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§xÃ~ (2001)
The Replacement Suspects


Reviewed by: mrblue
Date: 12/26/2010

Marco Mak takes a page out of Wong Jing's playbook with The Replacement Suspect, a remake/ripoff (depending on your view) of the American film Albino Alligator. As you might expect, as with many of Wong and other Hong Kong film-makers' "homages", the end results here aren't all that great.

Reviewer Score: 5

Reviewed by: j.crawford
Date: 05/26/2004

Simon Loui has written a couple of very good screenplays [Paramount Motel, Undercover Blues] besides acting in every Hong Kong film made since 1990 [just kidding ;-)]. I guess he ran out of ideas here. Long-time film editor Marco Mak takes the directors credit but probably shouldn't have. One of the worst film's made in Hong Kong since Johnnie To's A Hero Never Dies[1998]. Michael Wong, speaking almost all English in the film, gives his worst performance yet. Awful.

Reviewer Score: 4

Reviewed by: S.A. Winters
Date: 01/08/2003

A complete rip off of the American film Albino Alligator which was also pretty bad in the first place. You have to have some nerve to put your name on a film as screenwriter when you are stealing credit from somebody else.
For some reason this film wants to be "important". It's looking to say something about the media and how we have preconceived notions of who is "good and bad" in society. THE ENTIRE FILM IS LAUGHABLE. These actors do not have the talent to pull off a serious piece of social commentary. This is simply a filmed play about a hostage situation in a bar with lots of over acting. Here is where you realize why some HK actors always play a charactor running around shooting people. Because that is all they are capable of doing.
If you want to see a more inventive movie on the same subject matter, check out the Korean "Attack the Gas Station!"
and on a side note, Michael Wong speaks English for 95% of this film and it was so damn distracting. Why do they let him do this? He is truely a horrible actor. Avoid this mess at all costs, but hey, then again, you may love it. This is just my opinion.


Reviewed by: danton
Date: 04/15/2002

Another B-movie co-written by Simon Loui that offers some interesting ideas but in the end suffers from poor casting choices and from quite a bit of poorly written dialog.

The plot is basically a hostage drama with a rather ludicrous premise (the police is pursuing a weapon's smuggler who ends up as a hostage at a bar when he inadvertently crosses pathes with three jewel thieves). The movie is basically set inside the bar where the criminals are holed up, and we spend 90 minutes watching both hostages and hostage-takers argue, plead, cry and otherwise act out Loui's dialog, while a rather bored Michael Wong stands outside as the police chief bellowing out his lines in his customary random mixture of Cantonese and English.

The director tries hard to make the stale scenario exciting, and he does create a few visually interesting flourishes, such as a shootout in which the bullets travel in slomo through an aquarium before they hit Kenny Bee, with the camera then panning back from falling Kenny to a closeup of the fish dying on the ground. That's nice cinematic storytelling, but it's not enough to salvage the film.

Simon Loui has created a few quite interesting B-movies such as Paramount Motel and Nightmare in Prcinct 7. This isn't one of them. I give him an A for trying hard, though...


Reviewed by: MrBooth
Date: 03/06/2002
Summary: Clunker from an otherwise promising director

I'd been in a dilemma about buying this one for a while - Marco Mak directed 2 of my favourite movies of 2001 (COP ON A MISSION and A GAMBLER'S STORY), but would his virtuosity be enough to overcome a script by the dreadful Simon Loui? I'd have taken a gamble anyway based on these stats... but with Michael Wong and Julian Cheung at the top of the credits list too? What eventually convinced me to buy it was a colleague of mine telling me he'd rented it, and found it so bad that he turned it off after half an hour. I often find that this particular colleague completely misses the charms of movies that I really like, so I took this to be a positive sign :D

What I actually got when I watched the movie was surprisingly just what I should have guessed - a well directed movie, from a lousy script with a terrible cast. Marco Mak has an excellent visual style, and builds tension wonderfully... but you have to wonder if it's worth the effort when dealing with such a clunky and convoluted script. Simon Loui appears to have basically ripped off the Japanese movie SPACE TRAVELLERS for the plot, throwing in a stupid idea at the start to set up his scenario, and then forgetting to include any of the humour, warmth or characterization that made SPACE TRAVELLERS so good. Michael Wong appears to have regressed again, and you really want to punch his smarmy "oh so tough police chief" who delivers most of his lines in English once more, and in a style that really has you wondering what inspired him to become an actor. Julian Cheung actually gives an excellent performance here - I was very pleased with him. Simon Loui himself is predictable as the self-indulgent bald headed "tough but suffering" role he likes to write for himself, and Roy Cheung is *completely* miscast. Kenny Bee hardly has to do anything, and seems to be wondering why he's there for most of the movie. The youngsters in the cast all did a good job though.

There is little to redeem the movie really - there's some nice visual effects in a couple of places, but they appear to have been knocked off (ironically) from Tsui Hark's KNOCK OFF, and seem a little bit pointless here. I've not lost my faith in Marco Mak yet, but I hope he's learnt his lesson here - never ever let Simon Loui hold a pen, or Michael Wong open his mouth. Oh, and remember to cast Suki Kwan again next time!

Not recommended, but I'm sure others out there will disagree completely.

EDIT: It has since been pointed out to me that TRS is less influenced by Space Travellers than by Kevin Spacey's directorial debut ALBINO ALLIGATOR. In fact, THE REPLACEMENT SUSPECTS appears to be a shot for shot/word for word remake/rip-off of ALBINO ALLIGATOR.


Reviewed by: tarantino
Date: 01/22/2002
Summary: a good surprise: marco mak is in progress!

Blood rules and Cop on a mission were two powerful but imperefect movies: blood rules had very innovative gunfights (the use of fast motion in it was very different from Time and Tide), inventive action scenes (the use of aquarium during a gunfight) but was abusing of wooian slow-motions and the love story part was written and filmed as an advert, cop on a mission had more of the same advantages and drawbacks, a jazzy and hypnotic thriller part as good as the best of patrick yau or patrick leung and love story parts looking like a very bad remake of 9 1/2 weeks.
Even if it is not as visually inventive as the two mentionned movies, replacement suspect makes Mak able to get rid of his bad visual habits most of the time (even if there's a few time and tide like plans not surprising due to the professional past of Mak). This is a slow fascinating hostages low budget movie. The beginning installs very quickly the plot in the best De Palma way. All the actors play correctly but maybe Simon Loui doesn't play the hurt brother of one of the hostages takers as tragically as lau ching wan would do, Roy Cheung is overplaying. Michael Wong is brilliant in the role of a cynical policeman who doesn't care about hostages, only thinks of smoking cigars and laughing about the female journalist.
The end is really surprising and explains the title.
Due to a few casting mistakes i mentioned, replacement suspect is not as brilliantly achieved as the best milkyway B movies. But this is an excellent HK low budget movie though which is very refreshing in comparison with the recent milkyway bad comedies and To's disastrous Full Time Killer.