VENGEANCE
Directed by Johnnie To
Produced by Michele and Laurent Petin, Peter Lam, To, Mr. Fai & John Chong
Written by Wai Ka Fai
Released by IFC Films
English, Cantonese & French with English subtitles
Hong Kong/France. 108 min. Not Rated
With Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Testud, Anthony Wong, Lam Ka Tung, Lam Suet & Simon Yam
 

In Vengeance, the setup seems pretty straight-forward, like something directly out of The Punisher comic book: a restaurant owner’s daughter and her family are at home, and the maid answers a ring at the door. Boom. Lots of gunfire. Gangster types enter the house and the mother and her sons try to hide, but (despite the woman’s efforts) her husband and children are all killed in the kind of gunfire usually reserved for John Woo pictures. When Costello (Johnny Hallyday with his Charles Bronson-like face of steel reserve) comes to Macao to find out what happened to his daughter’s family, he sees that the matter’s too big for him to take on alone, and he seeks out help from three hit men, who don’t come cheap. But the hell with it, they can have his restaurant and most of his money.

Why so giving to three men who are cold-blooded killers? First of all, as we learn, Costello was once in that line of work, as it were, and gave it up for the restaurant business. Secondly, he has a Memento-esque problem with his memory from a bullet fragment in his brain from years back, so he has to write things down or else have people remember for him. In one of the more memorably curious and sad scenes, he takes the Polaroids the cops took of the crime scene and writes on each of the many photos “Vengeance.” There even comes a point where he may possibly not remember why he’s on this quest for retribution. Luckily, his three hit men friends—with an agenda of their own—will carry on if need be.

This is in many ways a pure genre/homage movie. In the vicious and rapid-fire gun fights, it takes on the feel of an old-school Hong Kong crime movie, with plenty of guns and ammo to spare. But at the same time, it’s also very much a tip of the hat to French crime films of the 1960s. (Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Melville’s regular star, turned down the lead role of Costello, a name formerly given to his brooding killer in Le Samouraï.) But thankfully, director Johnny To has the smarts not to make his film so blatantly derivative, like a Troy Duffy film.

And it’s not just an homage, at least that I can figure out. To has his own method in creating gun battles. A showdown midway through the film with the killers of Costello’s family has the tension of a Western shoot-out, but is also a cross between something art house-like and a mainstream action movie. The gun battle that ensues goes into the woods and becomes beautifully confusing. Everything is choreographed so well that we know that something is going on, even if we can’t quite make out what it is. (The moon itself becomes a lighting source).

Hallyday is an odd but not unlikable choice. He’s had a career that’s ranged from Jean-Luc Godard in the mid-’80s to The Pink Panther 2 (yeah, that one, with Steve Martin). His face is hard and cut, probably via plastic surgery a la Mickey Rourke, and yet he can be very expressive. I wonder if Delon would have brought more to the role, or been too predictably a reference to his Melville characters. But Hallyday’s able to bring soul where it’s unexpected, such as when Costello, on a beach at night, sees the ghosts, or something, of his slained family.

Bloody and hard-edged, Vengeance has some unexpected moments of pathos in between the shoot-outs and the bullets flying all over the place. It helps that the main character can’t do it all on his own and that his ailment differentiates the film in a crowded sub-genre. The director doesn’t break any amazing ground, but thanks to his ingenious spirit, it becomes captivating. Jack Gattanella
December 10, 2010