20 great movies from the past 20 years: Vengeance

I’m counting down to the 2025 best-of-the-year season by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. Here are the previous entries, if you want to catch up:

2005: Caché
2006: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing
2007: Sunshine
2008: Speed Racer

When filmmakers are trying to evoke “cool” in a crime thriller, they’re probably imitating Johnnie To. The Hong Kong legend is as skilled as he is versatile, making stellar gangster dramas, superhero adventures, and romantic comedies over his many decades in the industry. You can see the influence of his work and style, consciously or subconsciously, on filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino (who has expressed his admiration for To’s work), The Wachowskis, David Fincher, and plenty of other Hollywood luminaries.

I’ve seen 12 of To’s movies, and genuinely love them all. One of the things that makes To so special, especially within the crime genre, is his ability to evoke that feeling of “cool” without being so nihilistic as to lose the emotional core of the story. This perfectly calibrated balance of style, entertainment, and feeling makes his movies so compelling.

There are few better examples of this than the 2009 action thriller Vengeance, a crime drama about revenge and memory. The movie stars ultra famous French rock star Johnny Hallyday as a chef who travels to Macau seeking revenge when his daughter’s family is attacked by Triad gangsters. The chef hires hit men (To regulars Anthony Wong, Gordon Lam, and Lam Suet) to help him exact revenge, but the job gets messy as the chef’s memory starts to fade and the hitmen untangle the motive behind the original attack.

Vengeance is filled with impeccably blocked and composed images, and To applies a light touch to the music and dialogue, leaning into tension and atmosphere to build a palpable mood. This is especially present during the movie’s two exemplary shootout sequences. My favorite takes place at night in a park, as the combatants are forced to wait for the moon to occasionally peek out from cloud cover so that they can actually see each other.

Hallyday’s performance is the emotional core of the movie, and one of the great lead acting performances by a musician. His face – weathered, but soft – adds an air of melancholy to the proceedings. The language barrier (he speaks French and English, but no Cantonese) also deepens his performance, especially when layered onto his memory issues. 

In a Memento-style touch, Hallyday’s character takes photos of the people important to him, so he can remember who they are when his memory fades. His struggles with memory are a nice touch that subverts and challenges many of the norms of the vengeance sub-genre. He feels compelled to take revenge before he forgets everything, but as his condition progresses, the question shifts: What is the point of revenge when you’ve forgotten what happened in the first place? 

The answer lies somewhere in the movie’s relationship to camaraderie and friendship, as Hallyday’s character and the hit men he hires become thick as thieves. They play games together, share stories, and build a wonderful relationship under dire circumstances. In a particularly touching moment, the hit men walk through the crime scene at his daughter’s house while he cooks a meal that they all share. It may be futile to find moments of compassion in this cruel line of work, but it’s worth trying anyway.

Vengeance is streaming for free with ads on Plex.