Directed by Johnnie To and Ching Siu-tung
Produced by Ching Siu-tung, Johnnie To, and Yeung Kwok-fai
Fight Direction by Ching Siu-tung
Story and Characters by Sandy Shaw
Written by Suzanne Chan
Cinematography by Poon Hang-Sang
Production Design by Pui-Wah Chan and Catherine Hun
Edited by Ah-Chik
Music by Cacine Wong
Starring
Anita Mui as Wonder Woman
Michelle Yeoh as Invisible Woman
Maggie Cheung as Thief Catcher
Damian Lau as Inspector Lau
Lau Ching Wen as Tak, a mercenary smuggler
Paul Chun as the Colonel, promoted from Police Chief
Takeshi Kaneshiro as Chong Hon, a Charismatic Religious Leader
Eddy Ko as President’s Deputy
Shan Kwan as the President
Anthony Wong Chau-sang as Mr. Kim, Gothic Megalomaniac; and as Kau, Ex-Decapitator, Ex-Landmine Enthusiast, Ex-Villain
. . .
“Just because you can’t watch it on TV doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Executioners is a direct sequel to the comic book wuxia fantasia The Heroic Trio . . . so direct that I consider it less of a standard sequel and more like Act II of a two act dramatic structure. Yes, sure, The Heroic Trio is perfectly watchable all on its own, and you are, of course, free to resist sequelization if it vexes you; but Executioners offers a more complex and unpredictable set of outcomes for the characters we meet in the first movie. Heroes fight among themselves. A bumbling side character rises to villainous heights. A ruthless killing machine yokes himself to an honorable mistress. The forces of oppression employ some truly underhanded brutality in their pursuit of total power. Executioners is a cynical downer in which the comic book fantasia of The Heroic Trio is mutated towards a dystopian totalitarian vision. But what good are our heroes if they are never tested to the limits of their mortality? Executioners is not consequence free Marvel and DC nonsense-although it takes inspiration from the American superhero comics-where no one ever really dies because of merchandising. Batman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man must live on because plastic bullshit must be sold. When people die in Executioners they die hard, they die in pain, and they do not come back. Heroism comes at the highest cost in this dark fantasy realm.
Executioners returns us to The Heroic Trio’s precisely art-directed Hong-Kong-by-way-of-Batman’89’s-Gotham City-style metropolis a few years down a very dark road. Nuclear war has decimated the planet. Hong Kong stands as a city state bastion of civilization in a world radically desertified by atomic fire. Clean drinking water uncontaminated by rads has become both a desired resource and a cause for battle. Mercenary smugglers deal in scarce goods. Cutthroat raiders use violence to dominate. Against these chaotic circumstances, four political actors offer the people competing visions of order: the President, Chong Hon, the Colonel, and Mr. Kim.
The democratically elected President isn’t above doing some dirty deeds in service of the greater good. He and his supporters don’t have all the answers, but they’re trying to pull everybody together on a basis of considered choice as opposed to brute force dictatorship. It’s something worth considering.
Chong Hon is a charismatic religious leader who preaches an inspirational message of social justice by way of the spirit, and is played by Takeshi Kaneshiro in what I believe is his film acting debut. Pray hard enough and the radiation vacates the aquifers in the name of God. Yeah. Sure . . .
The Colonel offers a harsh, face-stomping military dictatorship-later for all that weak liberal democracy shit. The Colonel is played by Paul Chun, who played a comically bumbling Police Chief in The Heroic Trio. Here, Chun is hard-as-nails as an aspiring tyrant, who casts out compassion in favor of ambition. There’s also the disturbing implication of harsh circumstances bringing out people’s dark sides. The Colonel seems to think if he can secure his dictatorship-for-life then the ecological disaster will resolve itself; or maybe he’s too focused on his own game to grok the bigger picture. Watching The Heroic Trio and Executioners back-to-back offers a chance to see contrasting performances by Chun.
And finally we have the obvious Final Boss: the Gothically perverse Mr. Kim, a decadent technologist who dresses like the Phantom of the Opera, and loves collecting severed heads. Mr. Kim claims to have innovated a revolutionary water purification technology that can defeat the pervasive radioactive contamination. All he’s asking for is total power to pursue his sadistic pleasures without limit. Mr. Kim is a kind of right wing libertarian techbro, though his dandified style distinguishes him from the usual macho posturing of contemporary examples of the species who eat up so many news cycles. The amusing thing about Mr. Kim is that, in his own twisted way, he’s rather, well, not honest, exactly, but he is authentic. Mr. Kim makes no attempt to hide his bizarre depravities. He’s an example of someone who looks at the post-nuclear wasteland and decides to have as much fun as possible. Of course, he is played by Anthony Wong with gruesome gusto.
But what about our Heroic Trio?
Well . . .
. . . Anita Mui’s Wonder Woman has seemingly given up her superhero identity to raise a child with hubby Inspector Lau. Of course, she is drawn back into the game by a series of ordeals comparable to what Christian Bale’s Batman would go through in The Dark Knight Rises. Mui’s Wonder Woman rises to the occasion, offering a shining example that even brings out the inner swashbuckler in one of her enemies. She’s that kind of heroine. Wonder Woman inspires even the villains to raise their standards of evil.
Michelle Yeoh’s Invisible Woman conducts military operations against wasteland raiders. She’s also taken on a new sidekick: Kau, the former head-collecting henchman of the Evil Master from The Heroic Trio. Kau was horribly burned in the previous adventure, and so he now acts like a human attack dog wrapped up in head-to-toe bandages. Kau embodies the comic book logic of “better living through horrible mad science accidents.” Of course, Invisible Woman also served the Evil Master, and her journey in the first movie embodied the struggle between good and evil within a person’s conscience. She has a very tough road to walk in Executioners.
Maggie Cheung’s Thief Catcher is as capitalistic as before, still acting as a bounty hunter, but now taking on smuggling as a side hustle. She becomes frenemies with rival black marketeer Tak. Her journey crashes her entrepreneurial desire against the greater good.
And I shouldn’t neglect the honorary Fourth Man: Inspector Lau. In The Heroic Trio he played a classic Movie Cop of the Hong Kong style, blasting a maniac rampaging through a maternity ward, looking tragically cool with a cigarette in hand, and surviving getting blown up by a landmine. In Executioners Inspector Lau is pressured by his superiors to carry out a cold blooded assassination. Lau’s ethics are cruelly tested. His fate is a lesson.
Wonder Woman, Invisible Woman, and Thief Catcher all have their separate questlines that must be sorted before the trio can be reunited. These quests involve a bewildering array of ordeals: combat against superhuman persecutors; assassination attempts; journeys into atomic wastelands and subterranean city depths; and struggle against disillusionment with flawed political processes that sputter and choke against globally scaled ecological catastrophe. Yes, this is a pro-democracy movie . . . but nothing comes easy. Even idealized comic book champions must reckon with betrayal, defeat, and death in Executioners.
