I'm one of those people who will never get Johnny To movies. He specializes in "re-imagining" the modern HK gangster and urban crime drama by sloppily superimposing it with classic western mythos. The problem is Exile suffers just as the rest of his movies often do from over exuberance and a significant director's attention deficit disorder when it comes to keeping the audience enthralled like Leone or Peckinpah did rather than snickering from the implausible scenarios presented on screen. The character interaction in Exile is often cheesy, melodramatic, and while there is loads of charisma from the 5 HK co-stars there is not a single line worthy repeating in this review.
Exile obviously doesn't exist in any kind of real world but a parallel universe in which doors can fly off hinges and twirl around in mid air from the impact of gun shots. You also get plenty of mugging for the camera and slo-mo pose offs with constipated grimaces by the actors. There is also some obvious product placement (Red Bull) which gives the entire movie a ridiculous campy atmosphere. The entire experience borders on self parody and if it weren't for some interesting action scenes and good music his movies would be about the equivalent of made for cable trash that you would find on U.S. cable channels.
With that being said, even at To's worst his movies are made on a relatively tiny budget and look like they cost much more. So on a dollar per quality ratio I suppose he's pretty profitable and I can understand why HK studios shower him with projects.
Exile obviously doesn't exist in any kind of real world but a parallel universe in which doors can fly off hinges and twirl around in mid air from the impact of gun shots. You also get plenty of mugging for the camera and slo-mo pose offs with constipated grimaces by the actors. There is also some obvious product placement (Red Bull) which gives the entire movie a ridiculous campy atmosphere. The entire experience borders on self parody and if it weren't for some interesting action scenes and good music his movies would be about the equivalent of made for cable trash that you would find on U.S. cable channels.
With that being said, even at To's worst his movies are made on a relatively tiny budget and look like they cost much more. So on a dollar per quality ratio I suppose he's pretty profitable and I can understand why HK studios shower him with projects.