The Replacement Killers - DVD

Description: (Inside cover) Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat burst onto the American film scene with Antoine Fuqua's THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS, his Hollywood motion picture debut. Having already starred in over seventy films, such as John Woo's HARDBOILED, THE KILLER and A BETTER TOMORROW, he has already gained enormous popularity with cinema-goers worldwide with his films breaking box-office records in Hong Kong and most other asian markets.
Chow's co-star in THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS is Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino, who won the hearts of critics and audiences alike in Woody Allen's MIGHTY APHRODITE, as well as starring in the comedy ROMY AND MICHELLE'S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION and the sci-fi thriller MIMIC.

Review: This is Chow Yun Fat's very first American film, although not the biggest blockbuster when it was first released, but it is definitly one to watch more than once. It is a nice mixture of Hong Kong meets America. HK style gun fights with Americanised drama in between. It is sort of a middle point between HK and America, because the HK side of it isn't really put to full effect as most of us would have wanted. But the slow-motion, fast gun firing and camera techniques used are enough to make any action movie fan happy.
CYF doesn't have much English dialogue, and his acting abilities don't really shine to thier full potential, but he sure knows how to fire a gun better than anyone else. A few things through the movie, some people may find hard to believe. Like one of the henchmen getting shot in the leg in one scene, and walking normally in the next. And how that faint photo printout of CYF was magically enchanced to a clear and perfect picture. The music wasn't too bad either, I usually don't like any of that electronic-techno sound, but here it really suited the scenes quite well. I suppose that's the only time I do like it.

Executive Produced by John Woo and Terance Chang, who both Executive Produced The Big Hit together a little later.

The disc is a little light on extras, I would have liked a Director's commentary track and a couple of deleted scenes that were seen in the trailer. The trailer itself contains quite a few scenes that didn't make it to the movie. Alot more that you would usually expect, being a fairly short movie (compared to most nowadays) and being a DVD you would think that it would contain stuff like that.
The picture quality, being 16x9 enhanced, is brilliant as you would expect from Tristar Columbia.
As for the sound, it would have been better if the gun shots were a little louder and deeper to get it to feel more like a Hong Kong film. Some of the gunshots sounded a bit soft at times compared to, say, The Matrix DVD.

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