TIFF 09: VENGEANCE Review
Opening this year's Hong Kong Summer International Film Festival in August was the Asian premiere of Johnnie To's latest offering, VENGEANCE. A good old fashioned revenge thriller, the film is a collision of ideas and styles and an obvious attempt by the director to reach a wider audience, a fusion of European flavour and Far Eastern spice, that sees those time-honoured themes of brotherhood and loyalty given yet another airing. But is it any good?
VENGEANCE stars veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday as Francis Costello, who travels from Paris to Macau after his daughter's family is brutally massacred by triads. He is a stranger in town, but soon crosses paths with three local hitmen - Kwai (Anthony Wong), Chu (Gordon Lam) and Lok (Lam Suet) - and enlists their services to help him exact his revenge.
It emerges later on - rather unnecessarily - that Costello is himself a retired hitman, which rather takes the dramatic edge off his quest for vengeance. What gives a revenge story gravitas is seeing normal people driven to commit extraordinary acts by their emotions. Giving Costello past experience in the field makes it more plausible, yet far less interesting, that he has chosen to take matters into his own hands. He also has a bullet lodged in his brain, causing him to lose his memory at inopportune moments.
The film provokes tired philosophical musings about revenge, specifically what good can come of it if you have forgotten what you are avenging? The best part of the story is the revelation that the trio's boss, George Fung (Simon Yam), ordered the hit on Costello's family and their grudging acknowledgment that on another day it easily could have been them who murdered Costello's daughter - but hey, they wouldn't have shot the kids!
The film's biggest problem is that it seems to have no clear idea who its audience is or exactly what it is trying to achieve. It has not been made for a local or mainland Chinese audience, but rather To has tried to make a Hong Kong-style movie for a Western audience. Sadly, however, VENGEANCE struggles to justify its own existence. To's work normally has a political edge, intelligence, as well as style to spare. VENGEANCE feels watered down and lacklustre compared to something like ELECTION or THE MISSION. This is passionless, director-for-hire work and nothing more.
The sad truth is that the Western demographic who will go and see VENGEANCE are by and large already fans of Johnnie To because of his Hong Kong crime stories and will most likely be disappointed by the end results for the same reasons I was.
Having an English-speaking protagonist (played by a Frenchman) forces most of the cast into speaking English for large portions of the film. Unsurprisingly, having almost everyone onscreen speak in a language other than their native tongue or having to be dubbed (Lam Suet by Conroy Chan, Gordon Lam by Terence Yin, to name but two), can't help but drag the film down dramatically.
Johnny Hallyday is a complete vacuum of energy, exuding zero charisma and sucking the very soul out of the film. He may be a musical icon in his home country, but a talented actor he is not. Because of this, the audience has no hook on which to hang our emotional investment in the film. We struggle to find anything in this character to relate to or support. We simply can not engage.
There are flashes of the Johnnie To brilliance that we know and love - a shoot-out in a garbage tip recalls windblown music videos of the eighties, another gunfight in the dilapidated digs of a backstreet surgeon is complexly staged, yet exhilarating as it spills into the rain-drenched streets. It's to Johnnie To's credit that, when the film does work, it still looks fantastically cool, even as you concede he's not firing on all cylinders.
Hallyday aside, the rest of the cast display the well-worn camaraderie synonymous with To's films and their humorous antics just about keep the thing afloat. Anthony Wong is as effortlessly cool as ever, Lam Suet is probably the best thing in the film, always hilarious in his signature role as "the fat guy" and it's good to see Gordon Lam cementing his position among To's fraternity too. Simon Yam makes for a great villain, his garish outfits helping to pimp him up as a leery and fearsome triad boss.
Michelle Ye turns up late on, heavily pregnant and fostering a number of mixed-race children. She is only onscreen for a few scenes, but des get in a memorable moment, distracting the sleazy Fung from way across the piazza with scarcely more than a smile.
Those familiar with the director's work should instantly recognise VENGEANCE as un film de Johnnie To despite its flaws and there is probably just enough on screen to encourage open-minded newcomers to at least take a glance at the rest of his back catalogue. But ultimately, the film has done the director no favours and this brand of East meets West fusion filmmaking is not servicing either market appropriately and VENGEANCE as a whole just doesn't wash.
