Who payed the critics

Let's be realistic.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The movie industry in Hong Kong has been centered around genre films fitting a specific mold for years. Action flicks, comedies and martial arts spectacles are what HK cinema is all about. Finding interesting work outside of these genre clichés is not an easy job, so when I came across Ho-Cheung Pang a couple of years ago, I was hooked.Exodus is his sixth film and one that is without a doubt a valuable and interesting addition to his body of work.Ho-Cheung Pang is known for decorating his comedies with a darker edge. Something that is an absolute rarity in Hong Kong cinema, setting it aside from hundreds of fluffy HK comedies. But Pang is more than a comedy director. His films are littered with references to classic directors and classic films. And he has a very keen eye for colors and angles. While his earlier efforts were fun to watch, it's only with Isabella that he took a swing at a true masterpiece. With Exodus, Pang proves it was more than a lucky shot, by blending the atmosphere and skills seen in Isabella with the wit and humor of his earlier films.Exodus is pretty weird, but the key to the film is already hidden in the first scene. While slowly panning back from an Elisabeth II painting, we see a couple of frogmen beating up a criminal in a police station hallway, set to a soothing classical score. One of the most effective opening scenes I've ever seen, blending the themes and capturing the atmosphere of the entire film.Exodus is a slow, understated film, both in narration, humor, acting and visualization. The camera is pretty static or slowly pans across scenes. The film is pretty lush as Pang paid a lot of attention to the use of color and the framing, but people expecting to see an exciting HK police drama are probably at the wrong address. Complementing the stylish visuals is a subdued soundtrack composed of classical piano pieces, slowing down the pace even more.The film stars Simon Yam, old veteran and classy actor in a role that suits him well. He lays down a great understated role, showing little emotion and taking things as they come along. Still, at the end of the film I wondered if a guy like Anthony Wong wouldn't have made it just that little bit better. Still, Yam's performance works wonders and doesn't miss it's effect.But the thing that makes Exodus stand out is the combination of the subdued atmosphere and its nutcase storyline. Exodus is completely nonsensical, sending Yam after a case where women conspire in toilet rooms to kill men. The apparent seriousness with which the theme is handled just begs for laughs, a feeling that is only enhanced in it's final 10 minutes. It's easy to miss the humor, or simply be put off by the whole setup, but I found it quite refreshing and simply lots of fun.Ho-Cheung Pang is a director I'll keep following closely as he's able to keep his work refreshing. Exodus is a hard film to recommend as you should like the art-house aesthetics and you're required to pick up on the humor, if not this film is probably a serious drag. But if you do, it will be a worthwhile experience, guaranteed. 4.0*/5.0*

The artful direction was the only thing which made me finish this film. The way the camera moved and all the shots on Simon Yam were very original. These artistic and unique scenes are something you will not get to see on TV or Hollywood blockbusters.A plot with logic and flow was something i was hopeful for. However, the film further gave me mindless dialogues and poor character development. Irene Wan and Yam starred in their usual roles, there was nothing compliment on their acting. The ending was really bad, i did not like it at all. Luckily, i was tired of those typical TV series and this film provided some entertainment.

The opening shot, a slow, meticulous dolly backwards down a hallway, says it all. It begins with a tight closeup of a pair of alluring female eyes in a photograph. The subject of the portrait is revealed to be Queen Elizabeth II, and beneath it stand two men in swim trunks, goggles and flippers who light up smokes and casually redirect a Hong Kong police officer who has unwittingly entered the doorway at screen left. These must be cops, and as the frame continues to open up, we notice two, then three, then four more of these "frogmen" beating a suspect with mallets and phone books as he struggles violently to flee. "All the hatred of this world are caused by men," claims one of the film's female characters, but as evidenced by this gorgeous opening shot, much of it happens under the watchful eye of condoning women, and in pondering the question of why the female almost always outlives the male, as well as what they talk about when they go to the ladies' room together, writer-director Edmond Pang, along with co-writers Cheuk-Wan-chi and Jimmy Wan Chi- man, have crafted a sleek black comedy that, strangely, doesn't manifest most of its inherent dark whimsy until well into the final reel. Nagged by a condescending mother-in-law who only sees value in a man who runs his own business, and long ago demoted to a desk job as a reward for interdepartmental whistle-blowing, bored and complacent police sergeant SImon Yam begrudges a favor to a fellow officer and agrees to take a statement from a peeping Tom (Nick Cheung), who foams profanely about a top-secret organization of women plotting the elimination of the male species, one unsuspecting rube at a time. Yam thinks little of it, until the report disappears from the evidence room and the suspect one-eighties his story after a visit from a smarmy female senior officer. Eager to learn why such a patently ludicrous story would need to be hushed up, he soon comes to the realization that Cheung was telling the truth! Artfully directed and photographed (by Charlie Lam Chi-kin) with an emphasis on static, contemplative frame compositions the seem to grow organically from the modernist architecture that dominates the locations, but the concept begs for a playfulness that the filmmakers seem to avoid until the last ten minutes of the picture. The build-up is played with such a straight face that sequences which all but confirm the existence of the assassination club pass with nary a raised eyebrow. Perhaps that was the point, but the shift in tone is nonetheless jarring. Yam underplays nicely throughout, as if his character knows all too well how ridiculous his mission might seem to those looking in. Fine music score by Gabriele Roberto features exceptional piano solos by Aiko Takai. 7.

At the denotative level, the film comes with an explicit theme of females' distrust on the other sex. At the connotative level, it is loaded with a wider exploration on the disequilibrium of the sexes. Set in a story line of suspected conspiracy of the feminine gender, it is a film noir with a mild degree of suspense and tension. Director Pang adopts a multiplicity of film language and cinematographic techniques alongside the restricted narrative. Pang deliberately leaves time for the audience to self-explicate the narrative and the leads' staging by use of, among others, freeze action, slow camera movement, slow cutting, lugubrious piano key strikes, subdued blue lighting and sound off, all in consonance with the tone of the story. The film is particularly slow-paced and consequently relatively hypnotic in the first half. The exposition on the lead's (Simon Yam) personality is unnecessarily long and the portray on his intrinsic psychology seems to be pointless, weak and, after all, in vanity. Pang also uses discontinuous and elliptical editing for narrative purposes. The former renders several scenes mildly undecipherable before the entire narrative is shown, although this is probably an ostentatious narrative device of Pang to intensify the audience's brain working process in a psychology loaded product. Creation of sparse mise-en-scenes together with the infrequency of dialogues further establishes a mood of alienation among characters in addition to the story's mystery mantle. If termed a comedy, the film is a noir comedy. Not surprisingly, it is not associated with logic, nor are the lines of thoughts behind the theme reasonably articulative as the screenplay is from Goo Bi GC. It is ontologically more an exquisite, eccentric and cult film aimed at a minority market.