International Premiere
“You’re not punishing them. You’re just punishing yourself!”
With one line, a movie is summed up. Punished is a revenge drama that, yes, like so many films before it, plays with the destructive nature of vengeance. But while those films typically try to make that argument by turning a harmless family man or a soulful lover into a brutal killer in the pursuit of justice, Punished does the opposite, by having a callous tycoon turn his hostility on himself. And just for extra challenge, the girl being avenged is a rich, nasty, spoiled brat with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Amazingly, the film manages to be emotionally affecting all the same.
Anthony Wong plays a real estate mogul who, in the opening scene of the film, arrives at a kidnapper's hideout and finds his daughter Daisy (Janice Man) dead. In flashbacks, we find out that Daisy spent her days wasting Wong’s money by partying and doing drugs with other inheritance-squandering rich kids. She gets kidnapped after storming out one day and Wong refuses his wife’s suggestion of contacting his benefactors at the police force because he doesn’t want to risk the embarrassment in case she’s behind her own kidnapping. Instead, he asks his ex-con chauffeur Chor (Richie Jen) to look into it; and, after she turns up dead, to act as his vengeful hands.
It is a surprisingly brisk and effective kidnapping story. There are so many movies about revenge flooding the market these days that they all try to set themselves apart by either upping the violence or devising twistier and twistier plots, just to avoid cliches. Punished resists all of that urge and delivers something that’s deliberately simple and straightforward. The kidnapping is just a kidnapping, the revenge is just a linear progression of deaths from one conspirator to the next, and no complications really arrive. It wants the audience to get more involved with the emotional state of the characters rather than either “plan,” which gives it that air of realism that the film uses to its advantage. Action scenes are kept to a minimum, and when they happen, they’re the kind where people falling from a modest height still results in them lying down on the floor in pain for five minutes.
Guilt plays a big part, complimented by two minor subplots that show Wong’s influence on the people around him. One is his obedient teenage son, who’s saddened by the strict control Wong deals him—an effect of Daisy’s misbehaving. The other is an employee of his company, who risks injuries and death to please his boss. Punished is more about these parental concerns (if we are to allow the interpretation of a CEO as the parent of his workers), which also plays out in Chor’s loyalty, and Chor’s own relationship with the son that was taken away from him when he went to prison, than it is about bad folks’ comeuppance.
This is a breakout movie for director Wing-cheong Law, who was the great Johnnie To’s right hand man for so many years. He directed the sequel to To’s Running Out of Time, and served as an Associate Director on To biggies like PTU, Election and Exiled. To serves as a producer here, and also lent Law his go-to actor, Anthony Wong, who is often prominent and brilliant, but rarely so vulnerable and bare.
Despite working in the same genre that To has already cornered, the protege carves his own mark. There’s no trace of To’s elegant shootouts in Punished, nor are there any overt stylistic flourishes. In keeping with the realism of the piece, the movie’s climax isn’t an intense showdown with a bad guy. Instead, it leaves everyone involved unsatisfied and haunted, while we’re left with the uncertainty of their fates.
"Punished" is playing on Saturday, July 2 and Sunday, July 10 at NYAFF.
