Reviews

Tsui Hark is one of my alltime favorite directors and he handles this story with such style and effectiveness it rates right up there with The Killer as one my favorite action movies. The action sequences have to be seen to be believed with some of the most origional concepts I have ever seen employed recently.

I have never seen Nicholas Tse before in a movie, but he's a great actor and handles the top role quite well. It was great to see Anthony Wong have a supporting role. His role as Johnny Wong in Hard Boiled ranks him as one of the best villians in HK cinema.

It's interesting to note how some action concepts have come full circle. Hark used wirework with great effect and it influenced the Wachowski's when they did the Matrix. Hark borrows a page from the Wachowski's and uses bullet-time in this movie (special effects weren't that bad eitheir!)

Great dubbing too, the voice acting was top notch.

Now the flaws...their seems to be a story working here but darned if I could follow it. It seems that this story was edited so heavily that it left some glaring plot holes in order to speed up the narrative. Only the most concentrated of viewers will be able to pick this up the first time. Some parts were in Spanish w/o subtitles! In one sequence we don't know what is being said and seems to be Jack's reason for going it alone. More attention needed to be given to the subtitles for non-native speakers.

All in all, great film with some minor things getting in the way. 8/10

"Love and a Bullet" adds nothing really new to the hitman genre but its a fun movie all the same. There are some really funny parts such as how Pretty Nate's crew gets down...but as mentioned before the last twenty minutes are horrible. Like a video game where you have to beat a boss w/ some special capability.

Also the whole, "I'm a professional" statements got old quick. Treach like Ice Cube can handle acting and his charisma carries over from music to screen.

6/10

This made for t.v movie premiered on TNT almost ten years ago and promptly forgotten...why I have no idea. Macy is incredible as Lang and Mategna is at his most menancing. This is a dark film but a great one, if you can rent do so, you'll enjoy it.

Awful screenplay and the music was beyond bad. You have to feel really sorry for Lance Henriksen who is a great actor(did a marvelous job as Abraham Lincoln in THE DAY LINCOLN WAS SHOT). The main guy tried too hard to be Clint Eastwood

Jet Li is capable of so much more than what was offered in Kiss of the Dragon. This film's plot is amateur and contrived and it is left to Li to carry the film. Tcheky Karyo is a incredible actor...too bad this wasn't the film for him show it. There are some good moments but they are few.The worst part of the movie was that they used the rapper Mystikal in places where he wasn't needed such as the final fight sequence. If you are a fan of Jet Li or Besson don't bother spending the money seeing it the theater just rent it on

There are many things one can praise about Hard Boiled. John Woo's action, Tony Leung's undercover cop charecter but simply put Hard Boiled is a great movie. The premise of the movie is that the Hong Kong police force has officers so deep undercover, that sometimes the cops kill their own. I don't want to give away the story, to avoid spoiling it for those who haven't seen it. Get the DVD version and enjoy a action masterpiece

It's a unique movie. Two best friends find themselves on opposites sides of the law. The basic story and structure is great, where it falters is the dialogue. It isn't that I couldn't understand it. It just had such awful lines like, "I'm sending you home guilty as charged" or "Not Nice, pay the price." The crew filmed this movie in Digital Video to save on the budget but that doesn't ever take away from the movie. A worthy rental or addition to your library.

This film was nowhere near the quality of The Usual Suspects as advertised but it was a good movie. Joe Carnahan has a great visual style and the originality of the editing makes seeing this movie a must, but where it fails is the performances. These guys are not film actors and only Dan Harlan(who played Woo)is the only person who can carry a scene. Sometimes the delivery of the dialogue has each character trying to impersonate Mr.Brown, Mr.Pink etc.

I bought this movie a year ago and I remember seeing it the first time...I was blown away. The acting is top notch with Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts and Alan Rickman in the lead. Supporting them are veteran Jordan actors Ian Hart and Stephen Rea. Neil Jordan presented a very beautiful drama considering he had one camera and an impossible shooting schedule. The ending of the movie, is in my opinion one of the best filmed sequences of all time.

Unlike the first Brian De Palma Mission Impossible, this John Woo focused on the action. I have been a huge John Woo fan for some time and was pleased with the action scenes in this movie, some have complained about how over-the-top they are but does anyone actually go into a John Woo movie to see realistic action? The crew of MI2 developed the story only after several stunt sequences had already been plotted out and like most Hong Kong movies the story does tend to move along at a snail's pace until the last 30-25 minutes of the movie. All the Woo ingredients are here...the pigeons/doves, the hero brandishing two Berettas and elegant action sequence. For these reasons alone all Woo fans should see this movie.

The Replacement Killers is a so-so Hollywood reproduction of Hong Kong action. It boasts performances from John Woo veterans Chow Yun-Fat(John Lee) and Kenneth Tsang(the villain Mr.Wei) backed up by Mira Sorvino, Michael Rooker, Jurgen Prochnow and Danny Trejo. While the film does have some exciting action sequences, especially at the car wash and at the end of the movie, it doesn't fully exploite the acting talents of Chow Yun-Fat. Because Hollywood emphasizes story over style or stunts I was hoping to see Chow Yun-Fat really break through to the next level. In Hong Kong, several stunts or shootouts are brainstormed and a story is built around that, stunts over story. In Antoine Fuqua's freshman effort, he places style over substance that really does nothing to advance the story. The aerial shots of the city and the filtred shots of Wei's lair serve as distractions rather than enhancements. The main saving grace is the acting in this film...Prochnow,Chow and Tsang turn in incredible performances considering English is their second language. Overall an okay movie to rent or own.