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Review
by Kozo: |
Johnnie To’s latest treatment of the crime genre arrives
is yet another top-notch Milky Way production. Five
different triad members are brought together for one
mission: to protect Brother Lung (Eddy Ko), who has
unknown assassins out for his hide. Roy (Francis Ng)
is a minor boss who’s brought into the group along with
his right-hand guy Shin (Jackie Lui). James (Lam Suet)
is the resident gun expert, Mike (Roy Cheung) is a parking
boy who’s an ace marksman, and Curtis (Anthony Wong)
is the cold-blooded killer of the group.
Despite their disparate
styles and personalities, these five guys turn out be
quite a team. They form a bond of brotherhood amidst
the triad underworld, and that’s pretty much all this
movie is about. Sure that sounds hackneyed, but this
is a Milky Way picture, where the themes are unexplained,
the emotions bottled, and the context paramount. Basically
we just watch as these guys wander through these situations,
revealing bits and pieces of their individual characters.
What occurs in the film makes complete sense despite
the lack of overt exposition. The characters are revealed
so well that we're able to understand who they are and
what they're doing through minor emotion, or even just
the slightest physical action.
The rest of the film is all
extraneous but utterly essential minutiae about the
day-to-day of the mission. Johnnie To puts his fingerprints
all over the movie, and it shows in the controlled directorial
style, which yields some of the most interesting action
sequences put to film. This is a great genre piece that
succeeds with casual moments of sacrifice, honor, and
silent brotherhood. Johnnie To has cited The Seven
Samurai as an influence, and a connection between
the two films can easily be seen. In both films inaction
and stillness are as riveting as kinetic action, and
the internal lives of the genre character take on extraordinary
meaning. Maybe The Mission will be too slow for
some, but for the fans it’s an engaging bit of pulp
fiction. (Kozo 1999) |
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