The Replacement Killers

Antoine Fuqua’s directorial debut, The Replacement Killers follows Chow Yun-Fat’s elite assassin as he’s forced to fend for his life after he’s marked for death by a powerful Asian gangster (Kenneth Tsang’s Terence Wei) – with Chow’s character, John Lee, enlisting a beautiful forger (Mira Sorvino’s Meg Coburn) to assist his increasingly perilous endeavors. It’s a familiar (to say the least) setup that’s employed to consistently (and relentlessly) generic effect by Fuqua, with the movie, though appreciatively short, lurching from one over-the-top action set-piece to the next with little thought to pacing or momentum. Fuqua’s slick sensibilities highlight the emptiness of Ken Sanzel’s less-than-thoughtful screenplay, and it’s perhaps not surprising to note that both Chow and Sorvino are trapped within the confines of flat, one-dimensional characters. (The movie’s last-minute efforts to indicate romantic feelings between John and Meg fall laughably flat, to be sure.) The only thing preventing The Replacement Killers‘ complete failure is a smattering of admittedly effective action sequences, with shootouts at a functioning car wash and in a crowded movie theater certainly standing out as energetic examples of Fuqua’s comfort with such moments. The end result is a barely-watchable time-waster that wastes the talents of virtually all involved, and it’s ultimately impossible not to wonder what Chow, making his English-language debut here, was thinking when he signed up for the project.

** out of ****