Infernal Affairs 2

A movie hits theaters and is a huge success so naturally someone out there who stands to make a lot of money starts to think. If that movie was a success, wouldn't the same movie slightly tweaked be just as successful if not more?  Oh, yeah, we're talking unnecessary sequels!  I thought one of the most bizarre ideas for a sequel came following Martin Scorsese's The Departed.  Besides the fact that all but one main character ends up dead, what's the point? The movie stands on its own as a great flick so why water that down with a sequel or two or 10?  Thankfully, the powers that be decided to hold off on a Departed sequel...for now that is.

Now last year I reviewed 2002's Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong original of The Departed.  I liked it as much, if not more, as the American version.  So just like I was surprised at a possible sequel of the U.S. version, I was taken aback to hear that in 2003 Infernal Affairs 2 was released.  All I could think was one simple question....WHY GOD WHY? A sequel just isn't needed. After some quick searching, I happily discovered that Part 2 was actually a prequel.  Still unnecessary, but a little less painful in my opinion. So skeptical though I was, I checked it out mostly because the original was that good.

The obvious problem though with a sequel, and it is certainly in effect here, is that if you've seen the first movie -- in this case Infernal Affairs -- you know where the story should and most likely will end up.  You know going in which characters will survive, which twists and turns will come before they actually happen.  It's not all bad though.  Seeing one character work in a different situation than the one you know is an obvious bonus.  How do they change sides? How do the manage to pull the twist off?  At its worst, that's the movie's main problem.  More or less, you know how it is going to end before it starts.  Yes, there are instances that flesh out some character background, a throwaway line in the original that ends up being a key piece of the puzzle.  But as cool as some of those things were to hear and see them fit together, my fear was realized. This is an unnecessary movie no matter how enjoyable it may be.

Here's the gist of the story. What took place in the original in the span of about 10 or 15 minutes is expanded into a feature-length film. Washed out of the police academy, Yan (Shawn Yue) is approached by a police inspector, Wong (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang), to work deep undercover with the triad gangs, specifically up and coming mobster Hau (Francis Ng), with whom Yan is half-brothers. On the police force, the triads similarly have a deep mole they're using, a rising officer named Lau (Edison Chen). From deep inside their positions, they do their best to take the other (Yan the mob, Lau the police) down.  Their predicament gets worse when Hau looks to be preparing for a mass takeover, eliminating all his opposition as the passing of power in 1997 takes place.

Setting up the premise of the two deep undercover rivals in the first one -- both aware the other exists, just not who -- the jump in time forward worked.  It showed that years passed, both men carved an important niche out for themselves, and now they're in a position to make something of it.  Even having seen the first one, I was lost in the first 40 minutes as everything was laid out.  New characters were introduced, new situations, and I felt like I'd missed something.  It didn't help that Yue and Chen bear a striking resemblance to each other.  I found myself consistently getting them confused, only then wondering "Why is the deep undercover guy walking around a police station?"  Oh, my bad I guess.

After making their brief appearance in Infernal Affairs, Yue and Chen do return here to play the younger versions of the characters as they grow over a 6-year span.  The only issue is that neither young actor makes their characters very interesting. Both men are just there as everything happens around them, occasionally looking worried or shocked.  Part of the problem is that their predecessors were so strong, making each man complicated and basically, a real human being with worries and fears that are just magnified working in such a dangerous profession.  The rest of the cast does not disappoint, especially Chau-Sang as Inspector Wong, Ng as triad leader Hau, Eric Tsang as rising mobster Sam (also in the original), Carina Lau as Mary, Sam's longtime girlfriend who also has something with Lau, and Jun Hu as Supervisor Luk, Wong's immediate supervisor on the force.

All negatives and criticisms aside, this is too good of a movie not to recommend.  The story manages to keep it interesting even knowing the general direction it is heading.  The music is memorable, the set pieces exciting, and the action startling and unsettling.  It brings you into this dog eat dog world. Scenes of characters meeting in secret to avoid being detected bristle with dialogue that shows how frazzled they've all become.  The ending is nearly perfect too, putting all the pieces in place for the original Infernal Affairs.  Scarier than all that? There's a third movie, and yeah, I'll probably check that out too.

Infernal Affairs 2 <---trailer (2003): ***/****      

Exiled

A few weeks ago I reviewed The Mission, a Hong Kong action movie from director Johnnie To. It was a solid action movie that I'd never heard of but ended up loving it.  As I was reviewing it, I saw many of the same names popping up repeatedly in another movie from To with similarly positive reviews.  The movie, 2006's Exiled, was available on Netflix so I gave it a try especially when the description included a mix of spaghetti western and Hong Kong action backgrounds.  Glad I did.

The Mission was the story of five bodyguards working together and gelling as a team only to discover one of the group has committed an act that can only be resolved through his death.  The ending was good but not great and left me wanting a little more closure.  Take it for what this is worth because I've read descriptions of the movie that both agree and disagree, but Exiled is an unofficial sequel to The Mission.  It basically picks up where the 1999 action movie leaves off, a few months later with similar characters but different names.  To has insisted in interviews this movie was not intended as a sequel, and he's probably telling the truth.  But it's just too similar, too close for it not to be. However you interpret it -- sequel or not -- the truth is it's just a really solid movie.

It's 1998 in Macao and China is about to regain control of the island.  Mob wars are starting up everywhere as mobsters and gangsters make plays for power.  Waiting outside a small apartment are four men, all hitmen assigned a mission concerning a former gangster named Wo (Nick Cheung). It's a case of two vs. two as Blaze (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang) and Fat (Suet Lam) have been ordered to kill Wo while Tai (Francis Ng) and Cat (Roy Cheung) are prepared to protect Wo even if it means a shootout. All five men are childhood friends who have gone their separate ways but end up working against each other.  Friendship ends up affecting the mission though as all four men decide to help Wo and his wife Jin (Josie Ho) escape certain death. Their decision has quick consequences though as the mob boss who hired them, Boss Fay (Simon Yam), doesn't appreciate their change of heart and orders them taken out.

Reuniting four of the five main characters from The Mission including another key figure, Exiled certainly feels like a direct sequel.  It certainly helps things get into a flow because if you've seen the first movie, you're already familiar with the characters and their disagreement.  Instead of Shin having a target on his back, we get Wo, a family man with a wife and infant.  The story does have some odd elements and drifts at times more than it probably should.  The idea of combining some spaghetti western background with the typically action-packed Hong Kong crime thrillers doesn't always mix smoothly -- a running gag with shooting an empty pop can is tedious, a flying door spins through a gunfight -- but the positives most definitely outweigh the negatives.

Maybe the biggest difference I noticed here was a bigger budget given to To.  The movie is more polished, more professional looking, most evident during the action scenes.  Stylish with uses of shadow and light, slow motion, blood squibs that look like a fiery mist, the movie's action is truly something to behold.  Roger Ebert complained in his review that thousands of bullets are fired and no one ever gets shot.  Well, I don't know what movie he was watching because the action is everywhere.  The opening apartment shootout is a little more understated than the rest, building up to the bigger set pieces like a restaurant shootout (watch HERE), the fallout at an illegal doctor's apartment (HERE), and the two-part finale that involves a heist of a gold transport and the showdown in the finale at a upper class hotel.  Like few other directors can do, To conjures up comparisons to Sam Peckinpah and The Wild Bunch with his action.  Not a bad comparison.

More than just the action, Exiled is a modern western of sorts, and not just a spaghetti western.  The characters are the modern day equivalents of wild west gunfighters, guns for hire who take on a job as long as it pays.  Then when the chips are down, their true colors come out.  Wong's Blaze is the unwilling leader, Ng's Tai as his temperamental right hand man, Lam and Cheung as the loyal sidekicks, and Wo the root of all their problems.  But just like movie portrayals of gunfighters -- especially The Magnificent Seven and The Wild Bunch -- these men have a code they live by, one that depends on honor, loyalty, and in the end doing what's right no matter the cost.  So here even though it'd be easier to just shoot it out over Wo's fate, the quartet bands together and does what they believe in, even knowing the extreme risks they're all taking.

What can separate a good action movie from a great action movie is the characters.  Just like The Mission, we're given a reason to support these characters even when they are not particularly likable.  We're given little background information, but we don't need much.  Wong is the quiet scene-stealer, Ng the fiery hot-head, and Yam is the nearly psychotic bad guy.  I can't say I liked the movie more than The Mission, but it was close.  Very stylized action -- including a great opening sequence straight out of a Leone western -- and overall a movie that's a lot of fun to watch.

Exiled <---trailer (2006): ***/****

The Mission

Peruse through my reviews over the last year and a half, and you're sure to find a fair share of men on a mission movies. It is a type of movie that crosses all sorts of genre lines and boundaries.  Just thinking off the top of my head, I can think of these movies that are westerns, WWII, spies, heists, and many more.  Thanks to Netflix though, I've been expanding my movie horizons, and that's how I stumbled onto 1999's The Mission.

It is a Hong Kong action movie that's gained a bit of a cult status over the last 10 years, and for good reason.  This is a good movie.  I haven't really seen any Asian action movies with the exception of Infernal Affairs and The Good, the Bad and the Weird, but just from quickly reading up about them, there a ton of good ones to recommend.  Stylish and action-packed, there's not much to dislike about them.  Okay, the DVD I got had the video quality of a widescreen bootleg, but that's the distributor's fault, not the movie.

When his brother, Mr. Lung (Eddy Ko), narrowly survives a hit attempt, Frank Lung (Simon Yam) hires a team of bodyguards to work together to protect his older brother until the threat can be eliminated. Leading the group of bodyguards is a well-known name in the underworld, a hair stylist named Curtis (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang) who has a reputation as being loyal, capable and always finishing what he's hired for. The other four hires come from all walks of life with different backgrounds, but they intend to see this job through.  The quintet gels quickly, preventing several more hit attempts, but just when it seems they're unstoppable Frank delivers a twist to Curtis.  One of the four had an affair with Mr. Lung's wife and has to be eliminated.  What will the group do? Turn one of their own in, or stick together and shoot it out?

Director/producer extraordinaire Johnnie To has done it all in the movie business in Hong Kong from action movies to romantic comedies and everything in between. If this is an example of all his movies, the guy's got some serious talent.  One reviewer pointed out this is the type of crime thriller French director Jean-Pierre Melville would have made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the description is dead-on.  This is a bare-minimum type of movie, sparse sets with little decoration, brief dialogue with characters exchanging looks and glances that say more than words ever could, and characters who do unpleasant things not because they like it, just because they're good at it.  And at just 83 minutes, not a minute is wasted along the way.  To sets out the outline and goes with it, not a stray storyline anywhere in sight.

Maybe the biggest positive when watching foreign movies is you have little history or background with most -- if not all -- of the cast.  They're playing a character that you can either like or dislike, but that's all.  The five bodyguards reminded me in a lot of ways of The Magnificent Seven, honor bound only by their word and little else.  Chau-Sang is the leader of few words, a hair stylist of all things who does these security details and unsavory jobs on the side.  He looks like anything but a killer, and that's what he's counting on.  Rounding out his team are Roy (Francis Ng), a club owner with a temper, Shin (Jackie Lui Chung-yin), the youngster trying to gain a name for himself, Mike (Roy Cheung), a quiet, assured man with a gun, and James (Suet Lam), the chubby killer and black market guns supplier. They click right away and work beautifully as a team, becoming friends in the process.  That just makes it nastier when they might have to turn on one of their own.

What impressed me here -- among many other things -- was the execution of the action scenes.  The opener (the attempt on Mr. Lung) is unexplained.  We're just dropped into a standoff in a bar without knowing who any of the participants are.  Once the team is formed, we see them working together on several more botched attempts on Mr. Lung.  One, an attempt in a poorly lit alleyway -- watch HERE -- is chaotic without being confusing.  You're always aware where everyone is, and what they're trying to do.  The highlight later is a tension-packed attempt in a mall about to close.  Gunmen wait around every corner and beam, and Curtis and his team stoically stand still waiting for their chance. Check it out HERE. From the director's chair, To lets these action scenes develop and amps up the intensity by just sitting back and letting that natural tension take over.

Of course, I can't say I loved everything about this movie.  The flaws though are minor ones, and in the grand scheme of things won't change me from giving a very positive rating.  For one, the musical score sounds out of place to me.  I'm glad some blaring soundtrack that buries the action and story wasn't used, but this score was too soft, too quiet.  The other problem was the ending.  It could have been the subtitles -- which I'm sure missed some things -- or maybe just my missing something, but I'm not exactly sure what happened.  If what I think happened actually went down, we don't have a problem with the ending.  But all in all, a great action movie I'm glad I stumbled upon.

The Mission <---trailer (1999): *** 1/2 /****