Chow Yun-Fat in The Replacement Killers.

Jackie Chan has been the front runner for awhile, and Michelle Yeoh made a strong showing recently with her role in the James Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies. But if I had to place a bet, I’d put my money on Chow Yun-Fat, who is now appearing in his first U.S. release, The Replacement Killers, opposite Mira Sorvino. That’s because unlike the high-kicking, karate-chopping Chan and Yeoh, Yun-Fat’s screen persona, forged through such superior Hong Kong fare as The Killer and Hard Boiled, is already thoroughly entrenched in American mythology. Like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood before him, Yun-Fat specializes in playing the solitary, tortured gunman, cursed with a talent to destroy. And if nothing else, Yun-fat stands a better chance of crossing over to American audiences because they are likely to relate better to his style of shoot-’em-up action. Gun-Fu over Kung-Fu, if you will.

That said, however, The Replacement Killers is not the film that is going to put Yun-Fat over the top. It is a competent thriller, just good enough to give you a taste for more.

Yun-Fat is John Lee, an assassin who has been pressed into service by gangster Terence Wei (Kenneth Tsang); if Lee does not execute Wei’s enemies, his family in China will be killed. This suits Lee, a cold-blooded killer, just fine, until, that is, he’s ordered to kill the young boy of the cop who killed Wei’s own drug-dealing son. When Lee fails to complete the contract, he becomes the target for the replacement killers of the film’s title.

The Replacement Killers is a fine introduction to Yun-Fat, but unfortunately the producers of this film, including his longtime director Woo, couldn’t get him the support he needs.

Sorvino, who plays a freelance document forger who gets unwittingly swept up in the shootout between Lee and his assassins, is ostensibly here either because she has a well-publicized degree in Chinese studies from Harvard or because she is the current girlfriend of known Hong Kong film enthusiast Quentin Tarantino. But as for her character, I have no idea why she’s here. She gets to shoot some folk (hell, everybody gets to shoot somebody) but otherwise she only seems to be around to add a little exposition and dialogue to the proceedings. This hardly seems necessary; though Yun-Fat’s newly acquired English is a little rough, his brooding presence and pained expressions speak volumes.

And while director Antoine Fuqua, best known for Nike commercials and Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” video, brings a great visual flair to the proceedings, this first-time feature director still has to learn a few things about dramatic pacing and continuity. He shows more than enough promise, however, to warrant another shot at a major motion picture.