Vengeance   Starring: Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Testud, Anthony Wong and Simon Yam Optimum Home Entertainment RRP: £15.99 OPTD1730 Certificate: 18 Available 28 June 2010

When Francois Costello’s daughter’s family are executed by triads, the assassin turned chef travels to Hong Kong to find those responsible and exact his revenge. A chance meeting with three hit men, who have just carried out a similar job, leads to an unexpected friendship when they offer to help him find his daughter's killers. Costello, though, is on a time limit as a bullet lodged in his brain is slowly robbing him of his memory...

Vengeance (2009 - 1 hr, 44 min, 16 sec) is a fun noir thriller, directed by Johnnie To, from a Ka-Fai Wai screenplay. Like other similar films, Memento (2000) springs to mind, you have to accept the central conceit regarding Costello’s gradual fading memory to get the best out of the film. The film was nominated for three awards, including one for the director, at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Johnny Halladay is superb as Costello in his journey from vengeful father, bereft of his family and willing to kill the men responsible to his gradual forgetting his original family only to be welcomed into the arms of another. When he gets to Hong Kong his accidental witnessing of a hit brings him to the three men who will eventually help him fulfil his mission - Kwai (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang), Chu (Ka Tung Lam) and Fat Lok (Suet Lam) all of whom give a good accounting of themselves as actors.

I’m not at all sure that Costello was the only one who was suffering amnesia as I’m pretty sure that while it is revealed who killed Costello’s family, the reasoning behind this is never explained, either that or I phased out at that point. It may seem pretty twisted but the film also has quite a moral centre. As Costello’s memory goes, the trio discover that the man who ordered the hit on his daughter was none other than their own boss George Fung (Simon Yam), at which point they could have easily just put a bullet in Costello and thought nothing of it, but by this time the trio know the man and his pain and their sense of honour will not allow them to turn their backs on his plight or the job that they have accepted.

Of course, being a Hong Kong mafia film, the plot is full of shoot outs, some quite bizarre ones, including a shoot out using large bails of paper which the characters push around as cover. Although odd, none of the action creeps into the realms of fantasy, apart for the amount of bullets and damage some of the characters can take and still function, but then that’s the same in most action films.

The film is presented with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with a Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo 2.0 audio tracks. Although the film has been touted as Johnnie To’s first English language film, this is only partially correct as the film is in both French, English and I think Cantonese (I’m no expert), so the film has English subtitles which will be required for all of us who are not multilingual.

The DVD comes with a couple of extras, the original theatrical trailer (1 min, 34 sec) and The Making of Vengeance (10 min, 18 sec) which has the cast and crew bigging up the film, only this time they have a real basis for this.

So it’s a thriller with a twist, the acting is good and the action makes sure that the pace is kept up throughout the film.

8

Charles Packer