Punished

A-

Looks like a mediocre TV series segment, whose lack of tension is announced by bland background music.

****************************************************************

Punished has a slim storyline that could have been compressed into a couple of episodes of a standard TV detective series. But Hong Kong does have a movie industry that needs to deliver Cantonese-language products to cinemas at home and abroad (and dubbed Mandarin versions to mainland cinemas and genuine DVD stores).

The 2010 product from the Milkyway production team (led by Johnny To) can only be damned with faint praise: it's a competent vengeance movie with the crime genre's regular themes of middle-aged male bonding, corporate loyalty, painful violence and unfilial spoilt children.

The first third of the stretched-out 90-minute action thriller piques an audience's interest with flashbacks from and to the choking death of the obnoxious ransomed daughter of a property developer (Anthong Wong as angst-ridden as ever). His palatial home houses a second wife who's a young business brain, a housekeeper who's a black-clad mystery character, and a right-hand man (Richie Ren) who's a divorcee with an objectionably dismissive schoolboy son.

Having already paid 50 million HK dollars for the girl, the developer pays his loyal henchman the same amount to exact revenge on the kidnappers. Observers might want to know who they were and why they killed the girl, even though her death held no dramatic import, but soon realises that they had none either. They are disposed of, brutally, one by one, after low-calibre fisticuffs, and the screenplay had to add an inconsequential sub-plot and schmaltzy surreal conclusion to fill its allotted time.

Director Law-Wing-cheong does nothing to flesh out the skimpy tale. The movie looks like a mediocre TV series segment, whose lack of character or tension is announced feebly by its bland background music.