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 don't, 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.

what’s better than this? just guys bein dudes. just dudes bein gangsters. just gangsters loving each other 🥺

Red Bull Gives You Wings

To's western, essentially a series of tense stand-offs and stylish shootouts leading to the inevitable conclusion, have patience, it takes more than an hour for the titular exile to begin. If you showed this movie to a little kid who didn't know any better they would think that human beings were filled with red clouds instead of liquid blood.

Let Anthony Wong (BLACK MASK, THE MUMMY: THE TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR) and a few of his friends show you the true power of friendship...

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.

Top tier action filmmaking. Nobody moves a camera like To, nobody frames a scene like To, nobody makes films like To. No hyperbole here, but it’s easily the greatest Hong Kong bullet ballet that I’ve seen.

That 'angry' character who loudly fucking repeated himself all the time did my nut in. There's elements/breif moments I like but as a complete film I found it to be a total snore-athon, believe me no one is more shocked that I didn't like this more than me.

Was hier passiert, die Lässigkeit und der Humor, die furiose und brutale Action, die Tragik der Unausweichlichkeit des Todes - das berührt, begeistert und reißt mit. Tos Flirt mit dem Übermut des Hongkong-Kinos verlangt vom unvorbereiteten Zuschauer hier und da noch Toleranz, aber was er ihm dafür schenkt, ist ein funkelnder Diamant, der einen ohne Bemühen eines allzu ausgeklügelten Plots vor Demut in die Knie zwingt, vor Dankbarkeit, daran erinnert zu werden, wie sich Kino anfühlen kann.

As many have noted, a spiritual successor to his great minimalist heroic bloodshed flick, THE MISSION. This one is a little more bombastic, but maybe even better. Keeps switching registers between cold actioner and warm comedy. To darts back and forth between the archetypal and the specific. A master at work.

Gunfights with the boys. Johnnie To just knows how to do cool shit. The action scenes are gorgeous. Anthony Wong looks fantastic in a trench coat.

Je découvre Johnnie To, ça a l'air d'être un bon cinéaste. Le film sait qu'il est con mais je trouve qu'il tombe trop dans le ridicule parfois (les tirs sur les canettes... pitié quoi).

Acho que os primeiros vinte minutos resumem bem. A tensão urgente da violência quebrada por uma fraternidade quase terna que desemboca em algo "in-between"; um meio termo entre essas duas coisas que é particularmente melancólico e cativante. Talvez o mais perto de um western propriamente que o Johnnie To já chegou, e um que retoma com toda uma elegância coesa e invejável vários temas fundamentais da sua carreira. A inevitabilidade trágica do crime, a natureza da violência, a prevalência do senso de lealdade, os jogos entre destino e sorte. E é filmado, montado e coreografado da forma mais bela e significativa possível, transborda a criatividade já habitual do Johnnie. O plano da Josie Ho apertando o gatilho de uma arma descarregada deve ser um dos mais marcantes da carreira do diretor.

find buds you would take down criminal underworlds for!

After a weekend of not watching films, I was going to get back on with my horror marathon when I realized that this was leaving prime in 6 hours. My priorities immediately shifted because I knew I couldn’t miss out on a chance to watch my first Johnnie To movie. I am so glad that I made that decision because this is everything I could possibly want from a film. It very obviously pays homage to the heroic bloodshed genre, but with a strong taste for Leone. The build up to the violence feels like the focus, though the bloodshed itself is rather glorious. It also understands male friendship in away that is honestly hard to find. I am honestly quite pissed I have no way of easily watching this again because there isn’t a damn blu ray. I am now very much aware of the fact that I need to watch more To.

Hyper-violent, unimaginably lovely.

rides the line of celestial beauty its entire runtime, then decides to hinge its dramatic finale on a "Red Bull gives you wings" visual gag.... really fucking weird hahahaha

Johnnie To & Cheng Siu-keung utilize the entire frame with some A+ staging for awesome looking shots. Two of the best shootout scenes I’ve ever seen. The story is all over the place with a few different movies crammed into one. The western pastiche was cool. For a “dumb crime” type of movie, I’m now reading about the history of Macau, so thanks, To :)

Purely, aggressively visual filmmaking. It sketches a complicated network of alliances and conflicts, the details of which are often left unclear, but everything recedes in deference to To's movement, pace and sense of orchestrated chaos. The narrative essentially revolves around three different standoffs. The standoff is the perfect setting for To's florid style. He makes a bunch of people standing around pointing guns at each other exciting and even awe-inspiring. Two unforgettable images: in the opening sequence, when a bunch of people keep a door suspended in mid-air by shooting at it; the slow-motion Red Bull can flying up in the air in the film's finale.