EXILED (Hong Kong, 2006)
Directed by: Johnnie To
Starring: Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Lam Suet, Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Josie Ho
“Pic makes no apologies about aping spaghetti Western conventions...but also has typical Hong Kong agility and humor...and at least one sequence -- a blackly humorous moment when both groups unknowingly converge in an operating room where a doctor's performing surgery -- may become a classic.”
- Derek Elley, Variety

Imagine every action movie made in the last 20 years compressed into a hyper-condensed, super heavy particle that’s shot into your eyes at 24 frames per second and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what watching Johnnie To’s latest film is like. A spiritual successor to his 1999 action movie haiku, The Mission, this flick reunites most of the cast of that film to create a beast of a feast for action fans.

Set on Macau, a little island off the coast of Hong Kong whose economy is powered by enormous casinos, the movie kicks off with a knock on the door and two hitmen who show up saying they’ve come to kill the man of the house. He’s not home and so they wait. Pretty soon there’s a second knock and two more hitmen show up claiming that they’re there to save the man of the house. All the hitmen, and their target, were previously members of the same gang and they loiter uneasily until their victim arrives and before you can say, “Wanna stay for dinner?” the bullets are flying. Old habits die hard, however, and this wild bunch agree on a 24-hour truce so their target can pull off a robbery that’ll set his wife and child up for life. Viewed back-to-back with John Woo’s HARD BOILED, this movie shows you 15 years of Hong Kong action cinema evolution in fast forward. The action scenes are edited with surgical precision and Johnnie To fills the movie with his patented running gags, character business, and panoramic set pieces where the camera pans across the field of battle to show you the big picture.

The cast is an all-star gallery of Hong Kong character actors: there’s Anthony Wong, the wild man of Hong Kong cinema (also in HARD BOILED); Francis Ng, the method maniac; Roy Cheung, the good looking thug; Lam Suet, the square-headed lump from the Election movies; Nick Cheung, the comedian turned cold-blooded actor in Election; and the dapper, psychotic dandy, Simon Yam (Election). Taking place in an alternate, spaghetti western universe which delivers a fresh take on just about every Western convention ever made (the long, flapping coats; the bordello; even a stagecoach robbery) you’ll feel your testosterone start to pump and your heart begin to pound as these dudes fill Macau with enough lead to sink it beneath the sea.