Chow Yun-Fat is one of few Hong Kong film stars that has managed to perpetuate his stardom in Hollywood. That path was hard because Yun-Fat, unlike his colleagues Jackie Chan and Jet Li, built his popularity more on his acting than on his acrobatic or martial skills. Because of that, even with the backing of John Woo, he had to fight many obstacles while landing his first roles in Hollywood - language barriers, prejudices and obvious inability of Hollywood to create melodramatic action-packed epics that had brought Chow Yun-Fat such fame in Hong Kong. Chow Yun-Fat's first Hollywood film, 1998 action thriller The Replacement Killers, directed by Antoine Fuqua, shows how Hollywood unsuccessfully tried to reduce legend to simplistic formula.
In this film Chow Yun-Fat plays John Lee, top assassin employed by Terence Wei (played by Kenneth Tsang), Chinese American drug lord. After Wei's son gets killed in drug bust conducted by policeman Stan Zedkov (played by Michael Rooker), Wei wants revenge and order Lee to kill Zedkov's seven-year old son. Just when he is about to take little boy's life, Lee has sudden outburst of conscience and decides that there are some things he can't do. This decision jeopardises Lee's family still living in China, so Lee immediately needs forged passport in order to travel there and protect his loved ones from Wei's thugs. The documents are going to be provided by expert forger Meg Coburn (played by Mira Sorvino), but seemingly routine job gets complicated when she too becomes target of "replacement" killers hired by Wei. Lee and Coburn become fugitives and need to rely on each other in order to escape both police and mobsters.
The purpose of The Replacement Killers was to introduce Chow Yun-Fat to American audience and it is achieved in the opening scenes when his character arrives like angel of death and displays killing skills. After that promising beginning Ken Sanzel's script quickly succumbs to cliches and predictability. The plot becomes nothing than an excuse for series of spectacular action scenes and characters are revealed to be one dimensional. This only shows how many acting talents in this film were wasted, especially Mira Sorvino in utterly thankless and unconvincing role of the bad girl with a heart of gold; the film doesn't try to give even the simplest explanation why her character would help Chow Yun-Fat's character or went into the forging business in the first place. Diverse cast, that includes Europeans like Jürgen Prochnow and Till Schweigger, Chow Yun-Fat's old Hong Kong associates like Kenneth Tsang and, last but not least, reliable American character actors like Michael Rooker and Danny Trejo, is equally wasted. First-time director Antoine Fuqua, whose had directed music videos before, shows some skills while directing gunfights, but those gunfights after a while become repetitive and they can't compensate for the lack of plot. In the end, The Replacement Killers rested almost solely on Chow Yun- Fat's shoulders; that actor made this film possible and watchable but he, no matter how "cool" or talented, couldn't pull this film above the levels of mediocrity.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on February 3rd 2004)
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