Exiled

Fate knocking at the door: If it was good enough for Beethoven's Fifth, it's good enough for Johnnie To's 43rd.

Fate, in this case, comes in the form of Cat (Roy Cheung), a Triad foot soldier looking for an old friend, Wo (Nick Cheung). His knock is echoed shortly afterwards by Blaze (Anthony Wong), a hitman sporting the appropriate Hong Kong killer look: trenchcoat and shades. He's looking for Wo too. He has been sent to kill him, while Cat is determined that's not going to happen.

After a long, long wait for Wo to show - it's a full ten minutes before the gunfire breaks out - it turns out the hitman's heart isn't in the job either. Having shot the place up without spilling any blood to speak of, he then agrees to sit down for a spot of tea with the others. Because Wo and his wife and infant have only just moved in, that means he has to lend a hand unpacking the furniture.

By now several things are becoming clear:

(1) Johnnie To has enough clout in the Hong Kong film industry to do exactly as he pleases (in fact he has a formidable box office record and runs his own film company, which is credited with reviving the fortunes of the local industry after its 1990s slump).

(2) While he's a terrific action director, he's also a dab hand at inaction.

(3) He's seen a few Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns in his time

(4) He's in much more playful a mood here than we saw in Election and its sequel.

The next morning Blaze still says he's duty bound to carry out the job, but he's willing to muck in with the rest to pull off a last big payday to see that Wo's widow and son will be cared for. Unfortunately this act of altruism brings them face-to-face with Blaze's boss, Fay (Simon Yam), who is none too impressed with this turn of events. More gunplay ensues and more and more.

Five shoot-outs in 100 minutes, two of them absolute scorchers; it's like the good old heroic bloodshed days of John Woo's prime.

Set in Macau in 1998 - just as the former Portugese colony reverted to Chinese rule - Exiled makes good use of its unusual location, and is so attractively shot it could boost the tourist trade. Assuming audiences are willing to put its portrait of ruthless gangsters shooting up restaurants with absolute impunity down to genre convention.

Although the film is not a sequel to what may be To's best, The Mission, most of the cast from his 1999 hit are reunited here, which helps explain why camaraderie and loyalty resonate so strongly this time round. (A very visually-orientated director, To refrains from spelling out the ties in words, but not without some confusion - at least for me.)

It helps that these are some of the best actors in Hong Kong. Anthony Wong should be familiar from the Infernal Affairs trilogy (the role Martin Sheen played in The Departed, though it lost plenty in translation). Simon Yam (Fulltime Killer) makes an excellent villain, and several supporting performances register strongly.

To (pronounced 'Doe') tends to alternate between commercial films for the Hong Kong market (farces and special effects pictures for example) and darker thrillers that he finds more satisfying, and which tend to travel better. It's easy to see how much he enjoyed making Exiled, which often seems prompted by nothing more profound than a desire to watch his favourite actors rag each other and pull some cool stunts against a jangly guitar score.

Amen to that: this movie is a lot of fun. To even contrives to rework the climax to Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. His karma must be good. In its funny, cockeyed way it's even quite touching.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com