And it's still not getting old! I.e. the synopsis that comes with a new Edmond Pang movie that usually rings of some veerryy wrong things. Ok, after Isabella Pang isn't echoing incest again in his latest Exodus but with the frame of thought that concerns the female lavatory, eyebrows are raised high yet another time. Once again for the right and unexpected reasons?

I also realized that now it's fun to sell your friends or new peeps the idea of these basic, naughty and questionable frameworks of flicks because Pang hides something else in his head often. Reading his Director's Statement, you'll find a very candid view of observations made by a younger Pang and thoughts of watching women entering restrooms, coming out subsequently rejuvenated rested in his head only to be brought out in 2007. A slow, challenging, often times intriguing, dark and difficult experience, the sole problem of Pang's mystery is that he won't make any new friends. It's for established ones and those he will probably divide too! But as part of the Hong Kong cinema output, Exodus finds a place right smack in the middle of the big, commercial vehicles and the quick, much needed local. It's therefore very much its own and we're thankful for the daring positioning.

Dropping much slick, arty touches that Isabella came with (and alienated viewers with it due to its "obvious" connection to the works of Wong Kar-Wai), still we're in some kind of abstract territory it seems as Pang has DOP Charlie Lam shoot a weirded out opening with policemen in scuba gear beating a suspect bloody and the shot starts on the Queen! Okidoki then ...but latching mentally onto the synopsis, do we have a male director spewing out his hatred for women? Probably not as the path the narrative takes is so unplowed, it seems like Pang is conjuring up images in his head of what it MIGHT be that goes on behind closed doors. Reality or not, it's up to you. Men and violent tendencies could be a tangent too in this black comedy that is low on comedy, laughs and true darkness. Feel divided yet friends?

Yes indeed, Exodus burns slowly, possibly never amounts to anything come conclusion time (if you're a more intelligent viewer than me, you'll find stuff to "get" probably) but while having a connection to Pang's work isn't necessarily the clinching factor to want to decipher Exodus, it definitely does help because the somewhat somber, slow cinema on display here doesn't play well into a crowd just after a quick fix, not even a quick Edmond Pang fix.

No, on display is sort of a tricky The X-Files earthly conspiracy of some wacky yet black kind with a male at its center that walks a dangerous path. Simon Yam's Tsim doesn't exactly live a married life of dread, nor seems unhappy with a woman by his side. No one of those things represents the trigger to look deeper into the curious testimony left by Nick Cheung's Kwan Ping Man. No, having served the force for 20+ years, Tsim sees a chance to take a weird case far for his own career fulfillment. Very much prepared to follow through, walking clean, stale, stark surroundings, the career path dissatisfaction (worn on the inside) triggers the trip outside of the bubble.

One shouldn't go too far in explaining the rather odd, again probably unexpected paths of Exodus but the in place wackiness translating into something possibly real yet black turned typically Pang off-beat, reveals a common thread about conspiracies that again has to do with walking outside of your established, safe environment. When someone is prepared to do so, do you reap a reward or a painful separation? It applies to both sides in Edmond Pang's slow burning frame and if it seems abstract in words, it's a service to the final, unresolved effect of Pang's. Underwhelming could almost act as a compliment, even down to the performances but there's reason aplenty to remain a friend, an open one of Pang's tools of the trade and certainly one is happy for him to stretch what his cinema is about. Men and particular women have a system in his created world. A system he does not judge nor embrace and some of his characters work the system like they have been taught, for better or worse. When it comes crashing down, Pang's hand doesn't slap hard but forces you to think in different ways. It's well worth it but be prepared to be equally divided as his sexes are in the film.

While Exodus is certainly a quirky film, it isn't as cohesive as You Shoot I Shoot in getting its' point across -- which seems to be here that women are materialistic bitches who are willing to kill men for the slightest provocation. Yeah, this isn't exactly a good movie to watch with the ladies.

Simon Yam plays Kin, a cop who's perfectly content to ride the pine doing a desk job, even though his wife Ann (Annie Liu, who unfortunately doesn't seem to have developed her acting ability since her debut in 2005's Ah Sou) keeps harping on him to get a "real" job so that they can finish remodeling their dream house.

While taking a statement from a suspect in a peeping case named Ping (Nick Cheung), Kin is told about a conspiracy among Hong Kong women to kill the men in their lives while making the deaths look like accidents. Kin doesn't believe Ping at first, but after he becomes involved with Ping's wife (Irene Wan), the proceedings around him take a strange turn.

This sort of thing is certainly more fleshed-out than your usual Hong Kong thriller. Thankfully, there's nary a ghost to be seen anywhere, and there's a much-appreciated lack of slow-motion montages while some cheesy Cantopop single by the latest EEG acquisition plays.

As a whole, the film certainly has a great mise-en-scene. Via cinematography from Charlie Lam and a sweeping score courtesy of Gabriele Roberto, Exodus has a pastoral, almost soothing quality to it, which is a bit strange (but still welcomed) given the sometimes tawdry nature of the proceedings.

Unfortunately, even with how well-constructed the movie is technically, Edmond Pang uses all the restraint of a hooker on a meth binge and rams the point of Exodus into the viewer's head many times over. There's some very obvious attempts to go for shock value, with drug use, liberal utterances of profanity, and a fairly graphic (at least by mainstream HK standards) sex scene.

It's quite surprising, especially given the somewhat more restrictive nature of Hong Kong cinema nowadays, that Exodus was only given a IIB rating. But instead of livening up the proceedings, these methods just come off as cheap gimmicks.

Combined with an ending that offers no resolution, Exodus is ultimately an interesting, but failed, experiment. It's still worth your time, but be prepared to come out of this with a lot of unanswered questions and a bit of a feeling that there was a lot of wasted potential here.