Replacement Killers

January 28, 2008

Picking up Replacement Killers on Blu-ray was a difficult decision. When it came out back in September of 2007, I put it in my list of titles that I could resist on until I could get it cheap someday. Little did I know a Buy One Get One sale was in the cards about a month or so later. Even after that, it sat on my shelf until late January since the movie was still relatively fresh from when I first saw it on DVD when it originally came out. Replacement Killers wasn't a film that I thought would be a significant video upgrade, but I knew the audio would make it worthwhile and that was my main reason for snagging it once again, especially when purchased on the cheap.

My love affair with Chow Yun-Fat started many years ago when I first saw Hardboiled. It was unlike anything else I had seen and I just fell in love with it, both for his performance but also for the way John Woo did what he did. That led to taking in the Killer and lots of other films by Yun-fat. When it was announced that he was doing his first Hollywood film, I was really quite leery of it simply because of how poorly foreign actors from Asia have transitioned in the past, notably Jackie Chan. Learning that he had waited three years for the right project to come along and this was it just made me sad. It is as they say in the extras, the ideal thing for him to start with though. Replacement Killers brings him in as a Chinese hitman named John Lee who has come to kill the son of a cop that's harassing a powerful and influential Chinese businessman. John can't bring himself to do it because of his own family and that has him reneging on the job. That of course means he's got a bounty on his head now and he needs to get back home as quickly as he can before they get knocked off because of it.

So what's he to do? Use what few connections he has to meet up with someone who can forge him the papers he needs to get home. That brings him to meet Meg Coburn, played by the hauntingly beautiful Mira Sorvino. She's dressing down for this particular role but she still manages to shine through, though that works against the premise and look of the film at times. Once Lee meets up with her, it all goes downhill pretty fast as the grunt level hitmen show up to knock him off and it spirals out of control. It doesn't take too long for the professionals of the same caliber as Lee to show up. This pair would let even a newborn know that they're hired killers by their looks which is one of the weakest parts of the show. These two have no personality at all and are just killing machines. They're supposed to contrast the more thoughtful and emotional Lee but they went too far in the other direction. While the killers in the Hong Kong action flicks aren't often given as much depth as the heroes, they tend to be a bit more fleshed out than this in the better films.

And I really expected more from the film. This was the first thing done by Antoine Fuqua and it really does show that. I haven't seen any of his other films, but I'm admittedly more interested in checking them out now to see if and how he's grown as a director. This one though shows his adoration of Chow Yun-Fat by taking everything that made him cool and "elegant" in his numerous Hong Kong films and brought it to the screen here. What's missing is that real heart to tie it all together. It may work better if you haven't seen Yun-fat's other films and this is your first experience seeing him in action. At the same time, he's been copied so much since this time period that it has lost a lot of its allure in that regard so it's not exactly a good experience that way. What makes him who he is in this visualized sense is very much here and it was well captured while being tied to the music and locale. But it's a weak film overall and one that is essentially unmemorable for most but the die-hard fans of Chow Yun-fat.