Review of The Replacement Killers (1998) by Xgary X — 17 Sep 2009
When a hired assassin fails to kill the young son of a detective for a ruthless drug runner, he and a hapless forger are hunted by his replacements. In this, Chow Yun Fat's Hollywood debut, he revisits his familiar assassin with honour character in a fairly standard action thriller.
There's very little imagination or originality on display; the script does little more than contrive ways to keep our hero and the girl together while extras in bad suits with machine guns chase them around.
Having said that, there's very little actually WRONG with it either. Chow is as charismatic as ever, Mira Sorvino is knuckle-bitingly cute and the set pieces are reasonably well handled. It avoids schmaltz and lame love scenes and at less than 90 minutes is wise enough to not outstay its welcome.
Brainless yes, but the charisma of its star raises it (slightly) above the bog standard and its far from the worse US debut an Asian action star has had to endure.
This review of The Replacement Killers (1998) was written by Xgary X on 17 Sep 2009.
The Replacement Killers has generally received mixed reviews.
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