Blog Archives

Exiled (2006)

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Posted on September 25, 2007 by James

After following reckless and ruthless triad bosses across Hong Kong and China in Election and its sequel, Johnnie To returns to the perspective of the heroic underling as well as to the celebrated story dimension of 1999’s The Mission, one of the major highlights of his prolific career.

Exiled is neither a direct sequel or prequel to The Mission, but rather an interplay of similarities and divergences from the earlier film’s plot, themes, characters and stylistic approach. … (read more)

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Beast Cops (1998)

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Posted on March 3, 2007 by Mark Morrison

Modern cop drama with Anthony Wong playing the mildly corrupt cop who keeps a lid on things, Michael Wong as the uptight straight cop who’ll gun down a criminal regardless of the danger to the hostage, and Sam Lee as the skinny cop who always gets the goss. Most of Beast Cops is concerned with the interaction between the three cops, and the conflict between their way of walking the beat. Roy Cheung plays the local Big Brother who has … (read more)

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The Mission (1999)

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Posted on October 22, 2006 by Alison

There’s really nothing one can say that will adequately describe this film. I keep trying, but my tongue tangles with superfluous superlatives: excellent, great, superb, marvellous, impossibly good. I feel like I’ve regressed to my teen years, abandoning the maturity which I’m supposed to have gained by now.

Okay, then, I’ll give it a try. First up, this is one of director To’s best films. It exemplifies all of To’s strong points: visually stunning scenes, minimal dialogue, strongly defined characters, … (read more)

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Wesley’s Mysterious File (2002)

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Posted on November 25, 2005 by Alison

A more appropriate title for this would be “Aliens Ate My Scriptwriter”. Honestly, I’d hoped for more from this: after all, the poster showed Andy in tight black clothing, accompanied by Hsu Chi and Rosamund Kwan. But alas, I was to be sadly disappointed. The science was of such a level of 1950s sophistication as to make the fluffy pseudo-science of For Bad Boys Only look as respectable as particle physics. I kept expecting one of the characters to say … (read more)

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City on Fire (1987)

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Posted on September 14, 2003 by Mark Morrison

You might have heard this one before: Chow Yun Fat is an undercover cop who takes one last job infiltrating a gang of jewel thieves. He befriends cool gunster Danny Lee despite himself. The big jewel robbery goes wrong, Yun Fat gets gut-shot, and the gang withdraw to their warehouse hideout to shout and point guns at each other while trying to work out who sold them out.

Sound familiar? That’s because boy wonder Tarrantino used the last half hour … (read more)

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