Exiled, Johnnie To, 2006, 110 min.
In Exiled, four hit men – childhood friends – find themselves reunited and struggling to survive a gangland turned against them. Set in Macau circa 1998, on the eve of the Portuguese colony’s transfer to mainland Chinese control, the film evokes the lawless and eerily empty streets of the classic Western. Much like Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro or Sergio Leone’s noname drifter, To’s protagonists find themselves outside of hierarchy and order – but To’s characters are pawns, not antiheroes.