The Replacement Killers could have been a good, solid action movie. It could have been a sleeper hit; a movie that decided to break a few rules and be original and inventive. Instead it's a boring, forgettable movie that'll be out of theaters in a few weeks.
It's the American debut of Chow Yen Fat, who's Hong Kong films The Killer and Hard Boiled made him the best action star in the movies today. He has a grace about his characters: he can be somber and confident at the same time. When you compare him to American action stars he seems more real, more identifiable. After his international success, he came to Hollywood and was wasted. While he does manage to walk out of The Replacement Killers with his reputation intact, but everything else around him was a waste. It also stars Mira Sorvino, who plays your standard breaking the law loner who does everything her way and fakes passports to make ends meet. She's totally unbelievable here and spends most of her time trying to convince us that she's tough and knows how to shoot a gun. To describe the plot is to waste your time and lower your I.Q. You don't pay attention to the details in a movie like this, you don't follow the plot holes. Things like that will only frustrate you. Instead, you wait for the action scenes to come up (there's about five or six), you wait to see the skin shot of Mira Sorvino (there's only one). The action scenes were passable, though they tended to get old after awhile. Director Anotoine Fuqua puts a little bit of style in the movie, he tries to give the movie an Asian feel. But his problem is that you don't really know if he's spoofing Fat's movies, or if he's taking them seriously. There's a moment towards the end of the movie where Fat makes a stand-off with the main mean bad guy. The bad guy is driving down an alley in his limo (because bad guys always ride in limos in movies like this), the gates to his fortress open, and there stands Fat, holding seven or eight handguns. Whether or not it was supposed to be funny, half the theater laughed. Fat didn't look confident, he looked ridiculous.
Rather than watch The Replacement Killers, rent Fat's best action films, The Killer or Hard Boiled. Those movies also brought director John Woo to Hollywood. Woo's first film was a bomb in Hard Target . Hollywood let him stick around and he eventually made the successful and acclaimed Face/Off. Let's hope Fat gets the same chance.
The Replacement Killers (* and half out four). Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Starring: Chow Yen Fat, Mira Sorvino.
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