The Replacement Killers [Blu-ray] [1998] [US Import] [2004]

This is probably chow yun-fat at his best, it has all the usual showcase of guns, and the usual bloodbath scenes that chow yun-fat is so famous for. It matches the level of exellence that is potrayed in all of his other films like "the corruptor". It is about a hit-man(chow yun-fat) who is being blackmailed by the main mafia boss, and is being forced to carrry out three hits in exchange his familys safety, it all goes well until on his third assigment he bails out and the whole of chinatown, which means chow yun-fat must defend himself. the film has some of the best shootout scenes i have ever seen. brilliant, controversial, gory, gruesome,spectacular, these are just a few of the words i can think of to describe this film.

John Lee (Chow) is an assassin hired by Mr Wei (Kenneth Tsang) to take down his enemies. He owes Mr Wei three jobs, then he is free. But the last hit proves to be more than Lee can handle...

...This is one of the best films I have ever seen. Crammed into its sub-90 minute runtime is more action that most mainstream 2hr Hollywood action flicks. Spattered with neat camerawork and quotable lines ("His name IS John Lee!"), the direction is ultra-tight, not a shot or a word wasted.

Chow Yuen-Fat oozes charm as the troubled assassin, and Mira Sorvino turns in a nice performance as the female lead. Jurgen Prochnow, always good value for money, revels in his role as a villain.

The soundtrack is simply fantastic. Contributions from a selection of bands that you won't have heard of (Ithaka, the Crystal Method), and a Stereo MC's remix of Tricky's "She makes me wanna die". Be warned though that the official soundtrack CD is just the score, and doesn't contain any of these tracks.

Buy this film. Really.

I'm not normally a fan of fast-moving, all-action shoot-em-ups like this, but I've seen this film three times now and it grows on me more with each viewing.

The plot is comic-book simple. Chinese assassin John Lee (Chow "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" Yun-fat) is in thrall, for reasons that are never revealed, to Terence Wei (played by Kenneth Tsang), the Mr. Big of Chinese organised crime in Los Angeles. Lee has completed two hits on criminal opponents of Wei; the third will clear his obligation to Wei, which will free his family (held hostage by Wei) back in China. HOWEVER...
At the start of the film, Wei's son is shot and killed by Police Lt. Stan Zedkov (Michael Rooker)in a drugs bust. Wei's third hit for Lee is to kill Zedkov's seven year-old son in revenge. Lee, though quite happy to ice criminals, is unable to bring himself to kill the boy. As a result he goes on the lam, intending to return to China and free his family before Wei can have them rubbed out. To do this he needs a phoney passport (why a kosher one won't do is never made clear, but in a film like this such matters are irrelevant). He goes to forger Meg Coburn (Mira Sorvino). Wei's torpedoes follow him to her pad, and from then on its bullets, bullets all the way, as Wei sends in more assassins to replace Lee (hence the title), rub him out and do the hit job on the boy, who Lee and Coburn end up trying to save...

Probably the reason this film holds my attention and affection so much is the presence of Sorvino (who in real life, funnily enough, speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, though you'd never think so from this film). She usually plays sassy, no-nonsense girls (see, for instance, Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite", in which she played a call-girl so well she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), and her role here is no exception. However here, as in all her films but especially this one, she is so utterly fetching and magnetic that you just can't take your eyes off her. On top of this, she and Chow have great chemistry, which is always essential to any film with a hero and heroine, whatever the film's genre. The relationship between them is so convincing and engaging that it holds your attention however much mayhem engulfs them.

It's not just crash-bang-wallop, though. The film's ambience sometimes (and I'm sure deliberately) replicates that of the dystopian, rainy L.A. we see in "Blade Runner" - the wordless, haunting song that recurs throughout the film is highly reminiscent of the same oriental-sounding threnody we hear sung over Rick Deckard's futuristic city, and there is a very obvious visual tribute to Roy Batty's demise in the rain as an exhausted Lee lets the dust settle around him at the blood-soaked ending of the story. The obvious bond between Chow and Sorvino is enhanced by some pretty slick rapid-fire repartee between the pair of them. And the central villain Wei, far from being the standard sort of cardboard cut-out villain you'd expect in such a film, is portrayed by Tsang as reflective, sympathetic and almost justified in his actions, beliefs and feelings, adding yet another subtle dimension to a film which is clearly more than just the sum of its parts.
The ending is so predictable that I won't bother to go into it, but what the Hell, it's an actioner - pace Keats, that's all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know. Sit back, hang your brain up and just enjoy the spectacle.