GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Yashua Kimbrough (jimniexperience) 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 ..

MBunge Though this mesmerizing movie is supposedly about revenge, it's really a story about honor. The honor a man carries for his family. The honor he shares among men like himself. The honor he clings to when everything else in his life is gone. It's the sense of obligation that drives men to do the most horrible of deeds and make the most noble of sacrifices. With the deliberate direction of Johnnie To and a cast of smoldering intensity, Vengeance is the sort of film that you can't stop watching.After his daughter and her family are gunned down in China, a Frenchman with the fashion sense of Boris Badenov and a face that gets odder the closer you are sets out for revenge. A stranger in a strange land, Francis Costello (Johnny Hallyday) hires three expert killers (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Ka Tung Lam and Sute Lam) to find the men responsible for his family tragedy and help him take his revenge. But a surprise found along the way and a secret Costello is keeping to himself force all four of them to decide what kind of men they are and in what sort of world they're willing to live.The main thing to know about Vengeance, other than that it's quite good, is that this motion picture is dominated by silence. There's very little dialog, less of a soundtrack and even the gun battles are striking for how they echo in the quiet. Except for a few blips of expository dialog, the storytelling here is entirely visual. Director To exhibits a master's touch in framing his actors' movements, expressions and even postures to beam this tale through your eyes and imprint it on your brain.The action scenes here are magnificently realized and striking in their use of space. From a running gun battle through moonlit woods to a shootout in a building, the way events unfold in a linear fashion is far more compelling than the most frenetic blur of jump cuts and camera movement. It captures the athleticism of real human movement without exceeding into the realm of stylized combat ballet.Johnny Hallyday may be the star of Vengeance but I found him too odd looking a duck to connect with. It took me a while simply to get used to the fact that he wasn't wearing some poorly molded prosthetic make up. For me, the standout of the cast was Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as Kwai, the de factor leader of the three killers hired by Costello. He draws your eyes in like magnetic iron and then reflects your gaze back onto Hallyday. Chau-Sang plays Kwai as seeing that Costello used to be the sort of man Kwai has always wanted to believe he was, helping to define both men's characters and giving the viewer a true north upon which to fix their eyes. It's Chau-Sang that elevates this story and banishes all petty and craven motivations and concerns.Now, it doesn't make a lot of sense that in one scene Costello and his killers have the aim of drunken Sleestaks and in the rest they can shoot like Annie Oakley. The secret Costello carries is also more plot device than anything else. Those are minor quibbles, though.Vengeance is a great example of how playing against convention can breathe new life into the most clichéd premise. Instead of being hot and loud and insistent, this movie is cool and calm and attractively implacable. It will leave you wanting to see more work by Johnnie To and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, which is always one of the highest compliments you can give any film.

p-stepien Costello (an overly plastic Johnny Hallyday), owner and head chef of a French restaurant, arrives to Macau on news that his daughter was in terminal condition after being attacked at home by gunmen. The remaining casualties are her husband and their two children. Obliged by his daughter to inflict revenge on the perpetrators Costello disembarks on a mission of vengeance. Unfortunately for him he has no knowledge of who is guilty of the crime, whilst he himself has limited detective capabilities as he has a bullet lodged in his brain which impairs his short term memory (especially in regards to facial cognisance). Per chance he is witness to a murder committed by three contract killers. Instead of handing them over to the police Costello decides to hire them to aid him in his deadly mission...One immediately comes to ask why such a movie ever made it to Cannes (in the main competition to boot). Yes, it is stylish and some of the action sequences have many thought put into them. But all in all the characters are bland, vague and stereotypical, while the script never delves into more cerebral subject matter. Even though the opportunities were ripe for the taking. In one scene it turns out that the killers have families and wives, but this never causes any moral dilemmas to Costello or his crew. In another scene one of the contract killers poses interesting questions: Can you avenge something you can't even remember? This question however only lingers for a while, as soon after we are knee deep in blood and any contemplative course of action is muted out by gunfights.In the end Johnnie To seemed too focused on keeping the movie cool and tried hard not to divert attention from the fact that his sole aim is to make a straightforward revenge action flick. The saving grace of the movie are the thought-out action scenes and small details, which seemed to have consumed all the creative energy the scriptwriter had for this movie. That said the shoot-out in the forest is so lame, pointless and remarkably stupid that it actually had me laughing (never-ending bullets, seven grown men running around a forest with guns, but unable to hit an elephant with them and so on...).

dbborroughs Johnnie To gives me a wild end of year treat with his tale of French chef who comes to Macao to get revenge for his daughter. She was shot and her family killed in a hit for an unknown reason. The chef, played by Johnny Hallyday, hires three hit men to help him get revenge. The trouble is things are not quite what they seem and complications set in.This is a wonderfully awkward film, awkward in part as the result of the multiple languages being spoken through the film (the mix of English, French and Chinese require that you see this with subtitles. They also create some awkward speaking performances as people are not always comfortable with what they are saying) and partly the result of the way things unfold. It takes awhile for the film to click but once it does the film blossoms into one of the better films of the year.To be certain there is action and twists galore, but the best thing in the film are the actors. Anthony Wong, Suet Lam and Ka Tung Lam are the men Hallyday hires and they are wonderful. You sense the bond between them. Hallyday is a revelation in a role that is at first simple, and then becomes something more. To say that his stoic face hides many things is an understatement. Not to spoil anything, but what first seems like a kick ass attitude soon becomes something else entirely. There is something going on here and Hallyday pulls it off winningly. Its hands down one of the best performances of the year. You go with the film where ever its going because you like Hallyday and his friends.......which is a good thing because there are two sequences in the later part of the film that almost derails the film. Both sequences follow in close proximity to each other (one is a weak shoot out in a field and the other is what happens after that) and are going to be the point at which many people either give up on the film or press onward. I kind of gave up, but this being a Johnnie To film and what had gone before was so good I figured that To would pull it out. He did and the film ends with one of the great gun fights of the year.(I blame the sequences on screenwriter Ka-Fai Wai who is one of the best writers in Asia today, but at the same time he often takes things in an odd direction just look at Running on Karma, Himalaya Singh, The Mad Detective or Written By). I think if you're willing to go with the bumps you'll find the film rewarding.I really liked this film a great deal. For those who like more than just straight forward action this is a must. Honestly there is a great deal going on here and it makes you think as it makes you go wow.One of the Better films of 2009.