Replacement Killers
Director: Antoine
Fuqua
Screenplay: Ken Sanzel
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sovino, Michael
Rooker, Jurgen Prochnow.
Mark's Review
Let’s start with the reasons that I chose to see this movie in the first place. Reason 1: JOHN WOO. ( which is reason enough ) Reason 2: Chow Yun-Fat. What did I think? We’ll get to that in a minute. First let me say that if John Woo had directed this film it would have been a lot different. More entertaining, I’m not so sure, as I thought both of his Hollywood films (Broken Arrow, and Face-Off) [Actually 3; Hard Target. JW] lacked the qualities that made his work in Hong Kong so appealing. Then again those two movies also lacked Chow Yun-Fat. The star of many of Woo’s Hong Kong films, Yun-Fat makes his America movie debut in the Replacement Killers.
The movie opens strong with a scene that involves Yun-Fat breaking bad ( for lack of a better descriptive ) in a crowded night club, to which he was sent to rub out some sort of nefarious individual. Who cares who this sack of crude is or what he did to deserve this death sentence. The scene does what it set out to do: Introduce Chow Yun-Fat to your typical American audiences, complete with his trademark two handed, ballet like gun play. In other words, to show the American audience what the Hong Kong action film fans, more specifically John Woo fans, have know for years, Chow Yun-Fat is visually amazing, and a pleasure to watch.
Let me break this down for you. It’s not that the man is an incredible actor, he’s great, but not Oscar material, or even that he can speak English very well, which he can’t. But he has a quality about him that few actors have. Presence. He can say more with his eyes than with his words. He is the quintessential man of few words. Meaning that the few lines of dialogue that he has in the film, which is basically well written, are very well chosen.
Yun-Fat stars as a hit man that goes by the name of John Lee, ( Evidently the Chinese equivalent to John Smith,) who has been forced into service by a typical Asian mob boss. The mob bosses son was killed in a botched drug bust, despite several attempts by the police Detective (played by Michael Rooker) to avoid resorting to extreme force. Of course, the mob boss wants revenge for his sons murder, he calls in Yun-Fat, offering him this one last job that will absolve him of whatever he owes to the boss and allow him to go back to his family. All he has to do is kill the detectives son, making them equal in their losses.
The moment of truth comes, his finger on the trigger, Yun-Fat chokes. The rest of the film deals with him running from his former employer’s henchmen, trying to get out of the country and back to China, to save his mother and sister whose lives he has placed in danger for disobeying the boss. He pays a visit to Meg Coburn ( Mira Sorvino, ) an artist of fake identification such as passports. But before she can set him up, they are visited by several armed men that can’t shoot but never the less carry the largest weapons on the face of the planet. I love this stuff. Of course Yun-Fat escapes, Meg is arrested and meets the Detective whose son was the target. From there on out it’s basically a great ride, featuring some of the most original fight scenes and fight scene locations I’ve scene in an American film with an urban setting in a long time.
The acting is great. Even Mira Sorvino, who I’d thought looked out of place in the previews and stuff I had seen, her performance was dead on, I’ll never doubt her again. Jurgen Prochnow was the only wasted actor in the film. Playing the henchman of the mob boss, he seemed to want more from the part, and with an actor of his reputation, so did I. Keep an eye out for Chow Yun-Fat, he’s huge in Hong Kong, and even thought the American market seems to be shy about casting Asians in leading roles in action films despite the success of Jackie Chan, Yun-Fat will definitely be able to survive.
The story? It had it’s plot holes, nothing as bad as some of the other films I’ve seen recently, but the visuals and the action more than serve as a distraction from them. The direction? Antoine Fuqua is a man of potential, and while this film comes across as a tribute to the style of John Woo, it offers just enough to make me want to keep an eye on this guy.
Grade: B+
