Vengeance

[Milkyway]

Hallyday, Testud to star in To's HK-French Vengeance

French actors Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Testud have been cast in Johnnie To's upcoming thriller Vengeance which is being made as a co-production between France's ARP, To's Milkway Image and Hong Kong-based Media Asia Group.

Scripted by regular To collaborator Wai Ka-fai, the story follows a former assassin, now a French chef, who comes to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter whose family was murdered.

The cast also includes To favourites Anthony Wong, Lam Ka Tung, Lam Suet and Simon Yam.

"This is my first time ever in China. I'm very proud to be directed by a master such as Johnnie To," said Hallyday in a statement.

"As my first international film, I'm sure this collaboration will bring a new edge to my film-making," said To.

ARP last year acquired Hong Kong thiller Eye In The Sky, directed by Yau Nai Hoi and produced by To.

Vengeance has started shooting and is planned for a summer 2009 release.

http://www.screendaily.com/ScreenDailyArticle.aspx?intStoryID=42108&Category=

[AlbertV]

And to think, Johnny Hallyday's son David made his film debut with the 1987 B-movie comedy He's My Girl. At least Johnny didn't go that route Thank God

I wonder how the elder Hallyday is going to be in this film.

And one more little bit of trivia: Alias fans will probably learn that Hallyday's nephew is Michael Vartan, who played Michael Vaughn on the series.

[Milkyway]

Hallyday, Testud join 'Vengeance'

Johnnie To directs ARP, Media Asia thriller

Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday and French actress Sylvie Testud are to star in Hong Kong-set crime thriller "Vengeance," helmed by Johnnie To.

Pic, about a French assassin-turned-chef who comes to Hong Kong to avenge a murder, is set up as an ARP production in partnership with Hong Kong shingle Media Asia and produced by Milkyway Image.

Scripted by Wai Ka-fai, "Vengeance" has begun lensing in Hong Kong and is skedded for delivery next summer. It also stars To regulars Anthony Wong, Simon Yam, Lam Suet and Lam Ka Tung.

For To, pic is the continuation of a love-in between France and Asia, but a change of project. The helmer was ramping up to shoot a remake of French classic "Le Cercle Rouge" with Studio Canal and the Hong Kong thriller "Death of a Hostage."

According to a spokesman for Milkyway, "Le Cercle Rouge" is still in development while shooting has halted on "Hostage" while the director's focus shifts to "Vengeance."

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117996383.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

[AlbertV]

This is going to be one interesting film!!!!

[Milkyway]

Johnny Hallyday Talks Vengeance!

Johnny Hallyday was interviewed by Paris Match:

He said Vengeance’s shooting is going well, he’s not used to be so well treated.

He’s surprised by the shooting’s organization, the staff is really pragmatic: when they’re shooting in the street, they pitch tents on the sidewalk, they don’t rent rooms. It’s simple! But when it comes to cinema technics (movements, body language, positions…), they’re meticulous. For one scene, they do different shots. He said, it’s a film noir, but it’s seems more like a western: Johnnie To makes a lot of close-ups on lips, eyes, hands. He knows what he wants!

He also said he knew Johnnie To’s movies, but he didn’t know he was considered like a Star in Asia! He said To is really strict, and when he’s shooting a violent scene he’s like Melville, but when it’s an intimist scene, he’s more like Godard. Hallyday gave an example: he had to take a drink, and To told him “You’re going too fast”. Hallyday said in France he would have been told to hurry.

Hallyday thinks they’re doing a great film noir, with some action scenes with blood!

About working with Johnnie To: he said he’s the only actor who read the script. The others don’t have any ideas about the story… But Hallyday said they’re used to it, they fully trust To. Hallyday said Godard worked more or less the same.

Finally, Hallyday talked a little about his character, Francis Costello. He’s an ex-gangster, now chef. He’s french but his daughter is married to a chinese man, she lives in Hong Kong. But they’re going to be killed by the mob. So Costello comes there to find the killers, and kill them. He doesn’t speak chinese, but he’s helped by 3 local killers.

Hallyday said it’s a film noir with a lot of humour. A surprising humour, quite unusual.

http://wildgrounds.com/index.php/2008/12/30/johnny-hallyday-talks-vengeance/

[Milkyway]

http://wildgrounds.com/index.php/2009/01/29/more-photos-for-johnnie-tos-vengeance/

[Milkyway]

Teaser:

[Milkyway]

http://wildgrounds.com/index.php/2009/03/04/johnnie-tos-vengeance-gets-a-teaser-and-more/

[Milkyway]

Synopsis

Frank Yuma, a long time enforcer and hit man for an organized crime syndicate is suspected of being an informer for the FBI. The syndicate orders a hit on Frank and hires his own crew to do the job. But unfortunately for them, Frank Yuma survives

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1329454/plotsummary

http://www.beyondhollywood.com/poster-images-and-teaser-trailer-for-johnnie-tos-vengeance/

[Milkyway]

Official site: http://www.vengeance-lefilm.com/

[Milkyway]

Teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUA1ouTixw&feature=channel_page

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyYITh-ijM0&feature=channel_page

[emacs]

this Johnnie To film looks very promising. his films have been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival for several years. hopefully, we'll get screenings of Vengeance during http://tiff09.ca/default.aspx

[Milkyway]

Newest trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-8Nnmun4A&feature=channel_page

[wayne]

i am so psyched ... trailer looks awsome. i like does misty bloodshoots XD

[Milkyway]

French critics love Johnnie To’s Vengeance?

There was a press preview screening end of april. And the press was surprised in a good way by Johnny Hallyday, usually known as the french Elvis but also a poor actor. So the question is, what Johnnie To did to make him look (so) good?

In a great article entitled “Johnny Hallyday, the role of his life“, Le Monde says there was a kind of “verbal curfew imposed on Hallyday” even though the superstar tried to negotiate, Johnnie To always answered “Enough chitchat! I’m bored by dialogue. I prefer silent actors“.

Johnnie To didn’t really know Johnny Hallyday, and said the first time he met him he was totally amazed by Hallyday’s eyes, “it’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen, you never know what’s behind these eyes, you can just guess there are a lot of wounds. I immediately knew these eyes will give me a film“.

Because they don’t speak the same languages, they didn’t talk much says the article. But quite frustrated, Hallyday once asked To why he chose him? The director said “I like you“.

Johnnie To’s favourite scene in Vengeance is when Hallyday is on a beach, without memories and surrounded by children, “Hallyday is totally natural there“. And according to the article, Hallyday fought hard to make this scene happen. The actor didn’t want Vengeance to be a “manly film” only.

Finally, Johnnie To says he would like to direct The Red Circle after Vengeance, and he even offered a part to Hallyday (he would be the drunken former cop played by Yves Montand in the Melville’s version). He’s still wondering what’s behind Hallyday’s eyes.

Wait & see, after a Palme d’or?

http://wildgrounds.com/index.php/2009/05/09/french-critics-love-johnnie-tos-vengeance/

[Milkyway]

CANNES -- While it is common wisdom to suggest that the Hong Kong film industry is no longer what it was in the days when Shaw Bros. and Golden Harvest ruled the roost, or that the sector is becoming swamped by the influence of mainland China, Johnnie To remains an archetypically Hong Kong director whose star is still on the rise. To is old school Hong Kong in that he is prolific, frequently uses improvised locations and minimalist screenplays, often works on multiple productions at the same time and collaborates again and again with the same cluster of actors and technicians. But To's greatest skill is his ability to add extra layers of meaning or impact while working within commercial genres, particularly gangster and comedy films. Although he has been directing for nearly 30 years, it is only in the past five that he has become a darling of the international festival circuit, with "Breaking News," "Election," "Exiled" and "Sparrow" receiving berths in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Another To strength is an unwillingness to stand still. His Cannes film this year, "Vengeance," is his first co-produced with a French company, while one of his next, a remake of Melville's "Red Circle," will be his first English-language studio project. The helmer recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter contributing editor Patrick Frater about revenge, French cinema's influence on his work and making films the Hong Kong way.

The Hollywood Reporter: How and where did "Vengeance" come from?

Johnnie To: So many people I've met at film festivals have promised to set me up with a meeting with Alain Delon, who I've long admired. But when (French distributor) ARP actually delivered, I got together with my writer (and producing partner Wai Ka-fai) to come up with a concept. We presented the script to Delon, but he backed off. We still liked the script and so did ARP so we decided to proceed, but there was a year of hiatus in which I made "Mad Detective" and "Sparrow." Then in February last year during Berlin, Michele (Halberstat, head of ARP) told me she would set up a meeting between me and Johnny Hallyday the following month. I knew nothing of him, but when I met him I was fascinated by his presence and thought he'd work well for the project.

THR: So you've done an international movie, but in the Hong Kong way?

To: Yes. The director has full control over all creative and production aspects of the movie. We can add things or change things as we like. Here, except for the two French actors and the editor, the entire crew was from Hong Kong.

THR: Is it in English, French or Cantonese?

To: None of my movies have a lot of dialogue (laughs). When you have French interacting with (HK) locals they speak English and when the locals speak amongst themselves they speak Cantonese.

THR: Is the sense of place as important in this movie as it often is in your pictures?

To: The story is actually set in Macau, but most of it was shot in Hong Kong. The parts of Macau we shot have a colonial European look, whereas Hong Kong is more modern. We've chosen to mix them up here. This is a story of vengeance that could happen anywhere. But what we choose is the local colors that bring it out.

THR: And what is this "revenge movie" actually about?

To: Revenge is an act. It is ingrained in one's head. Something you have to do. But what this film is trying to examine is what is the role of revenge if memory does not play a part.

THR: How do you think this film will work in France, where Johnny Hallyday is the biggest singing star?

To: I shot the movie my way, with an actor who was right for the part, ignoring his reputation in France. I had not seen his previous outings as an actor, only some stills from "The Man On the Train" and some of his concert footage.

THR: Studiocanal seems to be recruiting a band of top Asian directors to remake films from its library. Is there a natural connection between the French and Hong Kong film industries?

To: HK cinema and French cinema have influenced each other at times in the past 40 years. The cycle may now be turning so that French people are again interested in working with Asian talent. But not every film will work, they need to be stylish. Maybe, too, the rise of China as a great power is having an influence on the way people view Asian culture.

THR: So which French films influenced you?

To: I grew up watching a lot of French thrillers, but at the time I was too young to pay attention to director's names. A lot of people compare my movies to Jean-Pierre Melville, and, thinking back, I saw a lot of films starring Alain Delon, so I guess it would be Melville.

THR: Though you've been making movies for far longer, Cannes has screened four of your films in the past five years. Have they seen something new in your latest films?

To: Difficult to say. I'm too involved. Every festival is looking for something new and different. And I'm always trying to do something different. Maybe I just fit.

THR: Since then, your films also have screened in Berlin and Venice. Do you now have a different audience to the one where you started?

To: Festivals and the work we do at them are very helpful at enlarging the audience. Where once my movies were only seen by some people on DVD, now they may be seen in theaters. I'm assuming that much of the audience for "Vengeance" may never have seen my previous movies, but may go and seek out some of the earlier films.

THR: You have a reputation for working with the same actors again and again. What does this help?

To: Many are old collaborators. First they trust my vision, second I don't have to explain everything. It makes my filmmaking more convenient. Anthony Wong is a very solid performer and I know that if he improvises a line it is because it comes from his understanding of the character, not just for his own enjoyment.

THR: You are also known for working on many projects at the same time. Yet quite recently there was a year when you didn't have a camera in your hands. What happened?

To: Reputations linger. I haven't really been like that in the past three years and I don't want to work on multiple projects. I will aim to set my schedule better in the future. Actually, after completing "Sparrow," there was a 12-month period before I started "Vengeance." In that time I was very busy developing the script for "Red Circle."

THR: Early preparations started on "Red Circle" and then stopped. Is the picture ever going to happen?

To: It needs time. I'm not satisfied with the script and if I'm not satisfied nobody else is going to be. But it is absolutely one of my priorities as you can see (points to the wall where script notes are plastered.) "Death of a Hostage," which is a Hong Kong production through Media Asia, is probably what I'll shoot next. Then, hopefully, "Red Circle."

THR: Other top Hong Kong directors such as John Woo, Tsui Hark and Peter Chan have recently set themselves up in Beijing. Are you planning to quit Hong Kong?

To: The mainland market is only going to continue to grow. I make films according to the projects I have. I won't go to China because everyone else is going to China. If I have a project that should be done in China and is best done in China, then it will be.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/interviews_profiles/e3i6ba95b8a606e6ae961ae7b1a10816fdf

[Milkyway]

Vengeance

A revenge shoot-em-up which fires mostly blanks, Johnnie To’s eagerly anticipated pairing with French actor and rocker Johnny Hallyday is unlikely to make it into the To Top Tens obsessively compiled by the Hong Kong director’s loyal fanbase. As always, the sensuality of To’s visual style and soundscapes and the choreography of the film’s bullet ballet provide reasons to watch, but the contrived plot, some wooden English dialogue and Hallyday’s stilted perfomance derail proceedings well before the final showdown.

What’s really lacking in Vengeance is the narrative inventiveness which lifted films like Breaking News or PTU out of the Hong Kong crime genre box and turned them into arthouse crossover items. Producer/distributor ARP releases the film in France on May 20 – but the audience driven by the pulling power of ageing rocker Hallyday, who is a national institution, is likely to be short-lived, and may not translate to other territories. Though he has become a festival favourite over the last five or six years, To is still invisible to most ordinary filmgoers, and Vengeance is unlikely to change this. Most of its ultimate audience will probably come from DVD.

There’s something very physical and compelling about To’s innate feel for cinematic sheen and syntax, and it’s fully on display in the 90-second pre-title sequence, which shows the brutal slaying of a happy Macau family – French mother Irene (Testud), her Chinese husband and their two young sons – by a trio of hitmen. Left for dead, Irene survives – and when chisel-faced father Costello (Hallyday) arrives at the hospital, he swears to avenge the murder.

Costello engages three local hitmen (To regulars Wong, Tung and Suet) to find the killers. To has a way with character actors, but the wry chemistry between the three assassins and the rugged Frenchman – who offers them his restaurant on the Champs-Elysees as collateral for the deal – doesn’t quite work. Maybe it’s because Suet and Tung learned their lines phonetically, maybe it’s because, behind his unflinching Easter Island facemask, Hallyday looks as if he’s not sure what he’s doing here. But around 30 minutes in, the humour-tinged noirish atmosphere that To is usually so good at evoking begins to tip over into absurdity.

Essentially it’s a script problem. Worst of all is the moment around 45 minutes in when a wounded Costello – who by now has revealed that before working as a chef, he too was a hitman – tells his hired guns that he has a bullet lodged in his brain, and is in imminent danger of losing his memory.

It looks like a plot turn that might have been invented on the hoof, but this is the first script that To and Wai Ka-fai actually committed to paper. This new fact allows for some Memento-style visual business as Costello rapidly drifts into amnesia and is forced to write down the names of friends and enemies on photos, and on his gun. It also gives an amusing edge to the final last-man-standing shoot out, but the slapdash way it’s introduced loses the sympathy of an audience that was already wavering between indulgence and impatience.

As ever, there are compensations. To is a master of location shooting, and Macau’s neon casino signs and ancient lanes provide an atmospheric backdrop for the film’s early scenes – an atmosphere that is underlined by Lo Tayu’s great urban score, which alternates blaxploitation-style funk with jangling Wild West guitar melodies. A scrapyard on a piece of wasteland backed by distant high-rise office blocks supplies another atmospheric setting, and becomes the location for the film’s most choreographed gunfight involving huge bales of scrap paper – a sequence whose self-conscious theatricality is underlined by the improvised grandstand from which Fung surveys the action.

http://www.screendaily.com/vengeance/5001268.article

[Milkyway]

Vengeance

(France-Hong Kong)

Johnnie To and Johnny Hallyday have a bloody good time in "Vengeance," a smoothly executed revenge thriller that finds one of Hong Kong's genre masters in assured action-movie form. Apart from the novelty of casting a Gallic rock 'n' roll icon as an aging ex-hitman exacting payback with the help of some Macau mobsters, this tightly tuned, heavily armed vehicle is vintage To, though it may strike both partisans and detractors as more of the stylish same. Western elements and abundant bloodshed make this To's most marketable item since 2006's "Exiled," with appeal for Asian buffs and French hipsters alike.

Wai Ka-fai's script gets down to its bloody business in the opening minutes, as a Chinese man and his French wife (Sylvie Testud) are gunned down in their Macau home. The violence -- accompanied by the smoky, stylized bloodspray that's become a To trademark -- dispels the mood of domestic bliss with shocking suddenness. From there, "Vengeance" descends into a darkly beautiful Triad gang underworld, where every confrontation must be preceded by much slo-mo brooding and sizing up of one's competition, often through sunglasses.

In a poignant but amusingly tongue-in-cheek scene, the wife, who has miraculously survived the attack, is visited by her father Costello (Hallyday), who promises to avenge her. Cutting a dangerously debonair figure in black hat and overcoat, Hallyday immediately draws all eyes, his magnificently grave, weathered features suggesting a lifetime of hardened criminality and brutal life experience. But there's also something about him -- perhaps the charming fact that his character, who hasn't used a gun in 20 years, now works as a chef in Paris -- that has a way of putting the viewer at ease. As coolly taciturn killers go, Hallyday's Costello is a pleasure to spend an hour and 45 minutes with.

The first of the film's suave setpieces brings Costello into contact with three assassins (played by To regulars Anthony Wong, Lam Suet and Lam Ka-tung) in the employ of a vulgar, decadent crime boss, Fung (another To standby, Simon Yam). Once Costello enlists the trio to help him hunt down his quarry, "Vengeance" settles into a wry, almost comfortably familiar buddy-picture rhythm, as the four men meticulously reconstruct the initial crime (precisely edited by Cheng Siu-keung), compare weaponry over a hot meal, and quietly consider the possibility of honor among hitmen.

As the action shifts from Macau to Hong Kong, Wai's script borrows a few twists from "Memento" and "The Memory of a Killer": It becomes apparent that Costello is experiencing the rapid onset of amnesia, imbuing his mission with fresh urgency. The final scenes, which include a lovely beachside interlude and a nighttime showdown in the streets of Hong Kong, are at once sad, elegiac and strangely joyous.

"Vengeance" isn't exactly subversive, and it more than keeps the promise bluntly extended by its title. But it would be a mistake to overlook the ideas that occasionally penetrate its sleek surface. To acknowledges that the seven professional murderers onscreen (four good, three bad, for those who care to delineate) are in many ways interchangeable. He also foregrounds the desire to protect one's children as the overriding motivation that governs the film's universe, not only setting the plot in motion but unexpectedly complicating it along the way.

Hallyday's craggy charisma stands out yet never overpowers his Chinese co-stars, with whom he blends effortlessly. To's widescreen mise-en-scene also merits top billing, as the helmer manipulates light, image and sound -- at one point even orchestrating a gory shootout by selective moonlight -- to bravura effect.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940275.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

[Milkyway]

http://festival-cannes.fr/en/mediaPlayer/9850.html

[Milkyway]

Film Review: Vengeance

Bottom Line: Director Johnnie To and star Johnny Hallyday in a marriage made in action-movie heaven.

CANNES -- This is a tale of two Johnnies. Renowned Hong Kong action director Johnnie To teams up with iconic French singer-actor Johnny Hallyday for a stylish, whiz-bang revenge melodrama in "Vengeance."

With atmospheric locations in Hong Kong and Macau and To's signature set pieces of choreographed gunplay all accomplished with a bemused wink to his audience, "Vengeance" can penetrate just about any market in the world. Popcorn and art certainly can co-exist as this movie amply demonstrates.

Interestingly, To knew nothing of Hallyday's long career in music and cinema before Alain Delon dropped out of the project. But thank goodness the two Johnnies met. With his long, deeply etched face, lanky figure in dark suit and tie, sometimes accessorized with an overcoat and black hat, and slow, steady gate, Hallyday perfectly fits the story's concept: A soft-spoken, deadly stranger in a foreign land who seeks the help of local assassins to take his revenge.

Hallyday plays a Parisian restaurateur who journeys to Macau when his daughter is critically injured and her husband and two small children brutally murdered by Triad hit men. There is in the Frenchman's manner the strong suggestion that whatever his culinary talents, he knows his way around guns and men of violence even better.

Hong Kong action films display impatience with logic and procedure in their anxiety to get to the point. So Hallyday doesn't need to go looking for help to penetrate the Chinese crime world -- it comes right to him.

Down the corridor from his hotel room, moments after he checks in, three hit men (played winningly by Anthony Wong, Lam Ka Tung and Lam Suet) are taking care of their boss' unfaithful mistress. So Hallyday hires them to help him find and execute his family's killers. No one seems to anticipate what an audience immediately will: Won't these Triad hit men know the Triad hit men who wiped out Hallyday's family? And isn't it likely that their boss may know or actually be the other assassins' boss?

Yes and yes to all that but, again, only the characters seems oblivious to the obvious. Best to forget these kind of questions so you can get to two extremely witty shootouts and one chase up and down a narrow building.

One shootout takes place at a picnic area in the woods, where the two sets of killers calmly wait for a barbeque to finish, night to fall and the hit men's families to depart before jerking out their weapons. The other, by contrast, is in broad daylight at a dumpsite, where everyone takes cover behind huge bales of compacted trash as they blast away with eager abandon.

A kicker here -- which To and writer Wai Ka Fai make clear much too late in the story, to be honest -- is that an old bullet lodged near the Frenchman's brain is causing rapid memory loss. So rapidly, again illogically, that his sense of purpose when he sets foot in Macau and later Hong Kong abruptly vanishes at the mid-point. He must, as did the hero of "Memento," take photos of people and label them so he knows friends from enemies and can recall his daughter's tragedy.

So the philosophical question the film raises is what does vengeance really mean when you've lost all memory? Whatever the answer to that, everyone is programmed to continue. Which means that even the white man's hired Triad assassins are willing to go up against their own boss and fellow assassins for the sake of this foreigner.

OK, so rational behavior takes a backseat to genre requirements, though few if any will care when the killers stalk each other with such a tongue-in-cheek sense of destiny and deliver deadpan dialogue that makes fun of their own absurdity. Call it cornball existentialism.

Sylvie Testud turns up with hardly any introduction as a woman who plays a key role in assisting Hallyday in exacting revenge while Simon Yam seems to enjoy himself as the smug villain.

Cheng Siu Keung's moody cinematography gives "Vengeance" a noir-ish sensibility while David Richardson's smooth editing pulls the action sequences together in a most satisfying way.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/film-review-vengeance-1003973844.story

[mark187]

Cannes report on Vengeance, in the first half of video. according to imdb, Vengeance has a release date in Belgium on May 27th. why, when this is an HK film, is there no HK release date yet? they would be smart to release it in June.

[Fightingfist]

Is this film good?

[ben]

Is there any information about a DVD release yet?

[Milkyway]

Should be out within few months in France. No theatrical/DVD release in HK yet though.

Reviews are mixed, mostly negative I think, but I'm convinced it's going to be a great movie. Johnnie To barely disappoints these days.

[Fightingfist]

Should be out within few months in France. No theatrical/DVD release in HK yet though.

Reviews are mixed, mostly negative I think, but I'm convinced it's going to be a great movie. Johnnie To barely disappoints these days.

Ok thanks alot.