelation for the audience. (Also making it reminiscent of that king of last minute surprises, M. Night Shyamalan.) Now no one’s going to accuse Chow of being unoriginal, but whether you find that revelation at all believable or even just faintly hilarious is another matter.

(And no, I’m not even going to intimate what that is. There are certain things I’d love to discuss in this review but that would just ruin it for you…)

So is it worth waiting for? Well, I’d say yes. It’s a pretty entertaining trip into the ensuing psychosis and paranoia of lead Kwok – by now a dab hand at playing stressed out, obsessed and slightly unhinged police detectives, mainly thanks to roles in Divergence and C+ Detective (aka The Detective), and seems to relish the opportunity. (Though whether it’s deliberate or not, his character becomes a lot less sympathetic towards the end. And I think it is.)

There’s action choreography by Chin Kar-lok (Shinjuku Incident, My Lucky Stars, Lust, Caution), who also appears as Ling’s suspicious police colleague Andy Chan.

It’s the conclusion, following that earthshaking denouncement, where the piece starts to fall apart, and all too quickly. Even references to Seven (you’ll quickly guess what I’m referring to) can’t save it then! Like those aforementioned Korean movies, Chow is by no means averse to graphic images, from the bone crunching beginning through drills to a plainly yucky use for nails.

Murderer is an impressive and beautifully filmed start for director Row Chow. Let’s just hope he doesn’t follow M. Night Shyamalan and get hung up on last minute revelations…

Written By

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:00:05 +0000

Mad Detective writer/director Wai Ka-fai and lead Lau Ching-wan reunite for a sad, soppy, sloppy mess of a film…

After the brilliant Mad Detective, I’ll admit I was looking forward to the latest pairing between that films writer and co-director Wai Ka-fai and its leading star Lau Ching-wan (who first collaborated back in 1997 on Too Many Ways to Be No. 1) – how wrong can you get?

Several years after the loss of her father in a car accident where she, her mother and brother survived, Melody (Mia Yam, Flying Butterfly) decides to write a novel about him to help her family get over their grieving. Blinded by the accident, in her story the roles are reversed, with their blind father (Lau Ching-wan) the only surviving member of the accident. The character in her novel seems to take on his own life, as he too tries to resurrect his family in a story, but tragedy is not far away for Melody.

And so the loop goes round, deliberately building on the confusing layer upon layer of different narratives in order to propel the suspension. At the core there are some interesting thoughts about alternative realities, and characters and scenarios breaking free of their authors intentions, echoing the Pang Bothers Re-cycle or even Stanger Than Fiction (though I guess we all have Charlie Kaufman to thank for that!). Yet unlike Re-cycle Ka-fai dabbles in these themes rather than commits to them, and as the story becomes more fantastical it lacks the both the Pang’s tension and inventive vision, which was more like Alice In Wonderland for grown-ups.

Indeed, between the overbearingly sentimental tone of the piece from the opening scene, right up to increasingly juvenile ideas of lead young adult Melody – with her brother deciding to appear to his father as a (fluffy and stupid looking) dog, a mysterious ‘Ghost Whisper’ (not Jennifer Love Hewitt!) and casting a young version of herself as the operator of a ghost tram, driving ghosts to the after life – this shambolic piece starts to come off more like a kids movie, something like a Studio Ghibli film with all the life and imagination sucked out of it.

Such naivety jars against the darker themes of coming to terms with bereavement and a young adult so in the pits of despair that she contemplates suicide. In Hong Kong itself the film received an IIB rating, the equivalent of a 15 (sort of). It’s reminiscent of Tsui Hark’s equally disappointing Missing, reiterating that films need for a bizarre and ultimately unengaging take on loss. There’s little here to make you connect or sympathise or care about the characters.

There’s no doubting the enthusiasm with which Lau threw himself into the role, even learning braille, but Written By is a convoluted mess. Neither childlike nor adult in tone it’s over simplistic treatment is evocative of the current trend in Hong Kong filmmaking to treat audiences like idiots. Very disappointing…

Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2009 starts today

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:00:30 +0000

The Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2009 runs at London’s Prince Charles Cinema off Leciester Square from today until Sunday 24th May. Presented by Terracota Distribution, the festival some of the best of contemporary Far East cinema, including titles from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea.

Opening the festival is Eye For An Eye, the eagerly awaited crime-thriller from directors Ahn Kwon-tae (My Brother) and Kwak Kyung-taek (Typhoon). Starring Han Suk-kyu (A Bloody Aria; The President’s Last Bang) and Cha Seung-won (Small Town Rivals; Ghost House), this Heat-style thriller concerns a soon-to-retire police detective who is drawn into an elaborate plot of robbery and revenge when he begins to investigate a heist during which one of the perpetrators impersonated him in order to pull off the crime.

Among the festival’s many highlights are: The Detective, the latest mystery-thriller from co-writer and director Oxide Pang Chun (Bangkok Dangerous; The Messengers; The Eye trilogy; The Tesseract); director Johnnie To’s (Mad Detective; Triangle; PTU) Sparrow, starring Simon Yam and Kelly Lin; the Malaysian horror-comedy, Zombies From Banana Village; and the martial arts action-thriller Legendary Assassin, which marks the co-directorial debuts of star Jacky Wu (Fatal Contact; The Legend of Zu; Drunken Monkey) and Jackie Chan’s longtime stunt coordinator Chung Chi Li. The festival’s programme will also include the films Muay Thai Chaya, Kim Ki-duk’s Dream, Keeping Watch, Ghost In The Shell (2.0), Me… Myself, After School and God Man Dog, the winner of the “Tagesspiegel” Readers’ Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Tickets are available for separate screenings, or you can get a festival pass for the whole weekend. Full details of the Terracota Far East Festival can be found at the official website »

Festival: Terracotta Far East Festival

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:30:33 +0000

Full details of the TERRACOTTA FAR EAST FESTIVAL can be found at the festival’s official website »

Terracotta Far East Festival

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:00:23 +0000

The UK’s premier annual Asian film festival, the Terracotta Far East Festival, will be held over four days this year at London’s Prince Charles Cinema from Thursday 21st May to Sunday 24th May. Presented by Terracotta Entertainment Group, the festival will feature 13 handpicked films representing the very best of contemporary Far East cinema, including titles from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea.

Opening the festival is Eye For An Eye, the eagerly awaited crime-thriller from directors Ahn Kwon-tae (My Brother) and Kwak Kyung-taek (Typhoon). Starring Han Suk-kyu (A Bloody Aria; The President’s Last Bang) and Cha Seung-won (Small Town Rivals; Ghost House), this Heat-style thriller concerns a soon-to-retire police detective who is drawn into an elaborate plot of robbery and revenge when he begins to investigate a heist during which one of the perpetrators impersonated him in order to pull off the crime.

Full details of the TERRACOTTA FAR EAST FESTIVAL can be found at the festival’s official website »

Mad Detective released on DVD and Blu-ray

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:00:39 +0000

Johnnie To and Wong Ka-fai’s terrific Hong Kong thriller Mad Detective is released today on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK by Eureka Entertainment.

Both releases will include:

Q&A with Johnnie To at the Cinémathèque Française – Johnnie To retrospective

Exclusive cast interviews shot during the Far East Film Festival featuring Lau Ching Wan, and Lam Suet

Interview with Johnnie To for the French theatrical release of Mad Detective

Original UK theatrical trailer

16-page booklet containing specially commissioned essay by David Bordwell (Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies,University of Wisconsin-Madison)

You can read our review of the film here »

Full Alert

Andrew Heskins — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:00:09 +0000

Lau Ching Wan (Mad Detective, The Longest Nite) and Francis Ng (The Bride With White Hair, 2000 AD) star in this superbly paced thriller from writer/director Ringo Lam (Full Contact, City On Fire)…

There’s always one, lurking there at the bottom of the pile. A great movie that’s been waiting patiently for you to get round to watching it. Often, one way or another, we never do. And that’s one of the reasons we’re starting this new series of Lost Classics, to rectify our mistakes.

Ringo Lam’s Full Alert is just that sort of movie. Watching it, it’s easy to see why – like so many of Lam’s films – it gets overlooked. The action keeps the emphasis on the real, rather than near superhuman, but with superbly understated performances by Ching Wan and Ng, this police driven thriller is comfortably a cut above most Hong Kong and American films.

When an architects body is found in a water tank, the police soon track down his killer, Mak Kwan (Francis Ng). Inspector Pao (Lau Ching Wan) soon establishes that this is part of a bigger heist that has yet to take place. A cat and mouse game between the two, with Pao trying to track down Mak’s partners on the outside, his brother and a Taiwanese gang, before they break him out and execute their robbery.

From their first face-off in the interrogation room, Ching Wan and Ng’s characters are perfectly pitched as equals. Lam’s script intelligently fills out their background, the ghosts of the past that haunt them, the wives and children they care about in the present. It’s a recurring element of Lam’s work, from City Of Fire – which became the more simplistic Reservoir Dogs – where he showed us how much Chow Yun-fat’s character could lose as an undercover cop, to the comic book roller coaster ride Full Contact, there’s always been a far more grounded, realistic edge the roles he creates.

Ching Wan and Ng reflect that in their portrayals, avoiding histrionics or overacting they stick closer to the reality of their situation. For Lam there is no black and white, absolute good and evil. Indeed, his City Of Fire pretty much defined the grey area of police work and the morals at play for all thrillers to follow since, from Tarantino to John Woo and Andrew Lau.

Yet if Lam avoids judgment of his characters, he values their lives above any other director. For him no life is lost comically or without consequence, and therefore without leaving a deep resonance on the piece. As such guns and their use always seem far more serious than in many of his peers films. Such use brings him more in line with Western themes, and, if anything, British and European films, rather than those of Hollywood.

Full Alert is well paced, moving quite naturally from scene to scenes rather than jumping. The tension builds nicely as the atmospheric film leads towards the inevitable confrontation between Ching Wan and Ng. The obvious reference material is Michael Mann’s Heat, with their roles echoing those of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino – yet if anything Lam makes something more interesting out of it. (A street shootout early on is particularly reminiscent of a similar scene in Heat.)

In many respects with extended scenes set in an interrogation room, and pitting of cop against suspect in a cat and mouse game, it’s easy to see the film as a precursor to Lam’s later, equally atmospheric near-horror The Victim. That time roles were reversed with Lau Ching Wan cast as suspect, Tony Leung Ka-Fai as police detective.

It seems somewhat appropriate to kick off our new series of ‘Lost classics’ with a Ringo Lam film. Despite a highly regarded catalogue of movies, the acclaim of other Hong Kong directors – such as peers Tsui Hark and John Woo – has eluded him. Yet his films have always held a greater complexity than either of those directors work, in a sense a far more European sensitivity that is so easily underrated. Indeed, you can’t help feel that Full Contact both made him on the international scene, and ruined him with regard to what both producers and audiences expected of him.

His attempts to crossover to Hollywood may never have gotten past the inevitable Jean-Claude Van Damme stage, yet you can’t help but feel his work in equally underrated in Hong Kong. Films like City On Fire and Wild Search helped define a much more grownup approach to storytelling in Hong Kong action films that laid the groundwork for films like Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and Johnnie To and Wong Kar-fai’s Mad Detective.

With his recent collaboration in the film Triangle easily the most successful segment, the time has come to reappraise Lam’s work, and right here’s a good place to start.

DVD/Blu Ray: Mad Detective

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:18:52 +0000

Johnnie To and Wong Ka-Fai’s latest collaboration Mad Detective is released on DVD and Blu Ray by Eureka on 3 November.

Read our review of Mad Detective here »

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Vengeance

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