I was a huge fan of
Chow Yun Fat long before he got his big break in America. I had tons of his movies on VHS and would watch them all the time. So, I had a lot of interest in
The Replacement Killers when it was in production and looked forward to seeing it on Opening Day. When I came out of the theater, to say I was disappointed is an understatement. There were so many things wrong with the movie that just rubbed me the wrong way.
First off, the casting of
Mira Sorvino as
Meg Corburn. She just is not believable as a gun-toting forger at all. Not to mention that some of her dialog readings weren't all that impressive. I love Mira, but I just think she was wrong for this role. The other problem I had with the movie was that of Director
Antoine Fuqua. This was his directorial film debut and it shows. He was coming from the Music Video background and a lot of what you see up on the screen is very MV cliched. It didn't help that he swiped a lot of 'shots' from a lot of different sources, be it
John Woo (expected) and
Michael Bay (rookie mistake).
As bad as
The Replacement Killers was in the theater, I still ended up getting the movie on DVD because I was and still am a big fan of
Chow. Hell, I even double-dipped and got the Special Edition when that came out as well. The movies plot is as simplisitc as it's going to get.
John Lee (Chow Yun Fat) has one last assignment to fulfill and his obligation is no more. He goes against his benefactor's wishes and becomes the target. That's it. It's all about escaping one bullet ballet for the next. Visually the film looks good and the sound was top notch. Even the soundtrack is kickass. Just don't go into this expecting a character with depth. There is none. You want to check out
The Killer and
Hard Boiled for that.
This is definitely worth a
Rent if you want some mindless action fun. I've gotten to the point where I can just enjoy it for what it is and nothing more. I'm not as critical of the film as I use to be. Should you decide to check this out, go with the Bare Bones version of the DVD. To me this has the better audio mix. The
Special Edition audio is horribly mixed. They pumped up the sound FX so much that it actually drowns out the dialog, rendering it useless. For the bonus material, go with the
Special Edition, which is the only reason why I ever kept it in the first place.