Exiled

Johnnie To finally returns..."EXILED" has essence of all previous "JOHNNIE TO" films!
EXILED is directed by Johnnie To (Full Time Killer, Election, Breaking News), one of the most acclaimed directors of Hong Kong. Johnnie To is the epitome of hard-boiled cool, his films are fresh, visually inventive and have that cinematic magic. The cast of Johnnie To's hit "The Mission" has been reunited for this film. No, this is not a sequel, although it does have very similar characters. Exiled won numerous awards in Hong Kong, including `Best Director'.

PLOT synopsis loosely derived from the DVD back cover:
The time is 1998. The setting is Macau. Every living soul jumps at every chance to make quick money before the Portuguese colony ushers in a new era under the Chinese rule. For the jaded hit men, they wonder where this journey will end.
Against this background of fin-de-siècle malaise come two hit men from Hong Kong sent to take out a renegade member trying to turn over a new leaf with his wife and newborn baby. They soon find themselves in the...

Exiled: one the the best hong kong films ever made
So my wife sees this trailer on one of her Asian horror flicks and rents it for us. Probably one of the best things she has ever done for me. It opened me to the world's new and improved John Woo; one of the coolest directors ever, Johnny To. I quickly added all To's films to my queue and let the Hong Kong buttkicking commence. Then I went straight to Amazon and bought Exiled!

Exiled is still my favorite film by To. It's about a guy who returns to a gang infested town with a bad past with all factions. So of course they send some goons to kill him. Well when the killers show up they have a show down that ends in a meal and sleep over. Reason being, they don't kill him yet because they want to help him do some jobs to get money for his soon to be widow and bastard child. The film is filled with this Confucian sense of duty, which makes these men's brotherhood top notch.

The best part of To's Exiled is how its shot. It's not like half the franticly handheld crap...

Exiled: Guns and Friendship
Though Johnnie To is often associated with Hong Kong gangster films, the prolific director has actually tried other genres of film like supernatural or romantic ones. Still, the fact remains that the respected veteran is at his best when making films about the underground world with stylish visuals, and "Exiled" once again proves his expertise with his great camera and skills to tell a powerful story of brotherhood.

In the opening scene that reminds us of old Italian-made Western films, two gangsters visit an old house in Macau, where they think someone named Wo (Nick Cheung) is living. Wo's wife Jin (Josie Ho) answers the door and says no, shutting the door on their face. Then another two gangsters arrive, quietly asking the same question. Obviously those four men have some business to do, but their motives will not be revealed until one highly-stylized shoot-out begins.

"Exiled," which was filmed without script, is made of a series of set-pieces or vignettes...

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