The Replacement Killers [Region Free] - Region B Blu-ray

The director of Chow Yun-fat's first Hollywood outing, music video veteran Antoine Fuqua, seems to be trying to squeeze the charismatic Asian superstar into a conventional American action hero mould, and the results are dispiriting.

Fuqua never lets this high-spirited actor smile, fetishising him as a gun-slinging clotheshorse in a series of garish, scenery smashing battle scenes. As a paid assassin whose former employers turn against him, Chow enlists the help of an illegal documents specialist played, with surprising grit, by Mira Sorvino, and then spends most of the time fending off squads of killers in mirror shades. The movie is art directed and photographed fit to kill (even the most routine incidents are eye-gougingly colourful) and edited to a hip-hop beat. It's garishly superficial. The frequent gunplay duels may keep action fans riveted, but they'll hate themselves in the morning. --David Chute