The Replacement Killers

MPAA Rating

R

Theatrical Release Date

Feb 05, 1998

Genre(s)

• Thrillers
• Blackmail, Murder & Mayhem
• Chow Yun-Fat
• Race Against Time
• Martial Arts
• 4-for-3 Action & Adventure
• 4-for-3 All DVDs

Rating (Stars)

Description

The director of Chow Yun-fat's first Hollywood outing, music-video veteran Antoine Fuqua, seems to be trying to squeeze the charismatic Asian superstar into a conventional American action-hero mold, and the results are dispiriting. Fuqua never lets this high-spirited actor smile, fetishizing him as a gunslinging clotheshorse in a series of garish, scenery-smashing battle scenes. As a paid assassin whose former employers turn against him, Chow enlists the help of an illegal documents specialist played, with surprising grit, by Mira Sorvino, and then spends most of the time fending off squads of killers in mirror shades. The movie is art-directed and photographed fit to kill (even the most routine incidents are eye-gougingly colorful) and edited to a hip-hop beat. It's garishly superficial. The frequent gunplay duels may keep action fans riveted, but they'll hate themselves in the morning. --David Chute

Director

Antoine Fuqua

Stars

• Yun-Fat Chow
• Mira Sorvino
• Michael Rooker
• Kenneth Tsang
• Jürgen Prochnow

Running Time

87 minutes

Original Price

$9.95

Current Value

$1.40

DVD Features

• AC-3
• Anamorphic
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• DVD-Video
• Full Screen
• Widescreen
• NTSC
• 1.33:1