Metacritic Film

Election

Starring Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Louis Koo, Nick Cheung, Siu-Fai Cheung, Suet Lam, Ka Tung Lam, Tian-lin Wang, and Maggie Siu

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Tartan USA
Crime  |  Drama  |  Foreign  |  Suspense/Thriller
100 minutes | Color
Hong Kong
Released In Theaters April 27, 2007

This 2005 film is the first installment in Johnnie To's Hong Kong gangland series.

WRITTEN BY
Nai-Hoi Yau
Tin-Shing Yip

DIRECTED BY
Johnny To

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

73 / 100

Critic Reviews

80 Chicago Reader Joshua Katzman
Johnny To is considered one of the best action filmmakers in Hong Kong, and in this smart, stylized gangland thriller (2005) he looks at the messy inner workings of a triad.
80 The New York Times
By the end, Mr. To has proven himself to be a genre hack of uncommon intelligence and soul: a first-rate entertainer who can thrill you into thinking.
75 New York Post
A poignant moment occurs in Election when a young boy sees his father brutally beat another mobster to death.
75 Boston Globe
Mostly Election tracks the shifting of power among men for whom power is all that matters, no matter how much lip service they pay to loyalty. The final sequence is a shocker but it's also completely logical.
70 Variety
Some general viewers may feel let down by the relatively scant action.
50 The Hollywood Reporter
A repellent movie filled with gratuitous violence, Election is bound to find an appreciative audience among those who like their cinematic criminals noisy, stupid and deadly.

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