The Stand By Me of triad films. I'm glad I watched The Mission within the last month, because it really gave Exiled a "we're getting the old band back together" feel. I love watching these guys together, and clearly they love working together (and with To). So much is communicated in their glances and gestures to one another. While seemingly every major action director was still dragging out Matrix "bullet time" and stale 90s Hong Kong tricks, To is constantly experimenting and innovating with how to stage and film a shootout. Here billowing curtains, tarps, and misty blood add kineticism to the typically tense and tight fixed location gun play. It's extremely exciting, quirky, and funny, as I've come to expect from To, but unlike any of his other movies I've seen, I found this one genuinely moving (as opposed to just rousing, if that makes sense). Maybe that's just the cold medicine talking, I don't know.

One of the coolest movies I've ever seen.

A town with countless hitmen, one prostitute, one back alley doctor, two cops, and not a single civilian. The whole thing has a very spaghetti western feel to it, so much so that if they were to remake this as a western, and by god I hope they do, they wouldn't have to change a single thing.

Besides, and this is what separates this movie from anything else in the genre: No one stages a scene and moves the camera like Johnnie motherfucking To.

Where has Jonnie To been all my life?

I'm fairly certain this is my first To film, and if it isn't, then it is certainly the first to make a huge impression.

The look! The style! The ballet! The panache!

Are all of his films this gorgeous?

And now you will have to excuse me as I go through his huge filmography and start sourcing them.

Only previous experience with Johnnie To was Triad Election, which didn't make enough of an impression for me to think "I now must see every other film this guy has made." But this...this. First 20 minutes were a thing of ridiculous tension-building/tension-diffusing beauty, setting up an amazing dynamic of old friends divided by differing senses of where their loyalties now lie. And it just keeps following up exhilarating set pieces with moments that shift on a dime. Sure, there's unnecessary business like the goofy "24 hours until I retire" cop, and it never quite makes sense that Wo's wife is suddenly determined to kill everyone who seemed to be the only guys on his side. But every once in a while a piece of genre film-making--brutally effective and demonstrating a true mastery of the form--just tells you "I now must see every other film this guy has made." Mission accomplished.

"I believe in my world. I believe in brotherhood and everything that goes with it."

오랫동안 참아온 것을 한 순간 터뜨리듯이.

They were throwing the gold around like it was chocolate bars covered in golden tinfoil. For some reason I can suspend disbelief that they can be in numerous shootouts and not get shot, but this bothers me.

Johnnie To usually treats his characters as chess pieces, and here is no different: they’re guided by the classic brotherhood code and working as means to an end.

But instead of going into the expected heroic bloodshed route here, To went in a slightly different direction. The world is more ruthless and cruel and this ain’t gonna be solved just by friends shooting at the other guys.

And unlike his Election movies (that were made more or less at the same time), he isn't just trying to make the lead characters work as part of a game, he is giving them souls, names, family, friends, and they share a strong connection.

That’s where the whole deal is in fact; even if is dressed as a crime, is more of a family drama. You may expect he goes after Melville watching just the beginning, but in the end you’re gonna realize - the man was aiming at fucking Ozu.

枪战之后，要修葺战场，再一同吃饭，还不够，就再影张相。剧作上省略前史交代，集中在问题出现后的解决。电影本身中有趣但又漂浮之处在于推进关键性情节发生的都是巧合式相遇。

일

My western ass: oh neat, Once Upon A Time in Macau
Johnnie To: you don’t know shit you little brat