Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Hired assassin John Lee is asked by Chinatown crime boss Terence Wei to murder the young son of policeman Stan Zedkov. Lee has the boy in his sights, but his conscience gets the better of him, and he spares the child's life. Afraid that Wei will take revenge on his family in China, Lee seeks out expert forger Meg Coburn to obtain the passport he needs to get out of the country, but a band of replacement killers is soon on his trail.
The Replacement Killers is a fairly routine late-90s Hong Kong-style action transplant, serving primarily as Chow Yun-fat's Hollywood debut. The plot is thin and derivative, leaning heavily on familiar hitman-with-a-conscience tropes and offering little narrative surprise. Chow's screen presence and chemistry with Mira Sorvino elevate the acting above average, though neither is given much to work with dramatically. Antoine Fuqua's direction delivers competent, stylish action cinematography with some slick gun-fu staging, but nothing truly distinctive. The film is essentially a pale imitation of John Woo's Hong Kong work without Woo's kinetic genius or thematic depth. The ending resolves predictably and without much dramatic weight, wrapping up the thin premise in a perfunctory shootout.