Johnnie To
It 'true that the beautiful "Vengeance" ("Avenge me" - but should view it in its original languages) does not reach the level of the absolute masterpieces of Johnnie To, as the recent "Election" and "Exiled", but do not worry: To a movie that is not among his masterpieces, however, has three spans over the media.
To The Film is the film of choice. The plan goes wrong, fate plays its cards to mess human projects (or ironically to help, "PTU") in front of the appropriate mechanisms cruel men have the sole option whether to stay faithful to its obligations or not, first and foremost all group solidarity ("The Mission"). The honor is as important as in Johnnie To John Woo, although it declined in a less mystical, more matter-of-fact . Written by
trust collaborator Wai Ka-fai, "Vengeance" (which takes place between Hong Kong and Macao) is the gift To a Jean-Pierre Melville. A Chinese family is massacred by a group of assassins, killed her husband and two children, survives seriously injured his wife, who is French. His father, a former gangster now restaurateur, arrives from Paris to avenge her. His name is Frank Costello, and in fact originally the film was to be played by Alain Delon. It is not that Johnny Hallyday (closed raincoat, his face gaunt with blue eyes burning, his hat down) does not make an iconic figure, but Delon would provide visual continuity and mythological - and we can only imagine what would have been great in the part, with his face and his eyes ice storm. Delon (To tell) after an initial positive opinion has been pulled back. Too bad for him, would add a pearl necklace to his great films.
Stranger in a Strange Land, Costello's more going to lose all memory because of an old bullet in the brain ("What is the revenge when you lost everything?" Being asked in the film). Stumbled by chance on a group of gangsters (as always Anthony Wong is masterful, as always Lam Suet is adorable, with his usual touch of humor) while performing a job as a killer for a mafia boss, takes them by offering them in exchange for ownership of his restaurant in Paris.
With a twist of fate of those who so love to Johnnie To, a poet of coincidence, only revenge began Costello's men discovered that the instigator of the massacre of the family had their own boss, Mr. Fung. But now they are linked to Costello, note that the name of the restaurant in Paris Costello, revealed only late in the film in order to solemnize and Les Frères. And everything will explode in a powerful sequence of shooting behind the shelter of huge bales of waste paper, punctuated by pieces of paper fluttering in the huge clearing windy - followed by a wild extension of personal vengeance, almost fantastic and dreamlike.
We find in "Vengeance" una sfilata di temi e motivi classici di Johnnie To. Dopo la cupa scena della ricostruzione dei fatti nella casa devastata, c'è una splendida sequenza in cui Costello, il gangster divenuto chef, prepara la pastasciutta e tutti mangiano insieme; una di quelle tipiche scene di To (se ne trova un esempio mirabile in “Exiled”) di sospensione festiva su cui però si proietta l'ombra della morte.
Come nel capitale “Expect the Unexpected” (che è un film di Patrick Yau, ma To l'ha prodotto e racconta di avervi molto messo mano), c'è una silenziosa pietà per quasi tutti: è il caso, più che un astratto male interiore, a muovere gli uomini come pedine; la malvagità cosciente complacent and there (here embodies Mr. Fung, a demonic Simon Yam), but is rarer than you think. Not that it matters, at the bottom of things, even if c 'humanity buried, you still kill and die. In a surprising page, the group of avengers is to kill the murderers - and finds them occupied on a picnic to the park together with their wives and children, that ignore the employment of husbands and fathers. Then stop and wait for the avengers ("Not in front of them," says Anthony Wong) and the killer, who understood, they send a child to provide food to the group ... John Ford would have done better. To
As always, this moment of mutual understanding does not negate fate. Wives and children gone, there is the inevitable showdown , in the light of the moon that comes and goes for the cloud: a succession of moments of frenzy and cold, the darkness where he holds his breath broken by flashes of light guns - and the mist of blood that oozes from the bodies hit, To the last picture frequently.
And again: a bicycle that runs from one driven by bullets, in a scene in Macao, Hong Kong continues to appear in a frisbee that has its own life. Feel inclined to conclude that now the film To objects move by themselves, this results not only from the ballistic (think of the can of Red Bull in "Exiled") but also the improvement of the sense suspension and abstraction, which he constantly sought, which was the incarnation of the mysterious child bicycle "PTU".
Beyond its characteristic narrative device, amnesia impending Costello recalls a very important theme in the film of To, for example, explored in "Running Out of Time" and in the charming and underrated "Yesterday Once More" : end-stage disease (ie here the loss of self-identity, which is like a quiet death) makes it invulnerable: it severs the bonds of life. And so let the man free and naked in front of his mission , drawn from the games of chance and the noble feelings of honor, friendship, revenge. And finally, as here, free, after that revenge has been accomplished, to embrace - no more memory or pain among the innocent, innocent - a new family of children.
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