Vengeance [DVD]

THE SYNOPSIS:

Johnny Halladay play a Parisian restaurateur who's travelled to Macau to exact revenge on the triad hitmen that massacred his family, but a bullet lodged in his brain is deteriorating his memories so he heavily relies on photographs to remind him of who is friend and foe; Chris Nolan's Momento anyone? In a hotel he meets three assassins with a contract to kill the unfaithful wife of their boss played emphatically by Simon Yam - no surprises there! Two of the assassins are played by some more Johnny To regulars Lam Ka-Tung and Lam Suet with hong kong screen legend Anthony Wong completing the deadly trio. A delighful game of cat and mouse ensues with lots of twists and double crossings taking place a long the way which all the characters seem totally oblivious to and generally surprised when made aware of their predicaments.

THE REVIEW:

Since the king of Asian gangster flicks released his double feature Election 1 & 2 based on the politics of the triad hierachy, Johnny To has, in my opinion, been slighly off key; but, his latest release, Vengeance, is clearly a return to his best form. The viewer is treated to sublime operatic gunplay, that has become synonymous with To's gangster forays, loaded with violence and tongue-in-cheek dialogue. The script has been written by Wai Ka-Fai who collaborated with To previously on Fulltime Killer and Running On Karma. Cheung Siu Keng's moody cinematography adds a Noir-ish sensibility culminating in a combination of arthouse cinema and popcorn pleaser. Vengeance has all the delightful plotholes that made To's other gangster flick Exiled so enjoyable - it always makes me laugh when people complain about the absurd behaviour shown by his characters, simply because they've obviously missed To's blatent stylization of a certain type of genre that he clearly delivers to his audience with a wry smile upon his face: it's not meant to be taken seriously.

THE VERDICT:

Vengeance is a gangster flick/action thriller that will satisfy most To fans and could possibly convert some more viewers into becoming fans of the Hong Kong Ganster tale. Also, it completes the theme based trilogy which started with The Mission and continued in Exiled - pure quality!

Clearly intended as a vehicle for Alain Delon - its former hitman-turned-chef protagonist is even called Costello in honor of Le Samourai - but settling instead for the less iconic Johnny Hallyday, Vengeance is a slick but lesser Johnny To thriller that capitalises on his box-office appeal in France but never makes quite enough of its premise. Hallyday starts the film looking for vengeance on the men who killed his grandchildren and son-in-law and left his daughter Sylvie Testud paralysed in Macau, hiring Anthony Wong, Lam Suet and Ka Tung Lam's hitmen to see the job through because he's losing his memory because of a bullet lodged in his skull. But, as Wong asks, "What does revenge mean when you've forgotten everything?" Unfortunately the film never bothers to really address the issue, opting instead for stylish shootouts over substance, making it easy to understand Delon's decision to drop out because of his dissatisfaction with the script. Being a Johnnie To film there are plenty of quirks along the way, like running into the killers at a barbecue with their children or a pitched gun battle fought behind rolling bales of newsprint while rubbish blows in the wind and Simon Yam's OTT mob boss watches from afar like an ancient general. They're enough to carry it over the weak spots and help overlook Hallyday's problems with English (much of the film's dialogue is in English), but they're never enough to make it stand with the best of To's crowdpleasers. There's also one strikingly odd leap in continuity as the final chase goes from daylight to the middle of the night in the space of barely a couple of shots that makes you wonder if something hit the cutting room floor despite the film being an unusually long for a Hong Kong picture 108 minutes. Good but not great.

The UK DVD includes a brief making of featurette and trailer, with a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer and English subtitles for the foreign dialogue, while the Asian DVD releases have English subtitles throughout (including the English-language scenes), which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering the awkward English accents at the beginning of the film.

Vengeance begins with a wonderful opening as a man comes home from work to greet his wife and two children, then is distracted by a knock at the door.

As he approaches and looks through the front door peephole, he gets shotgunned in the face and chest. The door is then kicked in and his wife gets shot, although she's not dead, according to what we see during the opening credits.

At that point, her father, restaurant owner Francis Costello (Johnny Hallyday, right), sets out to avenge the death of her husband, hiring three hitmen, Lee (Anthony Wong, below-right), Chu (Ka Tung Lam) and "Fatty" (Suet Lam), to find out who invaded his daughter's home and take them out. Costello has a few problems of his own, such as earlier in life taking a bullet to the brain which is still lodged in there and causing him to lose traces of his memory, so when he strikes a deal with the hitmen he wants to take photos of them to remember who they are. It's not easy to find the right men, and he comes across them in a hotel corridor after they've been sent to kill the adultress wife of their boss, George Fung (Simon Yam). And, without giving anything away of what's to come, that's about it.

This is the first Johnnie To film I've ever seen, and while I understand he's made many an action film, this really didn't work for me. The gunshot battles are way too arty for their own good and a bit too muddled in the placing of all the characters on both sides. In one, at 65 minutes in, some baddies are coming after our hitmen down some stairs, but a moment later, they're running along at ground level while our guys are working their way down the stairs. Later on, they're back at a higher level again. Eh?

Inbetween these, there's long periods of nothing much going on and so I did find myself getting rather bored as it progressed. However, shortly after meeting the hitmen and going to an outdoor space to test some weapons, it's funny watching them take potshots at a bicycle and not only start it moving but also keeping it going.

Presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic theatrical ratio, there is nothing to complain about other than a couple of hazy-looking moments that have dogged previous Optimum releases. For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.

Audio-wise, you get a 5.1 DTS soundtrack which is faultless when it comes to getting across the gunshots, but they're few and far between with little else inbetween other than dialogue.

There are just two extras on this disc, a Making Of (10:18), in letterbox 16:9, featuring on-set footage and chat mainly from the director, Anthony Wong (Lee) and screenwriter Ka-Fai Wai. The other is a Trailer (1:36) in anamorphic 2.35:1.

The menu is a static image of Johnny Halliday, alongside the menu items flickering away like Hong Kong street signs, with a short piece of the incidental music. There are subtitles in English, but only when French or Cantonese is spoken, not when English is. Surely the point of subtitles is to have them ALL of the time! Especially since there are some difficult accents to grasp here. but the Chaptering is, again for Optimum, a typical embarrassment with just 12 over the 109-minute running time.
Film: 4/10
Picture: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Extras: 1/10