International Cinema Festival of India

Exiled is really its own thing in the world of action movies. If you’ve grown bored with the recent Hollywood trend of shaky cameras, incoherent action scenes and split second editing, Exiled is a breath of fresh air. If you want to see action that’s clear, coherent, and carries a sort of odd, dreamlike quality, put Exiled on your movie downloads queue.

Years after a top ranked lieutenant in the Triad betrays his boss, the boss, played by Simon Yam, sends a pair of hitmen to take him out. Meanwhile, two members of the gang come to protect the man. These characters were all friends in the gang, and it’s out of duty that the two hitmen come to kill their old partner. They come to a compromise and decide to pull off a big score to support the man’s wife and child before settling their conflict.

There’s a warmth and sweetness to what happens. Where most gangster movies are defined by that cold, impersonal “Just Business” approach to violence, here, none of the characters really want to shoot at each other, they’ve been friends since they were young, and they seem upset that it’s come to this.

Johnnie To, the Hong Kong action legend, directed this film with a sense of sweetness and sentimentality and nostalgia. John Woo and Ringo Lam defined the Heroic Bloodshed genre alongside To with films like Hard Boiled and City on Fire, and To was always considered sort of the third wheel of the genre. This film, however, is much different from anything you might have seen from that era of Hong Kong action.

The dreamlike quality to the film is really something. Shootouts take place in slow motion, with action that takes only thirty seconds being expanded to several minutes. One incredible scene begins with a character throwing a Red Bull can into the air, and climaxes just as the empty can hits the floor, with bullets flying and people dying over the course of an incredible slow motion bullet ballet.

The action is clear and coherent, the story isn’t always so clear. This actually helps the film’s dreamlike feel, so if you just watch it for the characters and for the action, the weird, twisty-turny story won’t infringe upon your enjoyment of the film and what it really does have to offer the viewer.

The Heroic Bloodshed genre was defined as being an angry, violent group of films, largely as a reaction to the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong. The heroes would take on hundreds of enemies at a time in a symbol of the Hong Kong independent spirit against that of communist China. So it’s interesting to see To taking the genre in a new direction. This film is defined by its themes of compassion and forgiveness, and there’s an odd gentleness to even the most gruesome violence in the film.

Exiled is a rare action film, and certainly one to see if you want something a little different than the usual shaky-cam shootout flick. It’s really a refreshing breath of fresh air if you’re sick and tired of not being able to tell who’s shooting who and how the heck that guy got on the roof. Definitely a change of pace.

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