Vengeance

Johnnie To

The story: After his daughter’s family is wiped out in a gangland-style killing in Macau, French assassin-turned-chef Costello (Johnny Hallyday, right) shows up and vows to seek vengeance. He relies on hitman Kwai (Anthony Wong) and his partners to track down those responsible.

Hong Kong director Johnnie To is a prolific but erratic film-maker. In the last few years, he has been winning awards for his testosterone-fuelled, cops-and-crime adrenaline pumpers such as PTU – Police Tactical Unit (2003) and Election (2005).

He has ventured more recently, with mixed results, into the genres of supernatural romance with the uneven Linger (2008) and light-hearted caper with the buoyant Sparrow (2008).

With Vengeance, he is back on familiar ground. In the first scene, guns come out blazing as a scene of everyday domesticity is shattered by violence.

There are several other slickly staged set pieces, including a beautifully shot showdown in a wooded area at night, with volleys of gunfire and bursts of gunflare piercing the quiet darkness.

Costello is played by French icon Johnny Hallyday, complete with craggy face and tired eyes which have seen too much. Despite the fact that he is reliant on Kwai for help, there is not much of a connection between the two actors, although Wong is reliable as a stoic and honourable hitman.

Simon Yam steals the show with a nicely extravagant turn as the flamboyant crook George Fung.

If only the story, by To’s regular collaborator Wai Ka Fai, had been stronger.

Some of Costello’s early behaviour, including scribbling notes on Polaroid photos of people, seems eccentric until we learn that he is losing his memory due to a bullet lodged in his brain from his hitman days.

The memory loss proves to be conveniently selective. At times, this film almost feels like a rip-off of that superior thriller Memento (2000).

At one point, a hitman asks: “What does revenge mean when you’ve forgotten everything?”

But it is a red herring here, a throwaway question that is never really explored.

At the end, Costello goes after the mastermind, despite memory loss having set in. Still, there is something touching about an old man with the odds stacked against him facing down an army of bodyguards as he tries to take out his target.

The question of whether vengeance was finally wrought is one thing, but as to whether cinematic justice was served – not quite.

(ST)