Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

"Cheung Fo" (which means Gunfire, but which is titled "The Mission" in English), 1999, directed by Johnnie To/To Kei-Fung) begins bewilderingly. Hit men are trying to kill someone (Ko Hung) in the Super Bowl  restaurant. The someone hides in a kitchen refrigerator and calls for help on his cell phone. Carloads (carsload doesn't sound right!) of black-suited gunmen show up and the target and a worker who hid him there get out of refrigerators.

Eventually we learn that the target is named Lung and is head of a triad (Hong Kong gang). He called his brother Frank (Simon Yam). Frank then hires  five  bodyguards to accompany Shin anywhere he goes and to drive his seductive wife.

One of the guards is usually a hit man (Francis Ng), and another a free-lance operative, along with a hairdresser called "Ice" for his cold-bloodedness (Anthony Wong), a bar manager (or owner; Francis Ng), and a pimp. The bodyguards Shin had before all seem to have been shot in the Super Bowl ambush.

Later, there is a sniper in one long shoot-out, and a series of would-be assassins in a shopping mall that is closing down (for the night). The latter is my favorite for its use of escalators. Then there is a pitched battle between the bodyguards and riflemen in a warehouse.

So far as I can remember, the windshields and windows in every car in every Johnnie To movie are bulletproof. The doors take a lot of bullets, too, with occupants of the vehicle invariably surviving. And To's Hong Kong in movie after movie is mostly devoid of people (the teeming masses), and not just in the middle of the night but during the day, too. Although I have seen many Hong Kong police dramas, including some directed by To, from "The Mission" I'd have no idea that there were police in Hong Kong. They do not show up before, during, or after any of the shoot-outs. (This contrasts with the  Macau police official who wants to see no evil but keeps showing up at inopportune times in "Exiled.")

There is a scene prefiguring To's masterful "Exiled" (2006) in which hired guns (prominently in both, Anthony Wong) sit down to eat together before resolving the issue of a contract killing and protecting the one contracted to be killed. Even when the one who has tried to have their boss killed is identified, he is allowed to  eat before being shot. Only in Johnnie To movies, I think.

There is less humor than in later To movies I've seen, though the ending is at least smile-inducing. And the upbeat synthesizer music by Chung Chi-Wing made me chuckle several times.

With the aid of cinematographer Cheung Siu-Keung, To gets all five within the same frame as often as possible. Though there are multiple shoot-outs (in which things happen very fast, so that I was glad that I saw the movie on DVD rather than in a theater, so I could go back and replay several sequences), the movie mostly shows the bodyguards bonding like an army platoon during down time (like Sam Fuller's "Steel Helmet" and "Fixed Bayonets," though To himself cites "Seven Samurai" as a major influence, a much longer movie in which an assemblage of ronin wait for the bandits to come through most of the movie, though they supervise the peasants in preparing to defend their village). Lung's bodyguards  kill time with trick cigarettes and a soccer practice of sort with a wadded-up piece of paper and bemoan the waiting that is their lot most of the time.

There is a slight whiff of homoerotic feelings by Roy (Francis Ng, who won a Golden Horse Award for his performance) for his protégé Shin (Jackie Lui) of which Shin is unaware.

The DVD included no bonus features and a print that often seemed to be pentimento (that is, there seemed to be an image of the production line under many scenes).

And I again wonder why movies in Beijinghua ("Mandarin") from the PRC have more grammatical English subtitles than Hong Kong movies do. (Traditional and simplified Chinese character subtitles are also available—there is no indication of which is which; English was #2.)

©2009 Stephen O. Murray


My other Johnnie To epinions:
Running Out of Time 1999
Fulltime Killer 2001
PTU 2003
Running on Karma 2003
Breaking News 2004
Election 2005
Exiled 2006

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD