A Major Disappointment

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Karmic collection of the hunter's being hunted . The final movie of his Brotherhood of Assassin's Trilogy .A woman and her family is murdered , and she makes a dying wish to her father to avenge her . The father (who suffers from memory loss) hires hitmen to assist him . Half shootout action , half mystery movie as they must solve this unknown assassination ... Story setting shifts from the Bright City Lights of Macau , to the underground of Hong Kong , to the familiar home of Wo and his wife from "Exiled" , where the final shootout begins ..

I saw this movie trailer and i thought "this must be what Max Payne wasn't". The storyline was pretty cool "A french man looking for revenge in a foreign country", even the poster looks cool and promises a very dark violent movie. But no. This movie is full of clichés, full of slow motion scenes, trying to make the assassins look cool. Too much fantasy for a revenge movie. Or you could think, this movie must be like Death Wish, but, again, no. Death Wish still rules on revenge movies. So this one can be easily forgotten.This movie doesn't provide anything new.

Reading the plot line, I was expecting a cross between "Under siege" and "A history of violence" - movies which I liked both. What an utter disappointment! I guess I wasn't familiar with Johnny To's work, as the others who gave the movie high marks seem to be.The movie doesn't even make an attempt at making sense! The plot, where it exists, is dubious. Action scenes start in the daylight and end in the middle of the night (or the other way round). Characters do things that don't make any sense. After the first half of the movie, I tried to watch it as a dark comedy, but even that angle failed. "Rambo, the deleted scenes" is probably a more apt description of this movie.

As a Johnnie To fan, I have to say, that this is one of his weaker works. But it sill has a standard that some others may never reach (in my opinion that is of course). While there are themes of some of his other movies here too (loyalty etc.) and there are some nice character beats, as a whole there seems something lacking. But not only that, even small details have been done better.One scene for example, where our main character puts a gun together has been done with much more style and class in the Korean movie "A bittersweet life". Also the ending of that scene feels rushed and somehow wrong. The main actors sometimes have to speak English (although it seems that some of them have been dubbed, they still learned phonetically, so it doesn't appear as dubbed) and you can tell, they are not feeling good doing this.While our main character has a flaw, there are still quite a few things that shouldn't have happened quite like they do in the movie (pictures for example, and you will know what I mean, if you watch the movie). And while the flaw is a nice touch, it also almost works against the movie.Again, a good movie in my book, but still quite a bit off ... what I came to expect from Mr. To!