Directed by:
Antoine FuquaScreenplay:
Ken SanzelCinematography:
Peter Lyons CollisterComposer:
Harry Gregson-WilliamsCast:
Yun-fat Chow, Mira Sorvino, Michael Rooker, Kenneth Tsang, Jürgen Prochnow, Til Schweiger, Danny Trejo, Clifton Collins Jr., Carlos Gómez, Leo Lee (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Chow Yun-Fat makes a Hollywood splash as a John Lee, Chinese hitman beholden to drug kingpin Mr. Wei (Hong Kong stalwart Ken Tsang, in an interesting reversal of his "crusty cop" persona). The good news is that Lee's free after one hit; the bad news is that Wei wants revenge on a cop who killed his son--by killing the cop's son. Lee decides to run rather than kill the boy, and Wei doesn't take kindly to the betrayal. Tough-talking passport forger Meg Coburn (Mira Sorvino) creates a new identity for Lee, but that's of little help when they must face Wei's army of "replacement killers." (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (4)
I was expecting more from Antoine Fuqua, who lured Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat into his actioner. It has a decent pace, but the film feels very B-ish and doesn't offer much besides decent shootouts. A 90's B-movie standard that will appeal to few today. 60%
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This action flick was supposed to make two men famous. It was intended to be Chinese idol Chow Yun-fat’s big Hollywood debut and music-video director Antoine Fuqua’s first major feature film. But these big ambitions foundered on a below-average screenplay worthy of a straight-to-video B-movie starring Dolph Lundgren. The well-armed Chow is cool in his black coat and his unwilling partner, the blonde document forger Mira Sorvino, is sexy. But regardless of how spectacularly filmed The Replacement Killers is, it comes across as a bad joke because of its shallowness and the pointlessness of its content. Antoine Fuqua proved his mettle three years later with the excellent crime thriller Training Day and Chow achieved global fame not as an action hero, but as an unhappily in-love spiritual guru and kung-fu teacher in Ang Lee’s poetic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
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I don't find this "Hong Kong action movie set in America" nearly as bad as they say. Yes, a drop (or rather a couple of liters) of originality wouldn't have hurt the script, because especially in the first half the whole "boss sends assassins - they fail - boss finds out and sends assassins - they fail..." feels stupid, but because of the constant action, reasonable runtime and nice video clip direction, I didn't get bored and my brain didn't feel particularly abused.
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A simple, extremely stylish piece, a thoroughbred 90's song, reminiscent of John Woo in many ways. First-class imagery, you can't ask for anything else.
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Gallery (24)
Photo © 1998 Columbia Pictures
![The Replacement Killers - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/163/724/163724922_eab1fe.jpg)
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