Amazon.com reviews for
The Replacement Killers (1998) More at IMDbPro »

The Replacement Killers (vhs):

Amazon.com video review: This didn't turn out to be quite the deserving American vehicle for Hong Kong action superstar Chow Yun-fat that it should have been. But it is an entertaining potboiler about a hired gun (Chow) who fails to carry out an assignment to kill a cop (which would leave the fellow's son without a father), and becomes a target himself when the contract is handed over to other assassins. Mira Sorvino plays a document forger who is drawn into the fray, pairing up with the hero as they fight their way out of bad spots. The whole enterprise is a little too routine, but the action is sharp and the battles are imaginative and crisp. Director Antoine Fuqua has a by-the-numbers feeling for the influence of Hong Kong on contemporary thrillers (this film was also produced by John Woo), and that's enough to make The Replacement Killers purely enjoyable if not exactly a revelation. --Tom Keogh

The Replacement Killers (vhs):

Amazon.com video review: 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