Exiled a Bullet-Riddled Bore

It is 1998. Macao is thriving, quick money seemingly around every corner and available for any man willing to risk paying the penalty to grab it before the Portuguese colony enters a new dawn under Chinese rule. Four hitmen have come to a small apartment to see an old friend. Two of them are there to kill; the other two are there to protect. Together, these former friends decide to pull one last job in order to secure a life for their comrade’s wife and child but, in doing so, they force having to go into their exile after the heist is accomplished.

Anthony Wong in Magnolia Pictures' Exiled

No matter. Bonds of brotherhood under fire are not broken easily, and when the bullets start to fly only they will keep them strong because when death decides to come calling it’s good to know the man standing next to you will be there all the way until the bitter end takes you out of this life and into the one unknown.

I’m starting to think I might be over bullet-riddled Hong Kong cinema. Director Johnnie To (The Mission, The Heroic Trio) is a certified master of the genre, while actors Anthony Wong (Infernal Affairs), Francis Ng (Infernal Affairs 2), Lam Suet (PTU) and Simon Yam (Triad Election) are certainly no strangers to suitably pleasing action balletics. Yet I didn’t really care for very little of what any of them had to offer in their latest opus Exiled, and sitting in the theater at the Seattle International Film Festival looking at my watch I couldn’t help but wonder if, for me at least, this genre has simply just played itself out.

I don’t know. Maybe I just wasn’t in a very good mood when I was watching this. Even if that were the case, however, the script here meanders like crazy. Our five heroes go from trying to kill on another, to joining forces, to planning the murder of their boss, to trekking through the jungle like a collection of Armani clad Tarzans, to ripping off trucks of gold bars, to thinking about their boss some more, to finally showing up at a heavily fortified fortress like they’re all The Wild Bunch reincarnated. It’s agonizingly silly, so please forgive me if after a while I just decided I wasn’t in the mood to take it anymore.

In all fairness, To definitely knows how to stage scenes of carnage and destruction. He’s from the John Woo school of pistol-blasting cool, all the low camera angles, blistering slow motion and smoking .45’s enough to make even the most nonchalant action fan blush with longing. The opening scene inside a small apartment is an absolute joy, while a latter moment during a restaurant battle royale crackles with violent tension and bloody electricity.

It just wasn’t enough. I’ve seen these kinds of moments before (many of them in some of the director’s better films) and I hardly ever felt my blood pressure rise above room temperature watching this one uncork its ample supplies of ammunition. Worse, it seems to go on forever, and by the time things reach their climactic payoff I almost felt like taking a nap instead of seeing how it was going to all turn out. 

Fans of the genre probably aren’t going to really care. For the most part, To delivers all that he sets out to and for many that is all that is going to matter. I do, though, and watching a director as talented as this one go through the very same motions time and time and time again is starting to get more than a bit frustrating. While the hitmen in Exiled are the ones worried about becoming isolated, I was the one sitting in the theater who felt like they’d just been stranded on a desert island, and by the time the credits started I was more then ready to find my life raft parked outside and drive it all the way back to the safety of home.

Film Rating:  êê  (out of 4)

Additonal Links

-  Exiled Theatrical Trailer