More of a crime based character piece, then a straight ahead adrenaline pumping shoot-em-up, Johnnie To’s ‘The Missions’ is a perfect example of what can be achieved with distilled stripped down storytelling. It’s his masterpiece.Five men are hired to be the bodyguards for a gangster. Four of them are pros and one of them is a complete newbie to the genre. They’re going to do their job.
By jumping off such a simple premise, Johnnie To engineers a world that is completely enthralling. There’s nothing off-the cuff in The Mission. Everything is perfectly composed, thought out and presented in such a perfect and assured way (Composition, Editing and Camera Movement) that it’s almost unrealistically perfect. The actual design of the film stems from the bodyguards (Lead by a fantastic as usual Anthony Wong) They know how to do their job. No one here is diving to the side with a gun in each hand. The bodyguards have only lasted this long by always working in calculated and strategic fashion. The point of a gunfight isn’t to show off. The point is to kill the attacker as quickly as possible. This leads to some fantastic encounters where the suspense lies in the pause before pulling the trigger, not the actual act itself. Drama arises from the brotherhood that forms subtlety through the five bodyguards. We don’t need any big goofy gags to love a character. We just have to see them act human. The film isn’t 83 minutes for nothing. You only get the bare essentials, no fat, and that’s the way I wish all my genre films came packaged.
NOTE: Johnnie To later directed a semi-sequel called "Exiled" with the core cast returning and it was almost as brilliant as the original.
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