An extremely mundane tale of cops and killers in urban Hong Kong.
When street criminal Mak Kay (Ng Man Tat) is killed to prevent his testifying against a trafficker in illegal aliens, Inspector Lee Wai and his partner Yung Ting Pang (Danny Lee) pursue the case, bringing down a bad cop and a corrupt lawyer along the way. In retaliation, their superior is murdered
and Yung's wife assaulted. Going after the head boss alone, Yung is captured by hitman Ng Tao (Chow Yun-Fat), resulting in Yung's hospitalization. His partner is left to kill Ng Tao and knife the boss, getting shot by a bodyguard in the process.
Originally released in 1981 as EXECUTIONER (or EXECUTOR) and misleadingly repackaged as a sequel to the John Woo film THE KILLER (which was made eight years later), KILLERS TWO (also titled HEROIC COPS in an overseas rerelease) has similarly reshuffled Chow Yun-Fat to star despite his secondary
but pivotal role as an assassin. And not a very competent assassin at that--the cops first pick up his trail when he accidentally leaves his gun behind after a tryst with a prostitute. A 25-year-old, rail-thin TV actor who had yet to make his mark in movies when this was filmed, Chow sports
amusing contemporary fashions including a wide-lapeled leisure suit that perfectly complements the song "Staying Alive" during the nightclub sequence.
A fairly bleak story where virtually every major character is dead, crippled, or jailed by the end credits, KILLERS TWO doesn't offer a very sympathetic view of the "heroic" police, as they conspire to have one reluctant witness stabbed in prison to convince him that his former cronies want him
dead. Despite being awfully free with their fists, the cops lament that they can't beat suspects like they used to before the creation of Hong Kong's ICAC (the Independent Commission Against Corruption, a division set up in the mid-1970s to police the police); instead, they lock an illegal arms
dealer in the refrigerated back of an ice cream truck until he talks.
The US home-video release of the film is in Chinese, but though it is subtitled, no translation is offered for the written epilogue, so we're left in the dark as to the denouement after a freeze-framed image depicts the wounded Lee Wai stabbing the boss. Inexplicably, the (Chinese) credits fade
out before the last shot of Lee Wai walking down the street, obviously still alive and free. (Violence.) leave a comment