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Two hitmen arrive at a man's door intending to kill him. Two more gun-toters show up, bent on stopping the first pair. When the man himself gets home, the qunitet calmly enter the apartment and launch into a casualty-free shootout, after which it's revealed that these guys were all part of the same gang in adolescence. They decide to get back together and pull a final job, though a bigtime gang boss — bigtime for Macau, that is — who one of them once attempted to assassinate has other, more death-related plans for the reunited crew.
Exiled is the work of well-regarded Hong Kong action director Johnnie To, and I assumed it would be my introduction to him. Halfway through, however, I though to myself, "Hey, this is a lot like Fulltime Killer!" And for a good reason: he did that one, too.
Alas, it has now become clear that I'm not as familiar with the HK action genre as I could be. I don't know why, since I've enjoyed all three of its members I can remember seeing: Tsui Hark's Time and Tide astonished my 16-year-old self, Fulltime Killer favorably impressed my 19-year-old self, and Exiled did not fail to entertain my 23-year-old self.
That sounds like a severe case of diminishing returns, I realize. But I believe that, where HK action is concerned, the curve bends the other way after sufficient viewing investment. The genre has so many tropes, conventions and expectations that must be internalized before one can appreciate when they're defied, played with and exploded by the filmmaker. That's one of the reasons why allegedly groundbreaking modern dance troupes fail to engage — or even fail to not put to sleep — the dance neophyte: no familiarity with the form's "rules" means no shock and awe when those rules are broken. This Onion article says it all:
The routine, which defied all reason and social order by combining the elegance of ballet with dangerous, never-before-seen "street" moves such as spinning on one's knees and snapping fingers, reportedly lasted four and a half minutes. According to Lisbon, the bold and provocative number was the culmination of a month of rehearsals, 18 years of feeling like she was destined for something special, and six weeks of dating a troubled, but gifted, in-your-face competitive dancer and high school dropout.
Sooner or later, I'm bound to put in the time to really learn HK action inside out. Once I've done so, I'll watch Exiled again. I enjoyed it more than the average action movie the first time, but I've got a feeling it would kicks enormous butt to someone steeped in the genre.
Here's one thing I already know I like about the best HK action movies, though: very little exposition. I love it when a story parachutes you right down into the middle of things, rather than eases you in with lines and lines of unnatural-sounding expository dialogue. It pains me to hear a character laboriously restate what would be obvious fact or common memory to his interlocutor. In thirty years, I'll probably be one of those cranky middle-aged cinephiles who walks out as soon as he detects his pet peeve.
Well, no. I'd never walk out of a movie. But still.
9. Expository dialogue is the cancer that is killing cinema. Please, let no more characters begin a line with, "Remember how..." A film that doesn't trust its audience to figure it out without generous helpings of shoehorned-in explanatory verbiage is a film that disrespects its audience. Worse still is the unrealistic recitation of a time period's common knowledge to establish that time period. Though my favorite film of 2006, Stephen Frears' The Queen was unfortunately peppered with dead intonations of how there is a fresh young Prime Minister named Tony Blair in office, and how the flag at Buckingham Palace of course signals only the presence of the monarch, who is the Queen, who is you, and you are not currently at the palace, so the flag is down, etc.
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