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Fulltime Killer

2002, Movie, NR, 102 mins

Fulltime Killer: Review

FULLTIME KILLER
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Charged with as much psychological depth as gun-slinging violence, Johnny To and Wai Ka Fai's slick thriller brought a welcome jolt of adrenaline to the moribund Hong Kong action genre. Cool professional killer Ono, aka "O" (Takashi Sorimachi), and brash newcomer Tok (Andy Lau) are both hired assassins, but their styles are worlds apart. O, generally considered the top killer in the East, kills with stealth and precision and wants nothing more than to remain in the shadows. His true identity is a mystery to Interpol agent Albert Lee (Simon Yam), who has been doggedly pursuing O across Asia, and even his known address is a ruse. After running afoul of a powerful crime organization, O secretly moved to a covert flat across the street, where he watches his apartment through a telescope. In order to maintain his cover, O hired Chin (Kelly Lin), a Taiwanese video store clerk, to come to his apartment three times a week, clean up what little mess there is and post the faxes from O's mysterious manager on the wall where O can see them from his post. And O is keeping a close watch over Chin: The last woman to hold down the job wound up dead. Tok, on the other hand, wants to be a legend; he craves the attention of the police and kills with reckless flamboyance. Tok sees the world through the scrim of his favorite action movies (EL MARIACHI, THE PROFESSIONAL — the wilder, the better) and he's determined to unseat O as number one assassin. But Tok is a killer with an Achilles heel, a bizarre fatal flaw that ended his promising career as a world-class sharpshooter: Under stress, he's prone to debilitating seizures. Tok begins taunting O with provocative e-mail, then faxes Lee photos of the elusive killer in action. When that doesn't work, Tok finds a more direct route to his rival: Chin. The film is filled with the kind of choreographed carnage that became synonymous with Hong Kong action during the genre's heyday, but there's an elegiac self-consciousness to it all that acknowledges that while the best is behind us, there's still something to be said about its passing. The film's requisite set piece is an audacious daylight massacre set to "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's Barber of Seville; the ending, appropriately enough, is an homage to John Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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