The Movie Hit Exiled: A Fair Review
If you’re looking for an action flick that’s a little different from the usual shaky cam and incoherent running and shooting, Exiled may be the answer. It belongs on any movie downloads queue for the way that it manages to create a strange, dreamlike trance in its action through slow motion and unpredictable developments.
Years after a top ranked lieutenant in the Triad betrays his boss, the boss, played by Simon Yam, sends a pair of hitmen to take him out. Meanwhile, two members of the gang come to protect the man. These characters were all friends in the gang, and it’s out of duty that the two hitmen come to kill their old partner. They come to a compromise and decide to pull off a big score to support the man’s wife and child before settling their conflict.
The five characters are all friends, and so, after a quick, and dazzling shootout, they come to a compromise. Where most gangster movies are fairly cold and impersonal when it comes to “whacking” people, this one is oddly sweet and sentimental, and the five decide to pull off a big score to support the wife and child of the lead character before settling any other business they might have together.
The movie was directed by Johnnie To, the Hong Kong legend, who came out with his first films around the same time as John Woo and Ringo Lam were defining the Heroic Bloodshed genre of HK action flicks. Where those earlier films were defined by the anger at the Chinese takeover of the city, this one has a sense of forgiveness, compassion and understanding, having been made after the takeover.
The dreamlike quality to the film is really something. Shootouts take place in slow motion, with action that takes only thirty seconds being expanded to several minutes. One incredible scene begins with a character throwing a Red Bull can into the air, and climaxes just as the empty can hits the floor, with bullets flying and people dying over the course of an incredible slow motion bullet ballet.
The action is clear and coherent, the story isn’t always so clear. This actually helps the film’s dreamlike feel, so if you just watch it for the characters and for the action, the weird, twisty-turny story won’t infringe upon your enjoyment of the film and what it really does have to offer the viewer.
The genre of Heroic Bloodshed was defined by angry violence, often showing one man up against an army as a parallel to the independent people of Hong Kong and their anger against the Communist China. After Woo and Lam went to Hollywood, Johnnie To stayed behind and redefined the genre on his own terms, turning it into something a little less vitriolic.
Where the classic Heroic Bloodshed films were about anger and revenge, this one is about forgiveness and compassion, and is certainly a unique, one of a kind action film, both exciting and trance like at once.
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