The Mission (1999)

Maybe I should've written the original title: "Cheung Fo" in order not to create any confusion with an older much more known film, but since the interest for HK movies doesn't seem to be that big around me, I've told myself that it would be more "catchy" in English :). Although, I have to admit that in this case I don't have something that I would strongly recommend. Actually, a bit off-topic, it seems that I've reached a phase again where I tend to select what I see based on length criteria (in this particular case is somewhere below 90 minutes), which is probably not very "healthy" for my blog entries. But, let's see what we have here ...

I'll start as usual with the subject. About which I'll be quite blunt in this case: it's lame. So lame, that I won't hesitate spoiling something like 90% of it in the next lines. Extra info: I think it doesn't really matter, since this movie is probably not to be seen for the subject. So .. we have a boss of a Chinese Triad, somewhere in Hong Kong who manages to survive an assassination attempt. Following, he hires a group of five trusted bodyguards, four experienced and one rookie, who manage to protect him in another two similar situations. After which, the head behind the attempts (obviously a member of the same Triad family) is identified, executed and the problem solved .. with something like 15-20 minutes before the movie ending. So, in this interval we have the second problem revealed, totally unrelated with the first part = "the rookie" had an affair with the boss's wife .. and obviously this has to be solved too. Well, I'm not gonna spoil everything, although it's not that hard to predict the "unpredictable" ending. That's all. Now let's see what's worth seeing in this movie ...

The '99 production is directed by Johnnie To. A while ago I was writing about something shot during the same year, more exactly "Running Out of Time" (or "Am Zin"). The interesting part is that the respective title from my lighting quick unreliable research did at the moment seemed to be done on the rush between the scenes for the current discussed movie. I'm not sure it's exactly like this, but in my opinion that movie is far superior to this one here, although it seems rather unpolished in comparison. It is though a totally different style. To be specific, it has a light scent of "melancholic drama" ( I can't come up with another term right now ) which in my opinion is exactly the nice part that gets to your heart in HK action movies (as long as it doesn't become too cheesy). However, Johnnie To, quite appreciated as a director there, is a bit different in this aspect from what I've seen up to the moment ("Election 1 and 2", "Vengeance" with Johnny Halliday + the rest referenced up to here). That's why I've been surprised this Spring by the other title. Anyway, here we get back to his classic style. Which is .. dry & cold (I'm not really in my best day for finding the right terms, and I also don't have time to think too much, but that's pretty much "the feeling"). It's a simplistic subject, with a simplistic dialogue, an extremely dry humor .. to check out the scene with the ball game between the five bodyguards that I've linked below instead of the trailer. The only aspect that seems somehow opposed to that is the score .. and I managed to find also a clip for this, although it's not the best quality. Is a mix of themes, repeating quite often, which seem to be taken from an '80s or early '90s platform game, as Mario or something else. Overall, this approach for the movie, the style combination more exactly if we consider also the cinematography (which I have to admit that's very nice even simple = if you're careful enough you can spot details showing the work put in it), is probably the main argument to watch what we have here. As a final idea I've had the feeling, keeping the proportions, that I see something like a Melville movie ("Le Samourai" with Alain Delon as a classic example) transposed in the Asian version. It's not only my opinion, I've heard this comparison made for To before. Unfortunately, despite the seeming general appreciation, this style which doesn't care to much about the story is not really on my taste.

Rating: 3 out of 5