(Hong Kong/France) The opening film of this year’s Summer International Film Festival, Johnnie To’s “Vengeance” initially leaps onto the screen with beautifully choreographed shootouts. Unfortunately, it ends up limping off as an impotent imposter in the canon of Hong Kong gangster classics.
Category IIB. It would be easy to brush off “Tactical Unit—Comrades in Arms” as nothing more than a half-hearted, Hollywood-war-film-style sequel to the award-winning “PTU” (2003), which followed a police tactical unit (PTU) through the dark side of Tsim Sha Tsui. But this is one of the most engaging, intense and realistic local films in years, even though Johnnie To stepped back to produce this time and handed the directorial reigns over to his protege Law Wing-cheong.
