Venice. Fongchuk.

"Strongly recalling some of his late 90s work, like The Mission and A Hero Never Dies, Johnnie To's Exiled plays like a lazy-day, Mexican-set Western that happens to take place in Macau," writes Variety's Derek Elley. The film "makes no apologies about aping spaghetti Western conventions - from positioning protags dramatically within the widescreen frame (as in The Mission), through operatic, Latino-flavored music, to twilight heroes givin' it one final, do-or-die shot for an honorable cause."

Screen Daily's Dan Fainaru finds To "[l]ess concerned than ever to tell an actual story, and more interested in exploring the possibilities of cinematic language... The result is an orgy of unchained violence in which a small group of professional hitmen join forces against the rest of the world, with the police looking the other way."

Grady Hendrix comments: "ScreenDaily sometimes seems to encourage a more philosophical and less aesthetic contemplation of Hong Kong movies, but I wish they'd gotten Shelly Kraicer to review this one. He brings a terrific grounding in Chinese film to his reviews, and there's something slightly off about this review. Maybe it's the focus on violence which seems misplaced (sort of like pointing out all the music in a Bollywood movie)..."

Screens in Toronto next week.

Updates: Grady Hendrix has the trailer.

Todd, at Twitch, from Toronto: "Suffice it to say that To is on a hot streak right now. A very, very hot streak."

Posted by dwhudson at September 8, 2006 7:10 AM