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Fulltime Killer
Professional assassin O has resided in an isolated world of killing and loneliness. But his life begins to change once he meets the innocent Chin; hired to clean O's apartment. However, soon the flamboyent and reckless Tok enters Chin's life with a mission to unveil O's identity and usurp his place as the number one sharp-shooting assassin in the game.
Release : | 2001 |
Rating : | 6.8 |
Studio : | Milkyway Image Company, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Andy Lau Takashi Sorimachi Simon Yam Kelly Lin Cherrie Ying Choi-Yi |
Genre : | Drama Action Thriller Crime |
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Reviews
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
I appreciate Johnnie To as much as anyone with a taste for slow-burn, contemplative cinema, but Fulltime Killer is among his lesser efforts. It is very sub-par compared to what he's capable of when he fires on all cylinders (see Exiled or Election) and just not a very good movie. Granted the action scenes are all good (not great) in that heroic bloodshed slo-mo kind of way, but the rest of the movie is all over the place. It tries to be many things and it doesn't really succeed in any. Themes and characters are picked then abandoned without being fully fleshed out in favour of the next one while narration comes and goes with no connection to a central premise. In the end it feels disjointed, confused and a bit derivative, but it's certainly not without its moments. There are also lots of references to other movies (T2, El Mariachi, Leon, Point Break, an Allain Delon film I couldn't pinpoint) which might tickle your film buff bone. For To fans only...
So you have read the plot synopses people have left. This film is about two hit men. O is Japanese, and he has a samurai approach to life. He is disciplined, clean, detached, and efficient. He kills without remorse and he kills without relish. Tok is an up-and-coming hit-man of a very different sort. He is wildly showy. He has style. He loves overkill. He loves his work, and he hates his rival, O. O is the top hit-man on the East side of the Pacific Rim, and Tok wants his title.Some have commented that this is the same old hum-drum from the Hong Kong studios. I have to disagree. "Full Time Killer" is slick and polished in a way that most of the New Wave of HK action films are not. "Full Time Killer" does follow the common formula of two rivals hunting each other and hunting the same girl, but it is not the story that I thought set this film above others of the genre. Andy Lau gives a memorable flamboyant performance as Tok, a joker and a devil at the same time. O's repression and sense of honor make him the sympathetic rival, particularly when it becomes clear that he isn't restrained from engaging his enemy, but rather he doesn't know how to act on his own behalf.Plus, you have to love how the lead flies in those gunfights.I hope I didn't read too much into this film, but I recommend it to everybody. For 102 minutes I had a 10/10 experience.
Good production values, great photography, seamless editing, attractive young Oriental stars, and a puzzling plot leave you guessing to the very end what the outcome is. In the meantime enjoy relentless action in a realistic gorefest involving a competitive face-off between the 2 best hit men in the Far East, and some pretty smart and relentless police who are out to take them both down. It all takes place in many exotic locales around Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. What impressed me was that although my initial reaction to the two main protagonists was negative, I began to like and to root for each one to survive. It's not all bullets -- the gore is quickly passed over, and there's a lot of athleticism to add some interest, as well as some arty overtones by way of O's interest in photography, and even a brief, artfully-done sex scene. There are flashbacks and story-telling which confound the plot by taking you back and forth in time and back and forth between fiction and reality. I recognized Andy Lau, playing Tok, from House of the Flying Daggers. This movie is much better for its genre than a lot of the dreck coming out of Hollywood.
For those of us out there that miss the "Old" John Woo from The Killer, Hard Boiled, and A Better Tomorrow 1&2, Johnny To comes to pick up where Woo left off with Fulltime Killers. Now while some call that a blatant bootleg or hijacking of John Woo's style, I call it a pleasant revisit.Andy Lau plays Tok, a flamboyant leather clad professional killer who not only takes pride in his work but also looks to put himself in the spotlight with every kill he makes. Tok is a sort of tribute to one Castor Troy of Face-Off, with his flair and his trademark smile which he flashes at all times. Takashi Sorimachi plays O, a more traditional killer with a guilty conscience, who stays in the shadows and executes his job keeping himself out of the spotlight. O's guilty conscience is the result of an innocent getting caught up in his world. O is something of a tribute to Chow Yun-Fat's character in The Killer. As a result of O's more low-key approach he is the highest ranked and most sought after professional much to the dismay of Tok. Naturally a rivalry will result between these two polar opposites in an attempt to be the top.Acting as a catalyst to this rivalry is the lovely Kelly Lin, playing Chin, a mild-mannered video store clerk who is bored by life. An incidental visit by Tok to her video store, and a second job cleaning O's apartment begins a chain of events that puts her in the middle of these two professional killers rivalry.Fulltime Killer provides mind-blowing action scenes and a love triangle that even guys don't mind keeping up with. A throughly entertaining movie and a throwback to the "old" John Woo puts this movie high on my list. Give it a chance, and you'll be entertained at the very least.