Vengeance (2009)

Purely Joyful Movie!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A blonde wife advises her children not to run under the rain while her husband, a Chinese local returns from home. She was cooking spaghetti for dinner when someone rang at the door when her husband checked the peephole – a shotgun fired through the door without warning and shot to death by three unknown hit men.Forcing his wife and her two children into hiding upstairs in the master bedroom. Her children are kept safe inside the wardrobe while she gets her gun ready while one of the hit-man lean against the wall and she began to shoot and it hits his ear. She was gunned down and her children saw her on the ground.The children has seen the hit men faces and one of the hit-man has no choice but to assassinate them.The wife arrived in the hospital, still breathing but under paralysis circumstances. An elderly man touchdown in Hong Kong to visit the paralyze woman; who happened to be his daughter: Irene Costello (Sylvie Testud). The father spoke to her in French and she told him and she wants vengeance.François Costello aka Mr. Costello (Johnny Hallyday) went on his own investigation seeking for hit men for himself. Soon, he found Kwai (Anthony Wong), Chu (Gordon Lam Ka-Tung) and Fei Lok (Lam Suet) as his choice. Their reward would all his wealth and a restaurant in France. When asked about his background-he told them that he is chef but his former life was a hit-man back 20 years ago. But his weakness is his illness that he might not remember anyone or anything he does.Mr. Costello ran away from the scene and found himself loss and trying to recall his hit men.When their investigation starts to bear fruit, the hit men who kills his daughter family is none other than fishermen: Wolf (Eddie Cheung Siu Fai), Python (Felix Wong) and Crow (Ng Ting Yip).The standoff between the Mr. Costello's hit men and his enemies went awry when they get to escape. Mr. Costello was badly injured and Fei Lok got hit in his ass.Kwai received a phone call from his potential client, George Fung (Simon Yam); who direct the hit on his girlfriend and her lover when he found out the affair somewhere in the scene. Mr. Fung then ask him and his men to attend to another group of hit men who was shot by "3 Chinese men and 1 white man" which brings them back to them.Kwai, Chu and Fei Lok had decided to disobey their paymaster and helped Mr. Costello. Disagreement and disloyalty always ended up with the final showdown.

Initial camera work looked promising but this is movie is so boring and the plot consisting almost entirely of gun battles and gore.The story: Johnny Halladay 68 (French crooner from 60s) has a family in Macau or Hong Kong who is massacred by a thug. To get vengeance (title) Halladay recruits some thugs of his own. Turns out he used to be in the French underworld no doubt a Corsican (Contelli his name) and knows how to go about this business. Halladay at 68 looks like nothing else on the planet earth thanks to plastic surgery dye and make up. The plot is nothing but a series of shoot out and pulling bullets out of people.Don't waste your time. In addition closed captioning would have helped a lot to follow this thing as Halladay's and his oriental cohorts' English was not the easiest to decipher--at least on an average TV.The cinematography of these HK cheapo movies has improved greatly but the writers have not.I finally fast forwarded it about a third the way through but why bother it just makes the incomprehensible totally opaque.. UNPLUG IT.Avoid avoid avoid. Evitez Evitez Evitez--mal mal mal...non non non...DO NOT RECOMMEND

if you ignore all the deaths.Awesome movie. I went into this movie not knowing anything. Grabs you right away.If you don't speak the language, get the dubbed version so you can better enjoy the cinematography (sacrilege to some but I thought I was going to be watching subtitled, but once it got going I decided this was better for an action film).I really enjoyed the interactions with these characters. I mean I really enjoyed these actors.I won't bore you with recaps of the movie because there are plenty here. As a side note this is supposedly part of a trilogy/pseudo trilogy including "The Mission" and "Exiled" but this is my only experience so far. I hope they are just as good...now where to find them? Forget Kill Bill....Enjoy this one!!!

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.