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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better than your typical Hong Kong shoot-em-up, April 29, 2002
This review is from: Fulltime Killer - Special Edition (DVD)
I saw this movie last night at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It stars Japanese heartthrob Takashi Sorimachi as O, the best assassin in Asia, and Hong Kong heartthrob Andy Lau as Tok, an up-and-coming assassin who wants to be known as the best and thus challenges O. I went into this movie not expecting much but was pleasantly surprised, especially by the last third of the movie as it showed unexpected depths and twists. Not to say this movie is without flaws -- there's lots of typical extraneous violence, many hokey lines, and unbelievable scenes. However, the movie's switching between Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English (depending on the native language of the speaker) is a bit of a surprise and gives the movie a bit more of a cosmopolitan, realistic feel than most HK action flicks (don't worry, it's subtitled in Chinese and English). But the action is well-paced, with amusing references to the first-person shoot-em-up video games like "Doom" and "Halo" that it sometimes resembles, and interesting camera angles and editing. Sorimachi delivers a sexy performance as the efficient but terse O, and Lau walks a psychotic edge as the flamboyant Tok with a love for movies. "Fulltime Killer" isn't for everyone, but if you enjoy Hong Kong action films or are a fan of one of the stars, or like action films with a bit of a twist and aren't expecting "War and Peace", then check this one out.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Full Time Enjoyment, June 24, 2003
This review is from: Fulltime Killer - Special Edition (DVD)
Bang! Bang! Bang! Thanks to the thrill of Hong Kong cinema, action movies still find a home outside of most US production companies, and that fact has rarely been so admirably demonstrated as it is here with FULL TIME KILLER. Tok and O are both hitmen, struggling to be the best at their game. However, rather than leaving their characters flat and two-dimensional at that, the skilled craftsmen are provided interesting and understandable backstories that (thankfully) aren't related to harsh lessons learned in war or going berserk at the violent death of a lifelong friend. The motivations behind these two are possibly entirely real situations, and that makes their characters -- their similarities and their differences -- far more interesting than most flicks exploring the secret life of assassins. However, the story doesn't stop there: the killers are provided with dubious adversaries, facing doublecrosses by their employers who inevitably hope to pit these hardened men against one another. That, and a pair of police detectives intent upon bringing everyone involved to justice make this one inventive flick with heart as well as mind. The film is staged with wonderful set sequences, many of them reminiscent of the films of John Woo, and the action -- once it cranks up a notch -- is choreographed spectacularly. Also, the film borrows heavily from its American counterparts, lifting ideas and influences of some lesser genre hits and incorporating them into the lives of the two leads. Certainly, Hong Kong cinema is not for everyone. Often times, the action can stretch the bounds of believability, making modern cities seem more like one-horse towns in the Old West, guns that never need reloading. Dismissing these inaccuracies is easy, if you have an intelligent script to keep your interest ... and FULL TIME KILLER doesn't disappoint. If anything, one could fault KILLER for developing too much backstory for the hitmen and the girl that inadvertantly binds them together on their quest to become the best. Too many layers of complexity can detract from the visuals, but, if you're watching closely (no pun intended), you'll be able to guess the outcome of this smart thriller with a kind of childish glee. Lock and load.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
To stumbles, May 22, 2006
This review is from: Fulltime Killer - Special Edition (DVD)
Well, it had to happen sooner or later: a disappointing Johnnie To film, albeit one co-directed by Ka-Fei Wai. It's not so much that the film is exactly bad, more that it's so average when it could and should have been much better. A riff on Assassins, with reckless hitman Andy Lau trying to eliminate Takashi Sorimachi and take his crown, there are plenty of good ideas and clever plot twists and, while utterly unbelievable, Lau's character never becomes as much of a clown as Antonio Banderas in Richard Donner's film. But there's a clumsiness, not just to the film's construction but also its execution, as if it were made by less experienced hands. One major problem is the multilingual treatment: the Cantonese and Japanese dialog is fine, but huge chunks of the film are played in English, and neither Lau nor Simon Yam are particularly fluent in it, rendering much of their dialog painfully awkward (to be fair, Yam comes off far worse). The end, where everybody gets what they want, feels right, but there's a curious sense of underachieving throughout the film: the constant question isn't "What'll happen next?" but "Why isn't this as good as it should be?" One for the money, I suspect.
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