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Absolutely stunning film -- stripping every vestige of glamor and charm from HK's gangster world. A (gorgeous) sequence seemingly validating the mystic mumbo-jumbo around gang ceremonies, is soon shredded.

Though explicit gore is mainly avoided, the level of violence (physical and psychic) is high. The large cast is used very well. Standouts for me were (Tony) LEUNG Ka fai as a genial(?) psychopathicc gang boss and WONG Tin Lam as a gang elder. Visually brilliant as one might expect -- thanks (in part) to the cinematography of regular To collaborator CHENG Siu-keung.

Any advice on getting Johnnie To's films on DVD? I looked around a while ago for The Mission, which David Bordwell describes as "perhaps To's masterpiece", but couldn't find anything. Is it available?

I get almost everything HK-related from YesAsia (sometimes from Buyoyo -- if ordering in bulk).

I believe "Mission" is available on a HK DVD. Reports are that the DVD isn't so hot. People keep hoping for a new improved re-release -- but it hasn't happened yet.

I would recommend "Throw Down" and "PTU" as good introductory To films -- but my personal favorite is the immensely quirky ((and truly weird) "Running on Karma".

Thanks, Michael. I may pick one of those up, though it'd be nice to get my introduction to To on the big screen. Perhaps when I'm in Paris this summer...

Michael Kerpan wrote:I believe "Mission" is available on a HK DVD. Reports are that the DVD isn't so hot. People keep hoping for a new improved re-release -- but it hasn't happened yet.

Ha. "Isn't so hot." Thats a nice way to put it. It looks like shit.

It's got to look better than "Ashes of Time" or (even worse) the US DVD of Ann Hui's "Story of Woo Viet" (renamed "God of Killers"). ;~}

Luckily, I have not had the pleasure of viewing the editions you have pointed out.

But Mission looks like it is from a worn out video. It also has a logo from the start of the film that looks 'burnt in' on all the frames of the film.

I'm surprised that you would like running on karma so much. I think it gets a little too 'serious' near the end (even if this is understood by To). I wish it just stayed funny/weird all the way through, instead of serious/weird.

I don't think that Mission was that great either. Some very good scenes, but it didn't make that entire film great.

jcelwin wrote:I'm surprised that you would like running on karma so much. I think it gets a little too 'serious' near the end (even if this is understood by To). I wish it just stayed funny/weird all the way through, instead of serious/weird.

It was actually the turn towards serious/weird that caused this to have so much of an impact on me. My reaction might be idiosyncratic -- so I don't recommend this as a "first To exposure".

I also liked both "Yesterday Once More" and "Breaking News" quite a lot -- despite the criticism these have received.

Don't forget A Hero Never Dies which is my favorite To film so far. I hope to see Breaking News later today, as it opens for a week at the Balboa Theatre in my neighborhood.

Haven't seen "Hero Never Dies". It took a second watching of "Breaking News" to win me over. (There were some things I found annoying the first time through that I considered trivial upon re-visitation).

I really enjoyed Breaking News. But there was one thing that annoyed me and I found unrealistic. If not for this, it would have been excellent. I'm sure you know it if you have seen it, but I wouldn't want to point it out for people yet to see it.

You mean Kelly Chen's living-dead performance?

Huh?

You said "but there was one thing that annoyed me and I found unrealistic". I offered my guess.

Yeah I know what you meant, I'm just confused to what you mean by 'Kelly Chen's living-dead performance' is?

The annoying part for me was (don't read further if you haven't watched it) the fact that throughout the film so many people are shooting at each other but no one is getting shot. Three of my friends watched the movie also (all at separate times) and all commented on the fact that no one seems to get shot, with so much shooting.

Chen's performance aggravated me the first time I watched this. But, for whatever, reason, didn't bother me much at all the second time through.

I promptly avoid any film which "stars" her. It is obvious she will never learn how to act. She was excruciating in INFERNAL AFFAIRs as well.

Johnny To doesn't seem to be particularly gifted at directing actors. Veteran actors (Lau Ching Wan and Andy Lau come to mind at first), who usually give solid performances regardless of the material given to them are usually really good in his films, but when he uses less talented actors (like Takeshi Sorimachi, Kelly Lin, Richie Ren or Nick Cheung), the results are often just plain atrocious to watch (and then there's Kelly Chen, who would quite probably be awful even in a WKW-film. She's just hopeless). This only matters in films like Breaking News, which has a cast filled with some of the worst acting talent in HK today (mainly Richie Ren and Kelly Chen). Also Simon Yam seems to be somewhat of a wildcard, alternating between great performances and utterly hopeless camp.

That being said, I loved Election. The cast was excellent and even Nick Cheung, who was largely unimpressive in Breaking News, was actually pretty good in this. Also, Louis Koo seems to have picked up some acting skills along the years, and I could definitely see him in the kind of roles Andy Lau's been doing. He's got charisma.

Going back to Breaking News, maybe I've been spoiled by Michael Mann films (mainly referring to Thief, Heat and Collateral here), but I think the film really suffered from a lack of realism. I think there are two ways of shooting action. Either you go crazy like John Woo or Ringo Lam in their glory days or you try for some level of realism. Breaking News had something in the middle. No fancy choreography or moments of "Holy shit, that's cool", but nothing resembling a real firefight either. The end result just felt ridiculous. I'm by no means a military expert, but in Breaking News the entire cast looked like a bunch of people who've never even handled a firearm prior to shooting the film.

Michael Mann tends to put his actors thru rigorous training courses and bases his action scenes on what would be feasible in real life. So when James Caan moves thru the mansion at the end of Thief, it looks like he really knows what he's doing. His moves are calculated and efficient and he just looks as if he could do that thing in real life. Or when Val Kilmer and DeNiro assault the police roadblock in Heat, they move like a pair of professionals with military training would prolly move like. They cover each other, the other one laying down suppressive fire while the other one advances. They absolutely look like they mean business.

Compare this to the shootout in the beginning of Breaking News. What the hell is happening there? Richie Ren is standing in the middle of the street, trying to look cool, firing two guns with no care in the world. One of the robbers is firing an AK-47 from the window, one of his legs dangling outside the building (it looks just as ridiculous as it sounds), and of course he's even firing from the hip. The cops all shoot everywhere, with Nick Cheung firing his submachinegun from the hip, hitting absolutely nothing. I don't have a clue what the hell is going on in there. It sounds like a gunfight, but it sure doesn't look like one. Same thing is repeated for the rest of the film, loads of shooting, but none of the participants even look like they are actually trying to kill the opposition. It's just a horrible mess, with no dynamic whatsoever. And for an action film, that's not good at all.

Also, Breaking News annoyed me with it's wasted potential. The idea of a media war between the cops and the robbers was clever, but they could've been a bit more creative and inventive in how it's handled. To did a good job creating a nice tension in the scenes set in the apartment building though, and I think the middle part of the film worked rather well. Too bad it was let down by a rather silly ending, which felt like something out of a completely different film.

Grimfarrow wrote:I promptly avoid any film which "stars" her. It is obvious she will never learn how to act. She was excruciating in INFERNAL AFFAIRs as well.

Do HK filmgoers dislike Kelly Chen? I would assume not -- or else she wouldn't be in any films anymore.

Was she in "Anna Magdalena"? I didn't think the lead actress in this was bad at all.

Grimfarrow wrote:I promptly avoid any film which "stars" her. It is obvious she will never learn how to act. She was excruciating in INFERNAL AFFAIRs as well.

Do HK filmgoers dislike Kelly Chen? I would assume not -- or else she wouldn't be in any films anymore.

Was she in "Anna Magdalena"? I didn't think the lead actress in this was bad at all.

Len wrote:Johnny To doesn't seem to be particularly gifted at directing actors.

I disagree so thoroughly that I suspect it would be impossible to have a fruitful conversation on this topic. We would only talk at cross purposes.

Do HK filmgoers dislike Kelly Chen? I would assume not -- or else she wouldn't be in any films anymore.

I've understood that Kelly Chen is big there mostly due to her singing career, which seems to be quite succesful. And she usually tends to appear in films where it doesn't really matter much whether her acting is awful or not.

And still on the subject of To's abilities as a character director, my choice of words was a bit lacking. Johnny To does (occasionally really) good work with good actors who are well suited for his films. For example, Lau Ching Wan, Andy Lau, Maggie Siu or even Lam Suet seem to "fit" (for lack of a better word) in his films really well, and they always give good performances. But when a film of his stars an actor who's cast against type or who's less experienced, To doesn't seem to know what to do with them, and tends to let them just be themselves, sometimes with awful results. Breaking News was just a sad example of this. None of the lead actors seemed to know what they were doing, and even Simon Yam, who's often good, seemed like doing a caricature of a police captain.

Of Hong Kong directors, I think Derek Yee is one of the best at directing actors. He manages to get great performances out of actors who aren't usually anything special. Daniel Wu is a good example. At his worst he's ridiculously wooden, but he did a really good turn in Yee's "One Nite In Mongkok" and he wasn't bad in "Drink-Drank-Drunk" either.

Johnny To does (occasionally really) good work with good actors who are well suited for his films.

I thought the acting in "Throw Down" (for example) was uniformly pretty impressive. I don't recall much to complain in "PTU" -- or "Running on Karma" ...

Breaking News was just a sad example of this. None of the lead actors seemed to know what they were doing, and even Simon Yam, who's often good, seemed like doing a caricature of a police captain.

I rather felt that way the first time through. But on re-watching, I felt that much of this was deliberate. Kelly Chen was supposed to be wooden. Yam was supposed to be rather a caricature. The action was supposed to be improbable. People approached this as a conventional "action film" and found it lacking. I think To was, however, creating something deliberately more than a little surreal and absurd.

I have yet to see any of the two though I'm curious as hell about them ever since I came across the trailers. My question is: are they as good as they sound? Are they Hong Kong's Yakuza Papers equivalent or just perfectly alright movies? I've read very disparate opinions on them and I guess I will only make up my mind once I watch them but any comments are very welcome, of course.

I've only seen the first -- and I consider it (drum roll) a masterpiece.

Really (and I'm not retracting the term -- even provisionally -- in this case)

;~}

One of the starkest debunking of the mystique of gangsterism ever.

Michael Kerpan wrote:I've only seen the first

You can already pre-order the second one from yesasia. It's available from the 14th of July.

Michael Kerpan wrote:I've only seen the first -- and I consider it (drum roll) a masterpiece.

Really (and I'm not retracting the term -- even provisionally -- in this case)

;~}

One of the starkest debunking of the mystique of gangsterism ever.

Oi vay..... Gosh, I don't even want to imagine what you'd say when EXILED comes out! After all, it's the sequel to by far the best film To's ever done: THE MISSION.