Pun Salad

This movie was directed by Johnnie To, who (news to me) is a famous moviemaker in Hong Kong. For a crime thriller, it's quite arty. The primary protagonist is played by Johnny Hallyday, who's a famous French actor (also news to me).

Right from the get-go, an entire Hong Kong family, husband, wife and kids, is shot up by a team of hit men. (The kids too? Yes. Although that's mercifully not explicit.)

Unfortunately for the bad guys, the wife was the daughter of Costello, a French chef with a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées, but with a darker history. And he sets out on a crusade for… well, you see the title up there.

His method relies on hyper-Dickensian coincidence: he just happens upon a different team of hit men who are in the process of taking out the unfaithful mistress of a local mob boss and her lover (in flagrante delicto if you know what I mean). He hires them for their skills and local connections. What follows is (of course) a lot of shooting. But there is also a major ironic plot twist based in Costello's violent past. There's a reason he keeps taking pictures of people: he needs to.

I said it was arty: there are a lot of imaginative eye-catching visuals layered over the (admittedly pretty standard) plot. And there's an undertheme of loyalty; I couldn't help but think that this is a movie the late Robert B. Parker would have loved.