Killer's Romance
     
       
Director: Phillip Ko
Year:  1990
Rating: 5.5
This Hong Kong film is generally credited as being based on the Crying Freeman Japanese manga, but the connections are tenuous. Some of the plot points are here such as a killer is seen by a woman and they fall in love - apparently being an assassin is catnip to women -  give it a try - but the killer doesn't shed a tear, he wasn't trained to be a killer and no one refers to him as Freeman. It is directed by Phillip Ko who churned out loads of these low budget action films that make up for a poor script with some solid action set pieces. This one has a few good ones, particularly in the bloodbath finale.  It is choreographed by Luk Cheun (who is the Japanese villain in this film) who has some nice films on his Choreographer resume - The Lady Professional, The Bamboo House of Dolls, The Kiss of Death, Killer Constable all for Shaw Brothers and then Queen's Ransom with Angela Mao, Jimmy Wang-yu and George Lazenby for Golden Harvest. So within his limited budget here his kill ratio per dollar is pretty high.



In London the head of the Japanese Yakuza gang is murdered by the Chinese triads. His son Jeffrey (Simon Yam) returns from his education abroad to attend his funeral where the second in command (Luk Cheun) tells him who was behind his father's killing. I am not exactly sure what the son was being educated in but he seems to have a lot of skills in killing. His first assassination is a cold blooded shot to the head, another of a man in a wheel chair, another as a man leaves a meeting - all quick and to the point - but London being as small as it is, he keeps running into Paula, the lovely Joey Wong, who had accidentally taken his photo shooting a gun - but rather then turning it over to the cops plasters it all over her walls and waits for him to come kill her. Of course, as us Joey Wong fans know, no man could look into those merciful eyes and pull the trigger. They fall in love instead.





At times this feels as much fashion show as action film - Simon in his too cool sunglasses, permanent three day stubble and clothes right out of an Urban Clothing magazine - while Joey just looks stunning in whatever she wears. They cuddle up, play board games and ride horses at his ranch. Needless to say this doesn't end there - first the Chinese come after him in huge numbers with psycho Phillip Ko heading them and then it turns out the Japanese want to kill him too. A lot of it makes no sense at times and seems intent on just looking good. During this period Yam was in a lot of low budget films - it seemed like either he or Andy Lau were in everything - occasionally good guy, more often crazy bad guy - with a few exceptions such as Bullet in the Head and Naked Killer - but he was becoming one of the cooler actors in Hong Kong though that wasn't fully displayed until Johnny To brought him into his orbit. Also just to mention - the best friend is played by Carmen Lee in her debut - not looking nearly as beautiful as she was in later films.




I should mention that my copy is from an old dubbed Tai Seng dvd. The dubbing is pure chop-socky quality - painful at times and that no doubt made the film feel even cheaper than it really was. But for a low-budget (even being filmed in England) Philllip Ko film, it has some good moments and top actors.