Exiled
Johnnie To
Imagine a sensory orgy between the delightfully overstated excitement in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and John Woo-style gunplay, and you start to get a feel for the action movies of Hong Kong director Johnnie To. Despite widespread acclaim for his eccentric style in the Far East, To’s work remains fairly obscure in the United States, although there’s a chance that might change.
Last year, his pair of atmospheric gangster dramas Election and Triad Election had decent runs at Film Forum. Now, his high concept fusion of gunplay and road trip camaraderie, Exiled, opens in New York at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza. It’s a remarkable combination of everything expected from an action movie: bad guys in trench coats, women in peril, bullets galore. But it’s also infused with surprisingly effective ingredients that rarely appear in this kind of fast and furious amusement: Sincere, affable characters, light-hearted humor and an entirely believable fondness for the innate beauty of life and death.
Ostensibly about a team of hit men who reject their boss’ orders when asked to off an old friend, Exiled drifts through a series of encounters pulled together by the retired killers’ minimal interactions as they drive to the next set piece. After an aggressive parting of ways with their former employer, the group’s experiences grow increasingly abstract, leading up to a beautifully photographed journey in search of gold. The bright reddish landscapes radiate with natural beauty, creating a heavy contrast with the dark interiors where most of the shooting takes place. These two predominant settings grind together much in the way that martial arts begets western pastiche during Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 2, but the technique in To’s work is more complete than a cross-cultural exercise. To uses mindless violence like clay, pulling at it until the bigger picture represents something entirely fresh and artistic, yet inarguably fun.
Consistent with most of his oeuvre, Exiled has very little dialogue. Strands of conversation last long enough to keep the story afloat, but most of the crucial decisions take place during extended shootouts as men stare each other down at gunpoint. Once it’s clear that this sort of standoff happens with regularity, the unspoken language of peril becomes an engrossing experience. When the lead men decide not to kill their target, they stick around to help him move his furniture, and it actually seems like a natural decision.
To’s 1999 action yarn, The Mission (which has similar characters), also uses guns as linguistic devices, but the result is nearly ruined by a crappy synth score. In Exiled, the light piano melodies and eclectic upbeat rhythms elevate the action.
Sometimes, silence does the trick. I think that parsing the mise en scene in an action movie sometimes overstates the filmmaker’s intention, but in this case, the way that To positions his characters in front of the camera makes all the difference. Most scenes play out with fluid insanity, careening from intense to absurdly comedic with the slightest movements. A doctor operates on a patient as he slinks down the hallway with a weapon in hand; hundreds of bullets fly in the time that it takes for a can of Red Bull to hit the ground.
Although Exiled has been around for well over a year, its arrival at American theaters just a few weeks before the kooky diversion Shoot ‘Em Up creates an intriguing comparison. In the latter movie, Clive Owen does an atrocious amount of damage to the world around him, with guns and carrots (among other things). Nothing makes sense, but in its contained reality, everything makes sense. Shoot ‘Em Up deconstructs the enjoyment of action cinema from the inside out. To inspects it from the outside in, placing familiar components of day to day life in a circus of incredulous bloodshed. It’s a progressive emotional creation and a disparate collection of violence, but never a waste of time.
Johnnie To
Imagine a sensory orgy between the delightfully overstated excitement in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and John Woo-style gunplay, and you start to get a feel for the action movies of Hong Kong director Johnnie To. Despite widespread acclaim for his eccentric style in the Far East, To’s work remains fairly obscure in the United States, although there’s a chance that might change.
Last year, his pair of atmospheric gangster dramas Election and Triad Election had decent runs at Film Forum. Now, his high concept fusion of gunplay and road trip camaraderie, Exiled, opens in New York at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza. It’s a remarkable combination of everything expected from an action movie: bad guys in trench coats, women in peril, bullets galore. But it’s also infused with surprisingly effective ingredients that rarely appear in this kind of fast and furious amusement: Sincere, affable characters, light-hearted humor and an entirely believable fondness for the innate beauty of life and death.
Ostensibly about a team of hit men who reject their boss’ orders when asked to off an old friend, Exiled drifts through a series of encounters pulled together by the retired killers’ minimal interactions as they drive to the next set piece. After an aggressive parting of ways with their former employer, the group’s experiences grow increasingly abstract, leading up to a beautifully photographed journey in search of gold. The bright reddish landscapes radiate with natural beauty, creating a heavy contrast with the dark interiors where most of the shooting takes place. These two predominant settings grind together much in the way that martial arts begets western pastiche during Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 2, but the technique in To’s work is more complete than a cross-cultural exercise. To uses mindless violence like clay, pulling at it until the bigger picture represents something entirely fresh and artistic, yet inarguably fun.
Consistent with most of his oeuvre, Exiled has very little dialogue. Strands of conversation last long enough to keep the story afloat, but most of the crucial decisions take place during extended shootouts as men stare each other down at gunpoint. Once it’s clear that this sort of standoff happens with regularity, the unspoken language of peril becomes an engrossing experience. When the lead men decide not to kill their target, they stick around to help him move his furniture, and it actually seems like a natural decision.
To’s 1999 action yarn, The Mission (which has similar characters), also uses guns as linguistic devices, but the result is nearly ruined by a crappy synth score. In Exiled, the light piano melodies and eclectic upbeat rhythms elevate the action.
Sometimes, silence does the trick. I think that parsing the mise en scene in an action movie sometimes overstates the filmmaker’s intention, but in this case, the way that To positions his characters in front of the camera makes all the difference. Most scenes play out with fluid insanity, careening from intense to absurdly comedic with the slightest movements. A doctor operates on a patient as he slinks down the hallway with a weapon in hand; hundreds of bullets fly in the time that it takes for a can of Red Bull to hit the ground.
Although Exiled has been around for well over a year, its arrival at American theaters just a few weeks before the kooky diversion Shoot ‘Em Up creates an intriguing comparison. In the latter movie, Clive Owen does an atrocious amount of damage to the world around him, with guns and carrots (among other things). Nothing makes sense, but in its contained reality, everything makes sense. Shoot ‘Em Up deconstructs the enjoyment of action cinema from the inside out. To inspects it from the outside in, placing familiar components of day to day life in a circus of incredulous bloodshed. It’s a progressive emotional creation and a disparate collection of violence, but never a waste of time.
