The hard partying Daisy Wong expects her father to fund her dissolute lifestyle, despite her frequent tantrums. Wong is not inclined to indulge her, but his younger second wife and bodyguard-slash-whatever Chor do their best to cool his temper. When she is abducted, he half-suspects she is complicit in the crime. Alas, not so. After things go profoundly badly, the distraught Wong turns to Chor to provide him a measure of justice, revenge, or closure. For Wong, they are all more or less the same thing.
Produced by HK action auteur Johnnie To, Punished is quite restrained compared to his thematically related Vengeance. Indeed, Punished is more in the tradition of the moody, psychologically tormented first Death Wish film, rather than the body count-generating sequels that followed. Still, Chor has a job to do and he is the man to do it.
To regular (including in the aforementioned Vengeance) Anthony Wong is about the flintiest, steeliest older cat appearing in film today. He makes Tommy Lee Jones look like a weak-kneed old softy. While as hardnosed as ever, Wong (as Wong) forcefully conveys the father’s grief, guilt, and existential self-doubt, shockingly so, in fact. Likewise, Richie Ren (another To regular) is quite compelling and grounded as the avenging everyman anti-hero, Chor. Law and screenwriter Chi Keung-fung wisely hint at his checkered past and strained personal relationships instead of spelling out his back-story in painful detail. When the game is on though, he is all business. In the solid supporting ensemble, Maggie Cheung Ho-yee (the other one) also makes a strong impression as Wong’s smart, sophisticated pseudo-trophy wife.
