Vengeance

Hong Kong / France

MilkyWay Productions

Madman / Eastern Eye 2009

R4 DVD

If you like your gangster films to be clean and with minimal bloodshed this film will not be for you. Director Johnny To has given us a dark, violent film in the old style before the U.S. film industry decided to get all socially responsible.

Costello’s daughter is badly injured and her family has been killed in an apparent Triad assassination. Costello, a French chef, was once a gunman in his murky past. He took a bullet in the head and his short term memory loss at times of stress is becoming a major handicap, but he arrives in Macao seeking vengeance. Although he must take photos of everything to keep his mind refreshed it doesn’t affect his old killing skills. He witnesses another gang killing in his hotel and hires those killers to take on his case.

They are initially puzzled by the Frenchman but come to respect him, even to regard him as a sort of friend. This is put to the test when they find that the killers they want are another group controlled by their own boss. Do they cut the Frenchman loose and become dishonoured, or do they betray their boss and help the Frenchman get his revenge on the man who ordered the death of his family? With the killers’ help Costello is now armed and ready, which is just as well. Mr Fong, the Triad boss, orders the death of the killers. Although they go out in a blaze of glory Costello is left to find and kill Fong by himself.

Despite his constantly failing memory and the injuries he has sustained already, he finds Fong and prepares for his bloody vengeance.

Johnny Hallyday plays the part of Costello with far more style and compassion than you would expect from this sort of film. The Director gives him room in the script to play out a few human moments and these give us a welcome pause in the almost non-stop action. I felt a certain sympathy for Costello, a handicapped man in a foreign environment trying to do a hard job. His three Chinese compatriots also play their parts well and develop their own personalities.

The fusion between French and Chinese works really well here. As I mentioned before, if you can stand the violence, this is a great film.

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