THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS (1998)
Rating: 3.0 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Antoine Fukua
Written by: Ken Sanzel
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sorvino, Michael Rooker
Ingredients: Hitman now marked for death, lady forger
Synopsis: The title of this gangster redemption movie THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS might be a reference to THE KILLER, a famous Asian movie about gangster redemption, starring Chow Yun-Fat. The story is simple:
Hitman John Lee (Chow Yun-Fat), does the honorable thing and refuses his assignment to terminate a seven-year-old boy. This angers his powerful mobster boss, and the incensed crime lord hires a swarm of goons ('replacement killers') to kill off John and the kid. At first John's main concern is to reach China to put his mother and sister out of reach of the crime lord's vengeance. So he meets up with a forger named Meg (Mira Sorvino)in order to get a passport. But apparently it's open season on John and Meg. They're in over their heads and chased around town by loads of gunslinging goon squads. The rest of the movie is all high octane 'run and gun.' When the bullets stop flying after the final confrontation, the movie basically ends.
THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS is co-produced by John Woo, [Director of FACE/OFF]. The cinematography is super and so are the shootouts.
Opinion: With THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS, we're talking about a much beloved plot formula. Picture a 1950s black and white Japanese samurai movie. Outlaw samurai blows into town and tries to act honorably. But an even nastier dishonorable samurai with more men is out to kill innocent townsfolk. The outlaw hero ends up using his formidable swordsmanship skills to dispatch blade-wielding goons until the final battle ends. Then he walks off into the sunset.
Fast forward to the 1970s. Take the same movie, and make everyone wear a cowboy hat, boots, and a pancho. Outlaw gunfighter (picture Cline Eastwood) blows into town and tries to act honorably. But a nastier outlaw gunfighter with more men is out to kill innocent townsfolk. The outlaw gunfighter ends up using his formidable shooting skills to cap gun-wielding goons until the final battle ends. Then he rides a horse off into the sunset.
Now it's 1998. Add cool music, artsy cinematography, more shootouts, and a hot-looking blonde sidekick. The outlaw gunfighter who blows into town is an oriental gangster who tries to act honorably. But a mafia-type mobster with loads of men is out to kill an innocent boy. The oriental assassin ends up using his formidable shooting skills to dispatch gun-wielding goons until the final battle ends. Then he rides a plane off into the sunset.
THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS is quite thin on suspense and plot, but the cinematography is excellent and so are the gun battles. Mira Sorvino does a credible job as Meg, and Chow Yun-Fat may not become as famous as Clint Eastwood after this flick, but after THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS his name is sure to become a second tier household word in America.
Stars: 1. Chow Yun-Fat Put simply, Chow Yun-Fat is Asia's top actor - - he's kind of like an Asian Robert Mitchum; Chow Yun-Fat's a a guy that Asian ladies think is hunky because he's humble and has a manly charisma at the same time. Fat was born a poor farm boy on an island near Hong Kong. He began laboring at age 5 doing farm chores, and selling dim sum in the Hong Kong alleys and streets with his mother. He never completed a formal education, but a lucky break occured during school. A TV network sent two applications for auditions, and when Fat tried out, they gave him a chance as an actor. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fat - - who hates to be called Mr. Chow and prefers to be called 'Fat' or his nickname 'Fatboy' - - doesn't know the first thing about kung fu, but the man can act. He once played an idiot savant like Dustin Hoffman's RAIN MAN character. And like Susan Lucci, Chow Yun-Fat was a prime time soap star with years of TV dramas (over 14 years to be exact) under his belt. Like Richard Gere, Chow Yun-Fat did cheesy gigolo flicks in the 1970s. And like James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart, Chow excels portraying the cool, toothpick-chewing, chain-smoking - - but somehow noble - - gun-toting gangster. A versatile actor, Fat has also played a bumbling country oaf.
Though he has worked primarily in Hong Kong, now Chow Yun-Fat is in Hollywood and has the attention of big name directors like Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, and John Woo. It took a year and half of English lessons for him to learn enough English to star in THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS. The burning question for money-minded moguls of Hollywood is: Chow Yun-Fat is a great success in Asia, but will an Eastern hero concept - - an understated blend of humility and charisma in a nonwhite man - - be marketable to an American audience accustomed to Brad Pitt, Ethan Hawke, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, and Mel Gibson?
2. Mira Sorvino Mira is a Harvard cum laude graduate. She once spent eight months living in Beijing, and was a Chinese studies major in college. She won an Oscar in 1995 for playing a porn actress in the film MIGHTY APHRODITE.
Reviewed by David Sunga February 6, 1998
THE CRITIC ZOO http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews