A violent gangster thriller made during the late 1990s by the team behind the sleazy NAKED KILLER, CHEAP KILLERS is strictly by-the-numbers for the Chinese triad genre. It follows a tried-and-tested format, heavily indebted to the whole John Woo/heroic bloodshed style, following the lives of a couple of small-time hoods who fall foul of their own bosses. What follows is an odyssey of violence, rape and revenge, with a particularly tragic slant that sees one character suffering a nervous breakdown after a particularly gruelling episode at the hands of his oppressors.
While CHEAP KILLERS provides fitfully entertaining viewing, and the psychological slant to the story adds much-needed character depth, it falls foul of the hands of a director who seems ill at odds with the material given to him. Wong Jing's script is well paced and engaging, but Clarence Fok's direction is terrible: all flashy, MTV-style angles, gloomy shadows and scenes so poorly lit that it's difficult to see who's talking to who. Even worse, Fok fumbles the action sequences, rendering what should be exciting and grisly run-ins to nothing more than muddled flashes of ultra-violence. It's saying something that there's not a single decent bit of action all the way through.
The majority of the cast were unfamiliar to me, aside from newcomer Stephen Fung, reliably solid and who would later go on to fame and fortune with the likes of GEN X COPS. However, Alex Fong and Sunny Chan make the best of the material they're given, and their characters' homoerotic relationship provides much of the movie's interest. In some ways the film resembles the (much better) HEART OF A DRAGON, which saw Jackie Chan caring for his retarded brother, played by Sammo Hung, but Fok's befuddled directing style saps much of the similar interest that that film gathered. It's a pity, because in the hands of a decent director this could have been superlative stuff.
While CHEAP KILLERS provides fitfully entertaining viewing, and the psychological slant to the story adds much-needed character depth, it falls foul of the hands of a director who seems ill at odds with the material given to him. Wong Jing's script is well paced and engaging, but Clarence Fok's direction is terrible: all flashy, MTV-style angles, gloomy shadows and scenes so poorly lit that it's difficult to see who's talking to who. Even worse, Fok fumbles the action sequences, rendering what should be exciting and grisly run-ins to nothing more than muddled flashes of ultra-violence. It's saying something that there's not a single decent bit of action all the way through.
The majority of the cast were unfamiliar to me, aside from newcomer Stephen Fung, reliably solid and who would later go on to fame and fortune with the likes of GEN X COPS. However, Alex Fong and Sunny Chan make the best of the material they're given, and their characters' homoerotic relationship provides much of the movie's interest. In some ways the film resembles the (much better) HEART OF A DRAGON, which saw Jackie Chan caring for his retarded brother, played by Sammo Hung, but Fok's befuddled directing style saps much of the similar interest that that film gathered. It's a pity, because in the hands of a decent director this could have been superlative stuff.
