# The Mission (1999 film)
**The Mission** (鎗火, *Qiang huo*, literally "Gunfire") is a 1999 Hong Kong crime film directed and produced by [Johnnie To](https://www.edgepedia.org/johnnie-to), in which five gunmen from different criminal backgrounds are hired to protect a triad boss after a failed assassination attempt on his life.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) Made by To's company Milkyway Image on a very small budget during Hong Kong's post-1997 film industry slump, it won To best director honors at the Golden Horse Awards, the Hong Kong Film Awards, and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards, and it is regarded as the film that established his mature signature style.[2](https://www.tfai.org.tw/en/program/movieDetail/2c968082978c955401981194cf9c00f6) • [3](https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789622099197.pdf)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | 鎗火 (*Cheung fo* / *Qiang huo*, "Gunfire")[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) |
| Director / producer | Johnnie To; production company Milkyway Image[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) |
| Release | Hong Kong, 19 November 1999, distributed by China Star[4](https://www.hkfilm.net/archive/hkfa.pdf) |
| Budget and schedule | 2.5 million from a Taiwanese friend of To; 40,000 feet of film; shot in 19 days with one take allowed per shot[5](https://www.nextprojection.com/2013/07/16/tiffs-a-century-of-chinese-cinema-in-conversation-with-johnnie-to/) |
| Principal cast | Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Jackie Lui, Roy Cheung, Lam Suet, Simon Yam, Eddy Ko[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) • [6](https://www.netflix.com/title/60000149) |
| Key crew | Screenplay Yau Nai-hoi; cinematography Cheng Siu-keung; music Chung Chi-Wing[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) |
| Awards (2000) | Golden Horse Best Director and Best Actor; Hong Kong Film Awards Best Director; Hong Kong Film Critics Society Best Film and Best Director[2](https://www.tfai.org.tw/en/program/movieDetail/2c968082978c955401981194cf9c00f6) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and characters
After the triad boss Brother Lung survives an assassination attempt, his brother recruits five gunmen as bodyguards and to find who is behind the attacks.[8](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/The-Mission-Gives-a-Kick-To-Hong-Kong-Action-2889246.php) • [1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) The five men come from separate gangs and differ in temperament: Francis Ng stars as Roy, a minor triad boss who runs a nightclub and, together with his henchman Shin (Jackie Lui), forms the heart of the crew; Lam Suet is cast as James, who handles the group's guns; Roy Cheung portrays Mike, seemingly a mere parking attendant yet actually a lethal sharpshooter; and Anthony Wong takes the part of Curtis, the coldest killer among them, who earns his living cutting hair.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) • [9](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/mission) [Simon Yam](https://www.edgepedia.org/simon-yam) plays Lung's brother, and Eddy Ko plays the boss.[6](https://www.netflix.com/title/60000149) • [10](https://www.asianmovieweb.com/en/reviews/the_mission.htm)
For long stretches the five simply wait, kill time, and play pranks on each other, until they come into action like animals of prey.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) • [9](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/mission) Their loyalty is tested when Lung discovers that one of them is having an affair with his wife and orders the others to kill him.[11](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_mission_2000) In the resolution, the gunmen struggle between triad rules and brotherhood, and an old hand's clever arrangement lets loyalty and friendship both survive.[12](https://www.cinespot.com/hkmreviews/%E9%8E%97%E7%81%AB)
## Production background
To dated the film's making to 1998 or 1999, in the financial recession that followed Hong Kong's 1997 handover, when, in his words, nobody wanted to touch movies and he did not want to return to television. A friend in Taiwan gave him 2.5 million to make the movie, which was not enough, but he set out anyway with 40,000 feet of film. Knowing it would be a low-budget movie, he looked for good actors who could perform shots in one take to keep the production on budget, and he shot the film in nineteen days with only one take allowed for each shot.[5](https://www.nextprojection.com/2013/07/16/tiffs-a-century-of-chinese-cinema-in-conversation-with-johnnie-to/) According to an account drawn from the documentary *Nihilism: The Uncompromising Star of Johnnie To*, the entire film used only about one quarter of the film stock a typical Hong Kong production consumed, so every camera roll left no room for error.[7](https://www.milk.com.hk/to-kei-fung-art/)
The Hong Kong Film Archive's filmography records the film's local release on 19 November 1999 through the distributor China Star, with To and Wai Ka-fai credited as producers.[4](https://www.hkfilm.net/archive/hkfa.pdf)
## Style
The film is built on restraint rather than spectacle. Where classic Hong Kong action cinema rests on pause/burst/pause choreography, To stretches the pause phase to the point of fixity, and the gunfights are few, brief, and almost mathematically staged, with getting all five bodyguards into a single shot described as the director's obsession.[13](https://www.davidbordwell.net/books/planethongkong-davidbordwell-110111.pdf) • [14](https://www.sfmoma.org/event/mission/) The screenplay and direction favor long takes that capture the characters' moods, with rapid editing used sparingly.[12](https://www.cinespot.com/hkmreviews/%E9%8E%97%E7%81%AB)
**The mall shootout.** The set piece most often singled out is a gunfight in the Tsuen Wan Shopping Mall, where the bodyguards flank Lung on escalators before shots break the stillness; extended stillness and geometric placement create more suspense than a conventional barrage of movement.[9](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/mission) • [15](https://cinemaanthology.com/hong-kong/films/the-mission/) The Cinespot review notes that the scene's precision in blocking and shot design arose partly because the lack of funds forced the film to be shot that way.[12](https://www.cinespot.com/hkmreviews/%E9%8E%97%E7%81%AB)
To has acknowledged the influence of [Akira Kurosawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/akira-kurosawa)'s *Seven Samurai*, citing in particular its stillness, the sense of great power hidden within stillness, and the film has also been compared to the statuesque simplicity Kitano Takeshi brought to gunfights in his early 1990s films, at odds with the kinetic Hong Kong tradition.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) • [16](https://movie.douban.com/review/10082409/) • [13](https://www.davidbordwell.net/books/planethongkong-davidbordwell-110111.pdf) BAMPFA's notes add tributes to the male-bonding action films of [Howard Hawks](https://www.edgepedia.org/howard-hawks) and [Don Siegel](https://www.edgepedia.org/don-siegel).[14](https://www.sfmoma.org/event/mission/)
## Reception and awards
At the 2000 award season the film took Best Director and Best Actor at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards, and both Best Film and Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards.[2](https://www.tfai.org.tw/en/program/movieDetail/2c968082978c955401981194cf9c00f6) These were the first of To's three Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Director, followed by *PTU* (2003) and *[Election](https://www.edgepedia.org/election-2005-film)* (2005), and the first of his three Golden Horse Best Director awards, followed by *[Breaking News](https://www.edgepedia.org/breaking-news-2004-film)* (2004) and *Life Without Principle* (2011).[17](https://www.filmarchive.gov.hk/documents/6.-Research-and-Publication/06-02-Filmmakers-Search/Chinese/Johnnie-TO_c.pdf)
American critics received the film warmly on its US premiere. The [San Francisco Chronicle](https://www.edgepedia.org/san-francisco-chronicle)'s Bob Graham called it a flawlessly constructed thriller that keeps building right until its last shot, and wrote that it gave a swift kick to popular Hong Kong cinema, which had been sagging and limp lately.[8](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/The-Mission-Gives-a-Kick-To-Hong-Kong-Action-2889246.php) On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 60% Tomatometer from 5 critics and an 89% audience score from more than 2,500 ratings.[11](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_mission_2000)
Reported running times differ among catalogs: the International Film Festival Rotterdam lists 82 minutes, the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute 89 minutes, SFMOMA 81 minutes, and the San Francisco Chronicle's review 95 minutes.[1](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission) • [2](https://www.tfai.org.tw/en/program/movieDetail/2c968082978c955401981194cf9c00f6) • [14](https://www.sfmoma.org/event/mission/) • [8](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/The-Mission-Gives-a-Kick-To-Hong-Kong-Action-2889246.php)
## Legacy
Film scholar Gina Marchetti, writing in the Hong Kong University Press volume *Hong Kong Cinema Since 1997: The Post-Transitional Style*, called the film a watershed for To, whose laconic style and pattern of alternation between inertia and rapid action laid the foundations for his film method of the new millennium and his emergence as a filmmaker of note outside Hong Kong and, arguably, the most significant contemporary Hong Kong filmmaker in the context of Hong Kong itself.[3](https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789622099197.pdf) The Hong Kong Film Archive includes *The Mission* among its 100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies, and the archive's flagship screening program has featured it alongside works by Lung Kong, Tang Shu Shuen, Chor Yuen, Lau Kar-leung, and [John Woo](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-woo).[15](https://cinemaanthology.com/hong-kong/films/the-mission/) • [18](https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201501/12/P201501120693_print.htm)
The film also anchors what viewers and critics group as To's loose trilogy of films about hired guns, followed by *Exiled* (2006) and *Vengeance* (2009), each centered on a band of men bound by brotherhood and mood rather than plot mechanics.[12](https://www.cinespot.com/hkmreviews/%E9%8E%97%E7%81%AB)
## References
1. [The Mission (Qiang huo), International Film Festival Rotterdam](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2007/films/the-mission)
2. [The Mission, Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute](https://www.tfai.org.tw/en/program/movieDetail/2c968082978c955401981194cf9c00f6)
3. [Gina Marchetti, Hong Kong Cinema Since 1997: The Post-Transitional Style, Hong Kong University Press](https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789622099197.pdf)
4. [Hong Kong Film Archive filmography of Hong Kong films, 1913–2003](https://www.hkfilm.net/archive/hkfa.pdf)
5. [TIFF's A Century of Chinese Cinema: In Conversation With Johnnie To, Next Projection (2013)](https://www.nextprojection.com/2013/07/16/tiffs-a-century-of-chinese-cinema-in-conversation-with-johnnie-to/)
6. [The Mission, Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/60000149)
7. [銀河映像・超乎想像｜盤點杜琪峯不可不知的光影異想, MILK](https://www.milk.com.hk/to-kei-fung-art/)
8. [Bob Graham, "'The Mission' Gives a Kick To Hong Kong Action Genre," San Francisco Chronicle, 22 December 1999](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/The-Mission-Gives-a-Kick-To-Hong-Kong-Action-2889246.php)
9. [Steve Erickson, "The Mission," Screen Slate (2024)](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/mission)
10. [The Mission (Hong Kong, 1999) review, AsianMovieWeb](https://www.asianmovieweb.com/en/reviews/the_mission.htm)
11. [The Mission, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_mission_2000)
12. [鎗火 review, Cinespot 動映地帶](https://www.cinespot.com/hkmreviews/%E9%8E%97%E7%81%AB)
13. [David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong, chapter PDF, Harvard University Press](https://www.davidbordwell.net/books/planethongkong-davidbordwell-110111.pdf)
14. [The Mission film screening, SFMOMA (2017)](https://www.sfmoma.org/event/mission/)
15. [The Mission, Cinema Anthology](https://cinemaanthology.com/hong-kong/films/the-mission/)
16. [关于荃湾商场这场戏的分镜及影评（枪火）, Douban Movie](https://movie.douban.com/review/10082409/)
17. [香港影人小傳檢索：杜琪峯, Hong Kong Film Archive](https://www.filmarchive.gov.hk/documents/6.-Research-and-Publication/06-02-Filmmakers-Search/Chinese/Johnnie-TO_c.pdf)
18. [電影資料館「百部不可不看的香港電影」選映名導演佳作, Hong Kong Government Press Release (2015)](https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201501/12/P201501120693_print.htm)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1990s films › Crime dramas and gangster films*
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