Johnny Hallyday. |
Election (Johnny To, 2005): Every marathon inevitably has a clunker and Election was ours. Election is a fairly typical and rote crime film chronicling the election (!) of a new triad president in Hong Kong. The election is between professional, cool headed Lok, and the more thuggish, angry Big D. When Lok is fairly elected, Big D tries to stop him from obtaining the "dragon baton" which symbolizes his power. Various acts of violence ensue: bludgeoning, shootings, stabbings, and, most disturbingly, rolling people in cardboard boxes down huge hills. Both actors Simon Yam and Tony Leung Ka-fai (sadly a different Tony Leung than the much admired star of the first half of our marathon) are fairly charismatic, and the supporting cast is fairly colorful, but none of the characters leave much of an impression. Election isn't exciting enough to be an action film and not intriguing enough to be a crime film. The ending is a shocker though! If only more of the movie had been like that unforgettable and frankly stomach turning scene.
Vengeance (Johnny To, 2009): Unlike Johnny To's earlier film, Vengeance was one of the highlights of the marathon for me. Again, the story starts out fairly typically: a family is brutally murdered in their home, including two young children. The wife and mother, a French citizen, survives and is visited by her father, a chef, in the hospital. She asks him to get revenge for her, and we get the feeling that Francis Costello (a nod to Alain Delon's character in Le Samourai, as is the trench coat they both sport) is more than just a chef. Johnny Hallyady (an aging and terrifying looking French pop icon) is spectacular as Costello; angry, yet completely in control, he methodically hires a trio of hit men to help him track down the killers. The revelation that Costello has had a bullet in his brain for the last twenty years that affect his memory is a little clunky. He goes from being a little forgetful to essentially a child in a matter of minutes. This may be To's only misstep in the film. The cinematography by Cheng Siu-Keung is crispy and beautiful, and the set pieces including a crazy fight in a garbage dump are nail biters. Whereas in Election, the henchman were indistinguishable, in Vengeance the three hitmen who become Costello's partner each give nuanced, individual performances. We grow to love each of them and their ultimate fates mean something; in so many violent films, people die in terrible ways but it means nothing. In this film every taking of a life is meaningful, as To shows us that all of these hitmen have people waiting at home for them, even the ones that killed Costello's family. The message of most revenge thrillers is that revenge is ultimately pointless and doesn't change anything, but it is elegantly expressed (if a bit heavy handed; if you can't remember you got revenge, does it even matter?) with a deft hand by To. I expected a silly action movie and found something much deeper. The surprise of the marathon for me.
This is the face he makes the whole movie. |
Julie
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