"VENGEANCE" HITS THE FRENCH SCREENS

[if gte mso 9]> Normal/w:View 0/w:Zoom 21/w:HyphenationZone /w:Compatibility MicrosoftInternetExplorer4/w:BrowserLevel /w:WordDocument <![endif][if gte mso 10]> <![endif]

Since I was not at the Cannes Film Festival this year, I just had to wait a few more days to discover Johnnie To’s “ Vengeance” in Paris (It was released in the French theaters yesterday, on May 20 th, 2009).

The lead actor is supposed to be French rock’n’roll  icon Johnny Hallyday, but in fact, there are four main characters, Costello (Hallyday), a former hitman who had his daughter ( Sylvie Testud), son-in-law ( Vincent Sze), and grandchildren, shot by some triads, and the three killers that he hired to avenge them (played by Johnnie To’s regulars Anthony Wong, Lam Suet and Gordon Lam Ka-tung). There’re also some “ Memento” elements in the script, since Costello is loosing his memory and has to take pictures and write down what he has to do.

Dark atmosphere with some touching or funny moments, brillant filmmaking, cool tempo, charismatic actors with limited dialogues, spectacular gunfights... “ Vengeance” is more or less the movie that I expected: a variation on Johnnie To’s previous hitmen movie “ Exiled”(2007), which was already a variation on “ The Mission”(1999), one of Johnnie To’s best. So, in a way, “ Vengeance” can be considered like the third part of Johnnie To’s hitmen trilogy (“ Fulltime Killer” is excluded of course).

Frédéric Ambroisine (May 21 st, 2009)