Prop Department: "How many black suits for your new movie, Mr. To?" / Director Johnnie To: "Yes."
GreenCine: "[The Mission is] the best crime film to come from Hong Kong in years. It's austere and still, beautifully composed and tense, and the characters are professional and efficient, positioning themselves for efficiency and communicating and interacting silently while on the job."
Johnnie To: "I only knew what film-making was about when making The Mission."
The Mission is a 1999 Hong Kong movie directed by Johnnie To, starring To's regulars including Simon Yam, Anthony Wong, Roy Cheung, Lam Suet, and a few others from his usual Production Posse.
When a long-time triad godfather, Boss Lung (Eddy Ko) barely survives an assassination attempt, an elite team of bodyguards are hired and assembled to be Lung's personal posse, among them including Curtis (Wong), who moonlights as a hairdresser as his day job but is secretly a long-time mob enforcer with the most amount of experience, James (Lam Suet) a loner who is seeking for company, Roy (Francis Ng) a nightclub owner, Roy's brother Shin (Jackie Lui) and ex-pimp Mike (Roy Cheung). Despite coming from different life backgrounds, the bodyguards, and their employer, eventually starts considering each other as brothers of the same family.
The movie is notable for its short shooting schedule of 18 days, and extremely minuscule budget given the number of shootouts and action scenes. To a certain extent, it is this film which introduces Johnnie To from Hong Kong cinema to a broader, international audience.
Tropes associated with this work:
- Affectionate Nickname: James is called "Fats" by the other bodyguards, due to his rather plump size (played by the chubby character actor Lam Suet).
- Ambiguous Situation: The ending at least heavily implies that Lung ordered Curtis to fake Shin's death. However, it's not made clear if Lung actually let his wife be killed for her infidelity or faked her death as well. James' knowing smile at the end could hint at the latter being a possibility.
- Badass Crew: The main characters, Curtis, Shin, Roy, Mike and James.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Practically all the named characters, who spends the entire movie in slick, black tuxedos complete with ties and Cool Shades.
- Bash Brothers: The five bodyguards. Even moreso with Roy and Shin, who are brothers by blood.
- Benevolent Boss: Boss Lung, who treats his bodyguard team as a family and trusts them with his – and his wife’s - life. Even after one of them has an affair with said wife, he still refuses to kill him.
- Big Brother Instinct: Roy chooses to defend Shin after a hit is put out on him for having an affair with Lung's wife, which ends up conflicting with the bodyguards' loyalty to Lung himself. Except he can't bring himself to kill Curtis after Curtis guns down Shin. Luckily, it turns out Lung doesn't want to see Shin dead either and ordered Curtis to fire at Shin with blanks, allowing Shin to fake his death.
- Bodyguarding a Badass: The bodyguard team is assigned to protect Lung, himself a high-ranking triad boss (played by Shaw Brothers kung fu veteran Eddy Ko) who had seen plenty of action in the past few decades.
- Boom, Headshot!: During the mall shootout, the first assassin who attacks the team (dressed as a security guard) dies in this way, with Mike plugging a bullet through his forehead.
- Bulletproof Vest: After the mall shootout, Boss Lung starts wearing one, which saves his life in the later derelict building shootout.
- Darkened Building Shootout: The derelict building gunfight which takes place at night, without any lights.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Fat Cheung is seemingly revealed to be the one responsible for orchestrating the hit on Lung. However, he's killed two-thirds of the way through the movie, with the remainder instead focused on a test of loyalty between the bodyguards as it's revealed that Shin had an affair with Lung's wife.
- Face Death with Dignity: After being shot repeatedly, Fat Cheung calmly chews and swallows his food before expiring. Lung's wife too calmly allows herself to be gunned down by Lung's men.
- Faking the Dead: On Lung's orders, Curtis fires at Shin with a blank, allowing Shin to escape during the film's ending Mexican Standoff.
- Fat Bastard: The appropriately named "Fat Cheung" is revealed to be the one who put out the hit on Lung. He's a lot more affable than most examples though.
- Groin Attack: Happens to Curtis by Roy during a brief scuffle after Curtis leaves Roy behind during a shootout.
- Mexican Standoff:
- A brief one happens when Roy is beating up Curtis, causing James to point a gun on Roy telling him to stop as Shin pulls a gun on James.
- A straighter example, the restaurant standoff near the end of the film between Curtis and Roy, which James intervenes by pulling his gun on Curtis only for Mike to pull a gun on James.
- Mundane Made Awesome: The paper football scene, where Curtis, Shin, Roy, Mike and James spends maybe a whole minute of screentime passing a rolled-up paper ball between each other while waiting for Frank in a narrow corridor. The background music, accompanied by lack of dialogue, makes it seems more epic than it sounds on paper.
- Pistol Pose: Done by all five of the bodyguards throughout the movie, in the midst of shootouts.
- Retired Badass: Lung doesn't get in on the action in the movie itself, but it's implied that he saw quite a bit of action when he was younger.
- Revealing Reflection: During the shopping mall shootout, the metal trolley of a passing janitor reveals the location of two hidden assassins which the bodyguards guns down instantly.
- Silver Fox: Lung, the triad senior employer of the bodyguard team who sports a whole head of gray hair.
