Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. I decided early on that I would only program movies that have meant something to me over the years. Tonight, Monday November 18th, we’re watching THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS starring Chow Yun-fat, Mira Sorvino and Michael Rooker.
So why does THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS mean something to me, you might ask?! The main reason is a matter of timing and its star, Chow Yun-fat. I personally discovered Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat in the late spring of 1997 and was in full obsession mode when I read that he was making his American film debut with THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS in early 1998. To say I was pumped about this movie would be quite the understatement, and I was at a theater in Conway, Arkansas the very day of its wide release on February 6, 1998. Director Antoine Fuqua, making his directorial debut, tried to make a stylish film that would appeal to fans of John Woo, who served as Executive Producer on THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS. It worked on me, and over the next few years I purchased the movie in every format imaginable. I’ve owned it on bootleg VHS, regular VHS, DVD, and special edition blu ray. Looking back on the film now, I realize that it’s an exercise in style over substance, but that’s certainly okay. It doesn’t take away the fact that it came out at a time in my life when I was primed for maximum movie impact. You can never go back and replicate those times in your life, but you can celebrate them. Sierra and I will be doing just that tonight on #MondayMuggers at 9:00 CST. THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS is available for streaming on Amazon Prime. Join us if you’d like!
It was 1997 and I was in an outlet mall in Branson, MO. Being a film buff, I found myself looking for entertainment related books and noticed a book with Jackie Chan on the cover called “Hong Kong Babylon.” Jackie was enjoying some popularity in the United States at the time due to the financial success of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. I opened up the book and started browsing through the various chapters. I saw blurbs about a bunch of movies I had never heard of and blurbs about a bunch of people I had never heard of. Jackie Chan was the only person I knew anything about. I put the book down because I saw another book about Hong Kong movies. This one was called “Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head.” I opened it up and saw some of the same people and movies mentioned in the other book. I liked this book better because it had more pictures. I remember this second book opening with a chapter called “10 that Rip.” It was their listing of 10 movies that would determine if you were a potential Hong Kong movie fan or not. Watching these movies would either open up that part of your mind that got excited about Hong Kong movies, or you would be hopelessly lost and not a candidate for Hong Kong movie fandom. As I looked closer, I noticed this same man in both books. He was usually holding a gun and looking extremely cool. That man’s name was Chow Yun-fat, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I remembered seeing him years earlier on a VHS box at our local Hastings Entertainment Superstore. Not really being a fan of foreign movies at the time of the Hastings notice, I didn’t pay much attention, but now I really took notice. Chow caught my attention, but I also found it interesting that there were so many other movies that I’d never heard of, and I thought I knew a lot about movies. I bought both books and took them home with me. It’s no exaggeration to say that these books changed my life, and I was soon lost in a world of Hong Kong films.
No film exemplified my newfound love for Hong Kong movies more than THE KILLER, which was directed by John Woo and starred my new obsession, Chow Yun-fat. I was happy to find that it was readily available on VHS. I watched it on repeat. I had not seen anything that I thought was so awesome. The story is simple. It’s about a hitman, the killer of the title (Chow Yun-fat), accidentally blinding a nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) when he’s performing a job. Feeling devastated that he hurt this beautiful woman, he spends the next few months hanging around the nightclub hoping to have a chance to help her. He finally gets a chance one night when a group of young hooligans attack her on her way home. Chow steps in and beats the crap out of the guys and sends them on their way. This starts a beautiful relationship and the two fall in love. The killer has to perform one more job to get the money needed for a surgery that will hopefully restore her eyesight. When performing that last job, a tough cop (Danny Lee) finds himself on the trail of the killer and will do anything to get his man. John Woo has somehow crafted a story where Chow Yun-fat is an honorable “killer” on a noble mission to protect this young woman, and who is now the target of the Chinese triads trying to eliminate him. While trying to bring down the killer, the tough cop finds himself caught in the crossfire between the killer and the triads. When Chow goes out of his way to take a hurt young girl to the hospital, our tough cop realizes the hitman isn’t that bad after all, and the two men begin to have a respect for each other. There’s no time to rest though, as they find themselves having to team up to take on an army of triad soldiers armed to the teeth and out for blood.
I had never seen anything like THE KILLER up to that point in my life. The action had a style and flare that aroused everything I love about movies. I soon learned it fit into a subgenre of Hong Kong films labelled “heroic bloodshed,” a genre that I would go deep, deep, deep, into! The opening action sequence features the impossibly charismatic Chow Yun-fat dressed impeccably, taking on an underworld boss and his henchman, with two guns blazing in stylish slow motion. John Woo’s work has been endlessly copied by this point, but that does not take away how I felt watching this movie for the first time. I also loved the shameless sentimentality in the film, first between the killer and the singer, and then later between the killer and the cop. For a movie that’s balls to walls action, it has a huge heart. I was hooked.
I immediately began searching out all of John Woo’s films including A BETTER TOMORROW, BULLET IN THE HEAD and HARD-BOILED. After I watched those movies, I started trying to find every Chow Yun-fat film I could. I’ll never forget how I felt when I saw GOD OF GAMBLERS for the first time. I realized that Chow could do anything, not just cool heroic bloodshed films. I will tell anyone who’ll listen that Chow Yun-fat is my favorite living actor. After being a fan for 27 years, I still search the internet for any news I can find about a movie he may be working on.
And it all started at an outlet mall in Branson, MO, and when I first got my hands on THE KILLER.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 77th birthday to director John Woo, the man who did the most to popularize the idea of the slo mo of doom!
Today’s scene that I love comes from Woo’s 1997 film, Face/Off. In this scene, John Travolta pursues Nicolas Cage by both car and helicopter. While Cage’s criminal has the time of his life, Travolta’s no-nonsense federal agent reveals just how obsessed he is with capturing his prey. No one has switched faces yet but the action is already wonderfully over-the-top. Cage and Travolta both do what they do best in this scene and so does John Woo.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1995’s Heatseeker! Selected and hosted by @BunnyHero, Heatseeker was directed by the later Albert Pyun and yes, it does feature a cyborg! The movie starts at 8 pm et and it is available on YouTube.
Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. Tonight’s movie, starting at 10 pm et, will be 1997’s Face/Off, the John Woo classic starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage as rivals who switch faces! Face/Off can be found on Prime!
It should make for a night of intense viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto twitter, start Heatseeker at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to prime, start Face/Off and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy. And reviews of these films will probably end up on this site at some point over the next few weeks.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 76th birthday to the one and only John Woo! And what better way to celebrate than with a scene that we love? 1993’s Hard Target was not only John Woo’s first American film but it’s also one of the few films to make perfect use of Jean-Claude Van Damme (not to mention Wilford Brimley and Lance Henriksen)!
Today’s scene is hard Target’s epic shootout and chase scene. Nearly 30 years later, it’s still exciting to watch.
Nat Binder (Yancy Butler) has come to New Orleans to track down the father who she hasn’t seen since she was seven years old. What she doesn’t know is that her father has recently been kidnapped and killed for sport by a wealthy hunter and Most Dangerous Game enthusiast named Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen). After a homeless veteran named Chance Bourdeaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) saves her from a group of muggers, Nat hires him to help her track down her father. This turns out to be a good decision because Fouchon is sending out his private army to track down Nat and Chance is Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Jean-Claude Van Damme has never gotten as much respect as he deserves. Even though most of his action movies were low-budget and often not very good, Van Damme was still a better actor than some of the other B-action stars of the 90s and, unlike most of his contemporaries, he could actually do most of the things that he did in the movies in real life as well. Though Van Damme may have sabotaged his career through cocaine abuse, it’s not a surprise that most action fans would welcome a Jean-Claude Van Damme comeback far more than a comeback by someone like Steven Seagal. Hard Target features Van Damme at his best, emphasizing his athleticism and contrasting his earnest acting style with the more flamboyant villainy of Lance Henriksen, who also brings his best to the role of Emil. The film also features Wilford Brimley, bringing his best to the role of Bourdeaux’s uncle. Van Damme, Henriksen, and Brimley all at their best? How could anyone turn down Hard Target?
Hard Target was the first American film of director John Woo and he proves himself to be the perfect director for the material. With Woo, every scene becomes an operatic set piece and it’s impossible to worry about any plot inconsistencies when Van Damme is gracefully jumping out of the way of bullets and missiles. Woo turns the material into a live-action comic book and, even if it’s not as good as his Hong Kong films or later American films like Face/Off, it’s still undeniably entertaining.
Hard Target is Van Damme’s best film of the 90s. Watch it on a double bill with Surviving The Game.
While looking over at something to watch as the night wore on I came across a film that I still consider to this day one of the best action films ever made. People may try and guess that I’m looking at a Michael Bay flick (wrong). Maybe it’s a John McTiernan classic 80’s actioner (wrong again). Or maybe it’s one of those Luc Besson Euro-action flicks which became such the rage amongst the hipster cineaste during the 90’s (wrong thrice). No the film I’m talking about comes from Hong Kong and was the last actin film directed by the master of bullet ballet himself, John Woo, before he left for Hollywood to try his luck.
The film is Hard Boiled and it has so many iconic film scenes that it would be difficult to just choose which one I love. So, I decided to go right at the beginning and picked the “Tea House” gun fight which opens up the film. To call this scene awesome would be an understatement. The scene looks like chaos the moment the first gun goes off, but looking at this scene over and over one cannot help but wonder at the musical-like dance choreography in how the gun fight unfolds from beginning to end.
It’s not a surprise that the musicals of the 50’s and 60’s were some of John Woo’s favorite films and it shows in how he choreographs and films the scene. Chow Yun Fat as the coolest cop ever to walk a beat with the kickass nickname of “Tequila” almost goes through the scene like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly except this time the lead is not dancing in the rain or with Ginger Rogers, but shooting and weaving his way through a tea house full of Triad gangsters.
Two of the coolest sequences in this scene would be the body grind down the stair bannister and then the final climactic sequence in the end. Also, the way Chow Yun Fat and the main gangster look as they shoot it out reminds one of samurai dueling each other right down to the very stance they sometimes use.
Michael Bay and his supporters could learn and thing or two from Woo and this scene.
Through the Shattered Lens 