As far as movie meet-cutes go it's hard to beat the one in 'Vengeance,' when the mystery man played by the French chanteur Johnny Hallyday runs into three Hong Kong assassins in a Macau hotel. The three have just finished a job and slipped into the hall when they're surprised by Costello (Hallyday), who's headed toward his room. He gives them and their weapons the once over and strolls away, just another visiting Frenchman taking in the existential view. One beat later and they're the best of friends. It's just about 15 minutes into the movie when Costello meets his new buddies, a troika of hired guns -- Kwai (the wonderful Anthony Wong), Chu (Lam Ka Tung) and Lok (Lam Suet) -- who work for a gangster, George Fung (Simon Yam). By that point the director, the astonishingly productive Johnnie To, has crammed in enough terror, tears and choreographed action for a half-dozen films. Costello has made his way to Macau in the wake of the cataclysmic violence that has landed his daughter, Irene (Sylvie Testud), in a hospital and her husband and two sons in the morgue before the opening credits have finished. By the time the movie's blunt title ripples across the screen in blood red you know payback is a thudding heartbeat away. If you've seen any of To's films -- 'PTU,' 'Exiled' and dozens more -- you won't be surprised by what happens next, just deeply satisfied. 'Vengeance' isn't as narratively ambitious as 'Election' and its sequel, 'Triad Election,' his severe and sweeping gangster epic; and there aren't any scenes here as complex as the virtuosic opening of 'Breaking News,' with its 10 minutes of controlled chaos and liquid camerawork. To certainly delivers bullets and bodies in 'Vengeance.' Yet there are also pockets of calm here when he lingers over this group of men simply enjoying one another's company, which suggests he might have been rewatching some late Howard Hawks. Mostly, both newcomers to To and longtime admirers should be prepared for a master class in directing. If you want to know what great filmmaking looks like, watch how he aligns people inside his frame, creating first visual interest through their arrangement -- he often places the three assassins in a triangle -- and then visual excitement when they start to move. He likes fast edits and restless cameras, and dynamically mixes long shots with close-ups, but his images bristle with tension before he makes a single cut. There's a near-geometric aspect to his mise-en-scene, even when bodies start flying across the screen amid the clouds of gun smoke and arterial sprays. It's evidence of a rigor that was common in the old Hollywood studio system, when base levels of craft and technique were givens even in B movies. Contemporary action films from around the globe owe much to Hong Kong action cinema, which in turn owes even more to classic Hollywood. 'Vengeance' is a quintessential modern Hong Kong shoot'em-up, but it's also a western, as To makes playfully evident in scene after scene. In one sequence, Costello and his three amigos bond over bullets during target practice, sealing their brotherhood by shooting at a riderless bicycle (their firepower keeps it upright) that seems to have rolled right out of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.' Another time, the assassins face down the enemy army in a garbage dump, taking cover behind enormous bales of paper that loom in the landscape like boulders on the Texas plains. The casting of Hallyday, last seen in 'The Pink Panther 2' and the earlier, more memorable 'Man on the Train,' smacks of a gimmick, but it works. To makes the most of Hallyday's pop idol stature, dressing him in a black raincoat and fedora and furnishing him with suitably terse dialogue and a malady that gives the story a twist. And while To didn't shoot in Arizona or on a Burbank lot, he does find landscapes as emptied and haunting as once upon a time in the West, including an amazing close-up of Hallyday as he lies down, his face stretching across the screen in a shot that turns his magnificent mug into a monument of valleys and buttes, as the sounds of cowboys and Indians fast approach. FILM NOTES: 'VENGEANCE' Directed by Johnnie To; written by Wai Ka Fai; director of photography, Cheng Siu Keung; edited by David Richardson; music by Lo Tayu; art director, Silver Cheung; costumes by Stanley Cheung; produced by Michele and Laurent Petin, Peter Lam, To, Fai and John Chong; released by IFC Films. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English, Cantonese and French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. WITH: Johnny Hallyday (Costello), Sylvie Testud (Irene Thompson), Anthony Wong (Kwai), Lam Ka Tung (Chu), Lam Suet (Lok) and Simon Yam (George Fung). This film is not rated. 