Exiled hits U.S. screens

August 31st, 2007 in Action, Movies, Opening Today, Reviews

Now that it is being given a theatrical run, I would recommend taking advantage of seeing Exiled on the big screen. This is not only a terrific Hong Kong action film but easily one of the best films I’ve seen this year. Exiled has confirmed that Johnny To is one of Hong Kong’s best filmmakers with a film that is at least equal to the best of John Woo or Tsui Hark. If Exiled does recall a past master, that would be Sam Peckinpah, combining the elegiac feeling of The Wild Bunch with some of the sheer nuttiness of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

The film is about two pairs of gangsters who use to be friends and now are with rival gangs. One of the pair is trying to kill Wo, another former friend, who had attempted to assassinate a mob boss. The other pair has shown up to protect Wo. After the rivals fail to shoot each other inside Wo’s home, it is suggested that they sit down and talk things out. That there is no furniture in Wo’s home is resolved when the rival gangsters show up with furniture, culminating in a “family” dinner of the five former friends with Wo’s wife and child.

The five end up joining forces, first with a disasterous attempt to kill another rival mob boss. Wo is killed in the aftermath when the gang hides out in the office of a doctor popular with wounded gangsters. In what may be the most beautiful sequence of the film, Wo’s wife, angry at her late husband going back to gang life and getting killed, smashes the furniture that she had just been given, creating an improvised pyre over her husband’s body, walking away with their child while the house burns.

While Exiled does have its somber moments, it also is darkly funny. Richie Jen appears as a cop just days away from retirement whose only goal is to stay out of range when the bullets start flying. Anthony Wong, as the default leader of the misfit gangsters, is always enjoyable to see on screen. In one of the key scenes, a gangster who arranges jobs lets Wong and the others know that the gangsters of their generation are being eliminated. The various misadventures of Wong and his gang become a set up for a grand shoot out at the end which no coincidentally will remind some of The Wild Bunch. Like Peckinpah’s classic, To looks at honor and loyalty between men. Unlike Peckinpah, To, who famously made The Heroic Trio with Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung, has women who see through the posturing of men, and prove to be more pragmatic, as well as smarter.

Exiled opens today in New York City, and at theaters in Los Angeles, San Franciso and Chicago on September 7 with play dates at select theaters to follow.

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