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Starring
:
Andy
Lau
Anita
Yuen
Mark
Cheng
Christine
Ng
Waise
Lee
William
So
Action
:
Stephen
Tung Wai
Producer
:
Lee
Lok Fu
Fung
Chi Kap
Director
:
Veronica
Chan
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A
TASTE OF KILLING AND ROMANCE (2001)
Reviewed
by Phil Mills
Ko
Sau (Lau) is the finest assassin for hire and is currently
employed by a crime syndicate who use him for all their dirty
work. This is pretty easy money for Ko as jobs come
thick and fast and the syndicate has only one rule - if you
fail to kill your target then you become the target. It
would seem everything is perfect, at least that is until
female assassin Ru Fung (Yuen) appears on the scene. Not
only does she become serious competition for Ko in the job
market but she is also extremely attractive and the two soon
become romantically involved. In these sorts of
situations though, relationships can cause complications and
things go horribly wrong when Ko misses his next target due to
distractions in his personal life. This forces the
syndicate to send an assassin after him and there's no prizes
for guessing who that is!
'A
Taste Of Killing And Romance' is a prime example of the Hong
Kong trend-following machine at work as it adopts the lazy
approach of utilising a popular style of film to lay it's
groundwork. In this case, the style in question is the
works of John Woo and this movie is a clear homage to the man
in every way, from the anti-hero storyline and heroic
bloodshed action, right down to a couple of scenes that are
just a little too over familiar (most notably a very similar
shootout to the dragon boat festival scene in 'The Killer').
Of course, sometimes this method can work and create an
exciting if unoriginal epic but sadly this is not the case
here. For a start, the lead characters are extremely
bland as they have no conceivable motives and limited
backgrounds which means that the filmmakers are forced to
introduce numerous sub-characters to try and fill in the gaps
between their confrontations. However, the only effect
this has is to distance the audience from the main actors as
they become absent for large portions of the film, forcing you
to lose sight of the film's main theme. To add insult to
injury, the director then creates some very average action
sequences that suffer from choppy editing and poor
choreography that fails to create even an ounce of atmosphere.
This left me wondering why, if this is supposed to be any kind
of imitation of Woo, they forgot to take a closer look at his
over-the-top action sequences as they can liven up even the
worst of movies and surely would have helped here.
'A
Taste Of Killing And Romance' is an adequate time-filler if
you are in desperate need of something to watch but it will
certainly never amount to more. Andy Lau and Waise Lee
can always hold your attention in a film but even they do
little to raise an under par film that left me distinctly
disappointed.
Rating:
  
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