Fulltime Killer (2001)

Fulltime Killer (2001)
Original Title: 全職殺手
Translation: Full Time Killer

 

Starring: Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Takashi Sorimachi, Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Kelly Lin Hsi-Lei, Cherrie Ying Choi-Yi, Lam Suet
Director: Johnnie To
Action Director: Wong Chi-Wai

 

O(no)—Takashi Sorimachi, of GTO: The Movie--is a professional killer. And he’s pretty darn good at it. He’s suave, cool, and collected. He has the nerves of steel necessary to gun a pair of armed men down in the middle of a busy train station. And he lacks moral qualms that might prevent him from gunning down a childhood friend who was at the scene of the crime just to guarantee that no one will snitch on him. He is so good, in fact, that he is considered the top assassin in all of Asia.

Tok (Andy Lau, of Moment of Romance and As Tears Go By), on the other hand, is an up-and-comer—the sort of guy who will do any job for a pittance. He also has nerves of steel, such that he can fill a holding cell on the first floor of a Thai prison with grenades and stroll calmly out of the building before they detonate. He is a huge fan of cinema, especially action movies, and has a flamboyant, out-in-the-open style that suggests he’s performing his killings for the camera (how meta!). However, he does have a weakness: rapidly flashing lights.

Finally, there is Chin (Kelly Lin, of Martial Angels and Reign of Assassins). She’s a Taiwanese-born resident of Hong Kong who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Japanese. She works a day job in a tiny video rental store for Japanese films and acts as Ono’s cleaning lady on week nights. The only caveat is that Ono doesn’t actually live in his apartment. He hangs out in a second, cramped, run-down apartment across the street, observing Chin as she just does whatever she wants and then cleans up when convenient. He knows it. She knows it. She even undresses in front of the window in hopes of garnering a reaction from her employer. But nothing.

Tok is obsessed with O, hoping to take his place as the world’s (or Asia’s) greatest hitman. That means that he has not only figured out where the guy “lives,” but who his housekeeper is. Tok drops in on Chin’s work wearing a Bill Clinton mask (notice the poster of Point Break on the wall). Tok asks Chin on a date and she accepts. They go to the movies, out to a café, and Tok even tells her straight-up that he’s a professional assassin. He even teaches her how to use a sniper rifle, taking a page from Léon: The Professional. Chin finds herself taken with Tok’s over-the-top demeanor.

Of course, it does not take long for their paths to cross. Tok is betrayed by his employer, Fat Ice (Lam Suet, of Legendary Assassin and The Mission), during a hit at a subway station in Singapore. Ono is betrayed by his agent during a hit in Macau, which leads to a tense stand-off at a church between him and Tok (sniping at him from afar). Meanwhile, Interpol is on both men’s tail, especially Ono’s, following the murder of the Japanese civilian in Malaysia. Interpol is represented by Agent Albert Lee (Simon Yam, of Mission Kill and Cypress Tigers) and his partner, Gigi (Cherrie Ying, Rob-B Hood and Kung Fu Chefs). Lee is especially obsessed with bringing in both men, which will come to head with a particularly blood shootout at Ono’s apartment. But the story doesn’t end there…

Like The Mission and Exiled, this is a rather quirky little action-drama, benefitting from Johnnie To’s and Wai Ka-Fei’s surrealistic touches and Andy Lau’s compelling overacting. Andy Lau is a trip, going around in public wearing a Bill Clinton mask, and then throwing it off and enjoying the spotlight, even when he’s blowing away his targets in public. He’s a movie buff and has convinced himself that he is living in one. There is a neat scene right before the climax where the three main characters sit down for a meal and have a lively conversation, making jokes in Japanese and enjoying themselves. At the drop of a hat, the entire film becomes somber again as they two men head to the warehouse for their final showdown. Takashi Sorimachi plays his role straight, a nice foil to the Lau’s madness. Kelly Lin plays her role more as a curious observer, although the thrills of interacting with professional hitmen intrigue her enough that when the [crap] hits the fan, she whips out a sniper rifle as if she knows what she’s doing.

The technical aspects of the film are mostly impeccable. The editing by frequent Johnnie To collaborator David Richardson was nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award—he eventually won for Trivisa. The photography by Cheng Siu-Keung—he photographed lots of Johnnie To films and the directed Forbidden Arsenal and Sea Wolves—is fantastic. Only a brief moment of CGI before a grenade explosion took me out of the movie, and that was only for a few seconds in an early scene. He makes up for it with the expertly shot climactic shot of the two main characters exchanging gunfire as fireworks go off around them. The movie also makes great use of classical and opera music, like playing Rosini’s “Largo al factotum della citta” from The Barber of Seville or Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” during pitched gunfights. The effect is flawless.

The action was staged by Wong Chi-Wai, a long-time B-lister in Hong Kong cinema. He got his start in Taiwanese films like The Invincible Kung Fu Trio and Guy with Secret Kung Fu, and was able to evolve to working on late-period Shaw Brothers movies, like New Tales of the Flying Fox. His career was rather nondescript after that, working on a number of lesser-known crime and bullet-ballet films. He did work with Johnnie To both on this and Exiled, although he never became a To regular like his editor, writer and cinematographer.

The action is here is almost exclusively gunplay. The opening hit is pretty straight forward, but the following sequence with Andy Lau delivering shotgun blasts to unsuspecting Thai policemen is a bit more bombastic. Lau also wields a shotgun in a second hit in the middle of a busy street in Hong Kong. Things get even more kinetic with the aforementioned Macau job, which starts off as vehicular hit and quickly becomes a game of cat and mouse between the two main characters, one of whom has the other pinned down with a sniper rifle. The tour-de-force is the apartment shootout, where Ono and Chin trade shots with the HK SWAT team, who is trying to fence them in on both sides…and that’s before Tok’s sniper rifle gets involved. The finale is a gunfight in a dark warehouse that features night vision goggles, UZIs, shotguns and fireworks. It’s a stylist end to a stylist film, made more appealing to nerd types like me by having the characters talk about the video game “Metal Slug” before things go to hell!