Extended Cut
 Tagline: Conscience has no place in the heart of an assassin. International superstar Chow Yun-Fat (John Woo's Hard Boiled) makes his Hollywood debut with Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino (1995 Best Supporting Actress, Mighty Aphrodite) in The Replacement Killers, a fierce and explosive action thriller from director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day). After he betrays Mr. Wei, the ruthless crime boss who hired him to avenge his son's death, professional killer John Lee (Yun-Fat) goes on the run. Enlisting the aid of beautiful document forger Meg Coburn (Sorvino), Lee attempts to return to his family in China before they are victimized by his betrayal. But Wei's army of "replacement killers" is hot on his trail, and now both he and Meg are targets of their impressive firepower. With both sides fully armed and determined to fight to the death, and ultra-violent shoot-out breaks out when they finally face off against each other. It's a "seamless fusion of Hong Kong action-adventure style and cool" (The New York Times) that will blow everyone away - including you! Storyline: John Lee is the best hitman money can buy. But when John refuses to kill because of the seven year-old son of his target, John's bosses send someone after John to kill him and then take his place in the ring of hitmen. John then teams up with Meg Coburn to help him escape these "Replacement Killers." Written by Anonymous Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Brandon A. DuHamel, September 18, 2007 -- The Replacement Killers marked two debuts. It was the first feature film helmed by director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) who came from the world of television advertising, and it also marked the Hollywood debut of actor Chow Yun-Fat (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), who had previously made his name internationally as a star of Hong Kong action films. To many film buffs, and to a lot of those "in the know", he was already well known, but to the average U.S. audience, he was an unknown entity. In this film, Chow Yun-Fat plays John Lee, an assassin sent by his patron, Mr. Wei, to kill a 7-year- old boy as retribution for the killing of Wei's own son. John Lee's conscience will not allow him to kill the boy when he sees the boy at play with his father, the police officer that killed Wei's son, so instead John leaves and eventually makes his way to the office of Meg Coburn (Mira Sorvino) seeking forged documents to flee the country and get back to China in order to save the lives of his family from Mr. Wei. It is here where the action finally picks up as John Lee and Meg Coburn are set upon by Wei's men out to kill John, and after the fray, John kidnaps Meg as he still needs her assistance to flee. Chow's acting throughout is quite good. Not your typical overacting action hero, he maintains a quiet, stoic, and charismatic presence when delivering his lines. For some reason, even though you know he's an assassin, you tend to like the guy, which makes it believable that he would choose to not kill a child. Mira Sorvino more than holds her own, which is to be expected from an Academy Award® winner. Her character helps to counteract the cold masculinity of Chow's John Lee, which sets up a rather tender moment where John must choose between saving his own family and letting a child die, or saving the child. Antoine Fuqua's directional style shows his roots, which is a good thing in this case. The highly stylized lighting and camera effects add to the tension and drama, and highlight the action sequences wonderfully. He pays homage to Chow Yun-Fat's Hong Kong cinema background while adding a bit of MTV flare. One such scene that highlights this is the scene in a movie theatre where Mr. Wei's "replacement killers" go after the young boy, and silhouettes are set against the backdrop of a movie screen playing cartoons. The Replacement Killers is not without its faults. The dialogue between the characters can tend to fall into some painfully overused clichés, and sometimes you get the feeling there is dialogue lacking where there should be some. I also sensed that they were working too hard to make John Lee a likeable character and give him a past, but in the end his back-story was only given in passing. Still, it was an action-packed movie that was an easy watch, what more can one ask for? It may not be the greatest action movie ever made, but The Replacement Killers (Extended Cut) offers enough high energy action to keep you on the edge of your seat and get the adrenalin pumping for a couple of hours. Its stylized look and solid acting from Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino alone are enough to at least make it worthy of a purchase, but the excellent AVC encoding and uncompressed PCM soundtracks from Sony put it over the top. Cast Notes: Yun-Fat Chow (John Lee [as Chow Yun-Fat]), Mira Sorvino (Meg Coburn), Michael Rooker (Stan 'Zeedo' Zedkov), Kenneth Tsang (Terence Wei), Jürgen Prochnow (Michael Kogan [as Jurgen Prochnow]), Til Schweiger (Ryker), Danny Trejo (Collins), Clifton Collins Jr. (Loco [as Clifton Gonzalez Gonzalez]), Carlos Gómez (Hunt [as Carlos Gomez]), Frank Medrano (Rawlins), Leo Lee (Lam), Patrick Kilpatrick (Pryce), Randall Duk Kim (Alan Chan), Andrew J. Marton (Stevie), Sydney Coberly (Sara). IMDb Rating (11/04/14): 6.1/10 from 21,580 users IMDb Rating (02/13/11): 5.9/10 from 14,190 users
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