I agree to a large extent with the previous reviews. Nobody plays a group of gangsters like these guys; Francis Ng is God; the film has style spilling off the screen; it’s refreshing not so see CGI and teenybopper stars; and it’s got a decent plot. I have to give it an "8" based on all that. But I think maybe those who see this movie as the second coming of John Woo reflect how badly they’re jonesing for Mr. Woo more than how good this movie actually is.

Here are my reasons for not rating it higher than 8. Possible mild spoilers, but I think you’re probably ok.

I think “Exiled” is to “Infernal Affairs” what “House of Flying Daggers” is to “Crouching Tiger.”
“Exiled” is a neo-classic gangster movie like "House of Flying Daggers" is a neo-classic sword film. They both try to take the genre out further but don't really know how to, they both have tons of style, they both have climactic fight scenes that are both riveting and compromised (see below for “Exiled”, the sudden re-birth of Zhang ZiYi for HOFD), neither is as good as the original neo-classics ("Crouching Tiger" and "Infernal Affairs") each of which came out four years before their counterpart, and both contain scenes that verge on parody (e.g., the running through the bamboo forest in HOFD, the shootout scene where To crowds what seems like dozens of gangsters all within arms reach shooting at each other, while the can of Product Placement flies into the air). And both, while flawed, are really good movies.

But how can “Exiled” be compared to “A Better Tomorrow”, for instance? Can you imagine John Woo having Chow Yun Fat, Leslie Cheung, and Ti Lung in the climatic scene to suddenly run in and out of a photobooth like a bunch of high school kids drunk on candy-flavored wine? Think of CYF with the toothpick and grin, lighting the cigarette with the fake Benjamin; now he’s on the dock running in and out of a photobooth with the others. It just jars. How can To make fools of his characters like this?

And when he has the fantastic four come into the hotel laughing and joking about “where’s the ambush?”. These two scenes destroyed the cool characters he’d built up over the course of the film. Whatever he was going for, whether it was just to throw some levity in to clear our palettes for the big gun battle or some other reason, it was excessive and just didn’t work for me.

One more case of character assassination and then I’ll stop. Anthony Wong is the super cool leader who’s always a couple moves ahead of his opponents; this is why the other three follow him. Suddenly, two-thirds of the way through, he can’t come up with a plan but has to rely on flipping a coin to make all his decisions. For gosh sake, when presented with a golden opportunity to make a minimum of $20 million US apiece – at a time when they have no money and need to get out of the country and hole up indefinitely – he takes out the dang coin again! Oh I know, it’s supposed to show how cool they are, they just let fate lead them, don’t really care about money. Sorry, that’s a no sale. You can’t take a character like Anthony Wong’s through a movie and two-thirds and suddenly change him from cool-headed thinker, complex planner, into a “duh, I don’t know what we should do, let’s just flip a coin” dope. Like I say, it’s character assassination and I resent Johnnie To for pulling the trigger.

Enough ranting. It’s a good movie, you should see it, you’ll enjoy it. It’s just three scenes two many to be called Great.