BEFORE: Well, I'm presented with two choices, follow the linking or stick to the schedule - and apparently I've chosen the linking over the schedule. I made a plan, sure, but I've already dropped in so many extra films in January that I've got almost no chance of making my February 1 romance deadline in time. The original plan already assumed I could double-up twice during the month, even though I wasn't totally sure that would be possible, and I was going to link from "Mulan" directly to "Crouching Tiger" via Cheng Pei-Pei. Now THAT ship has sailed, because I added "Memoirs of a Geisha", and now another one that wasn't planned, so what happens now? Find four days this month where I can watch TWO movies, just to make an arbitrary deadline that I imposed on myself? No, the easier thing to do, and I hate to do it, is to just start the romance chain a few days later than usual.
I know, I know, but just look at all the great movies that I crammed into the first two weeks of the year, isn't that worth something? And for once I feel like I'm making something akin to progress, getting some of these classic films with stellar reputations off of the watchlist. I don't know much about "The Replacement Killers", for example, but it's got very good scores, even though it's not on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die". But "Crouching Tiger" IS on that list, so that one's important, too. Heck, they're all important, so what the heck can I do, but watch 'em all? It's just unfortunate that I noticed the linking opportunity at the last second, but isn't that better than not noticing it at all?
So, new plan - Kenneth Tsang (The General) AND Randall Duk Kim (Dr. Crab!) carry over from "Memoirs of a Geisha".
THE PLOT: A troubled hitman seeks aid from a forger to help him get papers to China. However, the drug lord has hired replacements to finish the job and kill the hitman.
AFTER: Eh, now I'm not sure that my little detour was worth it - this is a classic film with a good reputation, in other words, I think I've heard good things about it, but I just found it very simple, quite basic. It's an early Antoine Fuqua film (pre-"Training Day"), and it looks like it's the first thing he directed that was NOT a music video, but I think that doesn't elevate it, the director's future track record only counts for so much, and at the end of the day, there doesn't seem to be much here. Also, it was produced by John Woo, another director with a great reputation for action films, but I think I've only seen a few of them, like "Broken Arrow", "Face/Off" and "Mission: Impossible II".
I like the idea that the cold hitman here, John Lee, has a change of heart, and can't go through with the assignment when he learns that his target is a policeman's son, and his last two assignments were to take out criminals, which he found to be a lot easier. The Asian crimelord has threatened his mother and sister back in China, but that's still not enough to make him kill an innocent child - so he's in a no-win situation, I get that, and he's determined to come out on top here, though it seems the odds are nearly impossible. All good stuff, but still it feels like something is missing somewhere, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
(I don't know, maybe it's me, I've been feeling out of sorts during this latest wave of the pandemic, where there's no official lockdown here in NYC, but there might as well be. Officially, the city's still open, it's just every individual place IN the city is possibly closed, or barely open. When I went to see "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in a movie theater last week, there were maybe 4 people there, but it was the matinee. It seems like everybody's either sick with COVID or they're staying home so they don't catch COVID, plus it's freaking cold out there, so when you put it all together, nobody's out doing much of anything, I'm at home four full days a week, and I've got the cooped-up cabin fever again. When I'm at work I just want to be at home, when I'm at home I want to be out doing something, and if I go out with a friend, it just feels weird. All this hardly makes for a great attitude, and the only travel I'm doing is virtually, through movies.)
Anyway, the hitman tries to get a forged passport from a contact's female connection, so he can fly back to China and check in on his family, but some of the gangster's men track him down at the forger's office and try to shoot him, and her. This is one of several quick shootouts, they did pack a number of them into a tight 90-minute film. Not long after, the titular Replacement Killers appear on the scene, they're tasked with killing the kid that John Lee wouldn't kill, also they need to take out John Lee and the forger, who I guess both know too much. This leads to a shoot-out at the car wash, a shoot-out at the movie theater, and then later on they're going to swing by the dry cleaners and the Starbucks, and probably have a couple shoot-outs there too.
John Lee gets a passport from a dying friend, and the forger works her magic on it, so he's free to leave the country, but he can't stop thinking about the cop's kid - him leaving the country probably means the Replacement Killers will succeed, and he can't have that on his conscience. So the ex-killer and the forger have to team up to take everybody down, the gangster, his underlings, and the Replacement Killers. As I said, it all seems like pretty simple stuff - I'm not sorry I watched it, I just thought it would be more relevant, I guess.
I feel like I haven't seen Mira Sorvino in anything for quite some time - though she was in "Stuber" recently, and I saw her in "Butter" the year before that. She's been working steadily, it looks like, just not in movies that I've been watching, I guess that's just the luck of the draw. Reading up on her interest in making this film back in 1998, I knew she went to Harvard (at the same time as a friend of mine) but I didn't know she majored in Asian studies and spent 8 months living in Beijing. She was also dating Quentin Tarantino around the time she made this film, I guess that all makes some kind of sense.
Also starring Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sorvino (last seen in "Stuber"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "Brightburn"), Jürgen Prochnow (last seen in "Judge Dredd"), Til Schweiger (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Danny Trejo (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Carlos Gomez (last seen in "All About Steve"), Frank Medrano (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Carlos Leon, Leo Lee, Patrick Kilpatrick, Andrew J. Marton, Sydney Coberly, Yau-Gene Chan, Nicki Micheaux, Max Daniels, James Wing Woo (last seen in "The Big Fix"), Albert Wong (last seen in "Enemy of the State").
RATING: 5 out of 10 pinball machines
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