The Mission

B+

Directed by Johnnie To

Filmmaker extraordinaire Johnnie To's "The Mission" remains one of his best known and most globally praised works, a crime thriller that features many well known To collaborators in a story of duty and betrayal (boy, does that sound worn out...)

After an unsuccessful hit on crime boss Lung, his right hand man Frank (Simon Yam!) hires mercenaries Curtis, Roy, Shin, James, and Mike to protect the boss and seek out his would be assassins. Once the job is done, however, Frank uncovers an affair between Shin and Lung's wife and commands Curtis to kill Shin. Upon learning about the proposed hit, the other members of the once tight group must choose between loyalty to Lung or their brotherhood with the philanderer Shin.

"The Mission" is a crime thriller which operates largely in the same mold as later films such as "Exiled" and "Fulltime Killer" but is marked by a grittiness that is markedly absent from the films that followed it, giving "The Mission" a much more authenticate veneer than some of To's more elegant crime pieces. Indeed, "The Mission" contains very little in the way of intricately designed gun fights or slo mo showdowns that defy belief, choosing rather to operate in a realm that appears plausible if not completely expected. In many ways, therefore, "The Mission" sits quite nicely between the excesses of the latter two To film on the one hand and the stark and unfliching hyperrealism of "Election" and "Triad Election." Although it is a much better film that some To efforts, "The Mission" falls far short of capturing the magic of his best thrillers. When compared to later efforts, especially "Election" and "Election 2," "The Mission" feels like a warmup for To, a film to test out some of the ideas he would later employ more succesfully in his best work. "The Mission" has enjoyed a large mesure of critical success, especially amongst Western critics who often view it as one of To's major works, if not his masterpiece. Even though "The Mission" is far from a poor effort by To, his prolific career has produced a number of film's that seem to dwarf this effort, most noticeably his "Election" series. Nevertheless, To succeeds with "The Mission" by sticking to the basics and not overreaching, choosing to offer a straightforward tale of brotherhood and betrayal that gives sacrifices some intellectual weight in order to offer more gunplay, almost never a bad idea when it comes to this type of film. The film's rather obvious lack of pretension also makes it quite easy to overlook some its more shallow aspects. As a final note of interest, "The Mission" features some of To's longtime collaborators such as Simon Yam and Suet Lam in top shape, giving the film some recognizable faces for Western viewers that are also excellent actors in their own right. Suet Lam is especially effective as James, a role that garnered him a nomination at the Hong Kong Film Awards.