The Replacement Killers . Tucson Weekly . 02-16-98

The Replacement Killers

DIRECTED BY: Antoine Fuqua

REVIEWED: 02-16-98

Where executive producer John Woo's Hong Kong action films register triple-digit deaths with many thousands of bullets fired, this gringo homage, directed by Antoine Fuqua, manages a mere 32 fatalities, making Replacement Killers a marvel of understatement. It's all about family values: A hard-boiled cop (Michael Rooker) kills the sneering son of very bad guy Mr. Wei (Kenneth Tsang) in a bust gone sour. The mighty Chow Yun-Fat, the perennial hero of Woo's best films, is sent to dispatch the cop's kid as payback. But Yun-Fat's John Lee, a lean and mean assassin, suffers a fit of conscience--he's a devoted family man in his free time--and calls off the mayhem. Hounded by Mr. Wei's backup assassins, he falls in with a gun-toting forger with a heart of gold, a character nicely played by Mira Sorvino's expressive underwear. Jurgen Prochnow and Clifton Gonzalez vie for the role of evildoer with the worst complexion, while Yun-Fat looks mostly amused as he dances through mad acts of car-wash fu, fire-escape fu, and movie-within-a-movie fu.

--McNamee

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The Replacement Killers
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