FULLTIME KILLER (Chuen jik sat sau)
# stars based on 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by: Harvey Karten Palm Pictures Directed by: Johnny To, Wai Ka-Fai Written by: Joey O'Bryan, Wai Ka-Fai, novel by Ho Cheung Ping Cast: Andy Lau, Takashi Sorimachi, Simon Yam, Kelly Lin, Cherrie Ying, Suet Lam, Teddy Lin Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 3/5/03
Hong Kong produces a lot of films each year, maybe even more than Hollywood. The energetic city may also be the only one whose buffs prefer their own movies over those of the U.S. No wonder. Hong Kong is synonymous with action. Action draws the crowds. "Full Time Killer," which was picked up by the twenty-sixth Toronto International Film Festival, is highly stylized, its gunfights seemingly choreographed by Jerome Robbins, its protagonists engaged in an intriguing cat-and-mouse game as both friends and rivals. The two male leads are top fighters who find themselves caught up in a rivalry not only for who is to be the fastest gun in the East but who will get the girl who has been looking for some excitement in her life but apparently has not found enough simply by dating nice Chinese guys and going to the movies. Even Hong Kong action movies.
The two guys may share their vocation but psychologically they are as different as Bush and Saddam. In Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai's imagination O (Takashi Sorimachi) is numero uno but he is a loner. Having survived the lost of the girlfriend he loved in a gunfight that takes place as she is cleaning his apartment, he now spends his late night hours in a pad across the street, looking through a telescope at a new housekeeper who is as shy as he is, a video store clerk named Chin (Kelly Lin). He is not fond of conversation. By contrast, Tok (Andy Lau), an epileptic who lost the chance on giving China its first gold medal for pistolry because of an attack that felled him on his most important shot, is determined to make up for his shame by crushing O. Bearing a contemptuous smile as he goes about the business of killing, he is hot while O is cool, undisciplined while O is restrained.
To and Wai, using a screenplay by Joe O'Bryan based on a novel by Ho Cheung Ping, communicate their characters' personalities not by talk but by pure action. The opener is a gem. O, who gets top pay for the competent professional he is, strolls into a railroad station and assassinates three shady-looking fellows. He casually moves away knowing that the panicked crowd is unlikely to take action. When Tok, by contrast, discovers that he has been set up by his manager, he wanders without weapons into the big man's lair, breaks his boss's arm, and using the latter's gun wastes the man's bodyguards.
Film buffs will leave "Full Time Killer" debating the movies that are references by this feature, from Hollywood, Europe and from Hong Kong. For example in Henry King's 1950 "The Gunfighter," Gregory Peck (like O) strives to overcome his past by hanging up his piece in a psychological Western scripted by William Bowers and William Sellers while in "The Professional," Jean Reno allies with an alienated young girl (Natalie Portman) to battle thugs and cops in New York City. The theme of "The Professional" gets played out in "Full Time Killer," which features video clerk Chin's getting to like the training she receives from Tok, later becoming another Patty Hearst by taking up arms against the forces of law led by the frustrated police detective Lee (Simon Yam).
The principal flaw of the movie is that there is really nobody you can care about, but then who says every movie has to have a sympathetic character? There's lots of action, particularly the ballet-like obligatory finale, which is orchestrated ironically to Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" a musical piece dedicated to universal brotherhood. Another distinguishing feature is the use of four languages--Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and English--adding another tad of sophistication to the proceedings. Novelist Ho Cheung Ping uses the two male leads to symbolize an unfortunate change taking place in Hong Kong: the old codes of honor followed by gangsters have given way to more indiscriminate violence as the young upstarts in the trade are impatient with the former restrains.
Not Rated. 102 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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