#21 — Exiled
This is an ongoing, illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies. Last week I talked about one of Michelle Yeoh’s best works, Royal Warriors.
This is a nice change of pace from some of the more combustible, action copping and super soldier assassinating I’ve been wading through. I haven’t seen many of Johnnie To’s films. He’s a prolific artist who seems to specialize in crime stories, and sometimes squeezes in a shootout here and there (the opening gunfight in Breaking News, for example) that will demand your full attention.
Drug War was my gateway into his filmography and his work often feels effortless — constantly taking simple or cliched setups and delicately toying with them until you feel like you’re watching something new. There’s a patience and control to his work that highlights the sheer stupidity of garden variety Hollywood convention. Exiled is my favorite of the half dozen or so I’ve been able to watch. I try not to make these kind of comparisons, but this really feels like his own “The Wild Bunch”, and I might even like it more than Peckinpah’s classic.
It is very reminiscent of westerns, taking place in Macau locations that feel like ghost towns — completely absent of civilian life. It opens on empty streets, with hitmen in trench coats, and everyone in town is either a gangster or a couple cops trying to avoid dying before they retire. The first time I watched this, I had a difficult time trying to connect the central relationships. Basically, a job to eliminate someone leads to another job in protecting that someone, and then it’s revealed that all these someones have known each other for a long time. Old bonds are hard to break, so these guys end up reuniting.
*points to screen* Those guys are the “exiled”. They gotta go away now, on account of not completing their mission and upsetting a vengeful Simon Yam. But they also love taking scores and being pals, so they decide to pick their own job and bury the hatchet. That’s what a wild bunch does, they take scores. The action is the juice.
Of all the movies and directors I’ve covered in this countdown so far, there hasn’t been a director that shoots action like Johnnie To. It feels like so much is happening, but in this trance-like state of controlled chaos where you’re able to easily follow it all. Some of that is the occasional use of slow motion, but it’s also just incredible camera control, blocking, and some healthy restraint. The stand-out of Exiled takes place in a darkened operating room where a black market doctor tries to service rival gangs. This ends up going badly for everyone involved, but it leads to an amazing sequence where billowing curtains and shadow seem to hide a surplus of gunmen. Their crossfire is lit by muzzle flashes, and their wounds highlighted by misty clouds of red. It’s like a Renaissance painting alternative to the squibby mess of macho action cartoons.
The melancholy tone makes these scenes feel tragic. The shootouts are great to watch, but also something I want these characters to avoid. To’s humanizing depiction of professional criminals makes the action feel like what it actually is; a consequence.
In spite of being hardened killers, they have a youthful sense of camaraderie. They joke with each other and talk about life and personal stuff, and start to forget they’re gangsters. They talk about what they want to do with their lives, and with the money they earn. It’s hard to imagine any of these dreams materializing, you can kind of feel an outside force of some kind pulling them towards a fateful conclusion that they didn’t plan for.
Anthony Wong is perfect as the leader, Blaze. I’m just a big fan of this actor. There are very few people who can look as ordinary, yet also be threatening or flat out cool when they want to be. He could pass for a mild mannered accountant or a guy that slits throats for the mob, maybe the Hong Kong equivalent of Eddie Marsan. In Full Contact, he plays a wannabe gang member named Sam who’s way out of his depth — nervously sweating and showing his cards. Here he gets to be the more assured, successful, and dangerous version of that guy.
He seems to carry a burden of self awareness that again brings to mind The Wild Bunch. If Wong is playing William Holden’s role, he has that same, gradual understanding that cracks are beginning to form. His mistakes are felt and seen on his face. None of it needs to be explained. To is a great visual storyteller, and the cast conveys a deep history that runs back to their childhood.
I guess if there’s a critical point where this diverges from The Wild Bunch, it’s the gang’s collective moral compass. There’s no yearning for a more suitable era to get wild and do crimes. It’s more about the realization that honor and friendship override the criminal laws and codes that divided them in the first place. Most of them have an opportunity to cut and run at some point. Instead, they stick around for one last redemptive act. It’s one of the reasons I love the movie so much, and there’s a sentimentality to the late-game heroics that I think is earned.
There are moments of levity that keep things from ever getting too somber — at one point it almost transitions into a quirky road trip story. The music is a rumination of old memories, regret, and goodbyes — it reminds me a lot of Clint Mansell’s work (there’s a guitar tune that starts almost identical to the one at the end of The Wrestler before spinning into a western twang). It ends with snapshots of the gang goofing off in a photo booth, and a collage of their history is overlayed with laughter. It’s a perfect ending — a favorite of any of the movies I’ve covered so far.
