Heart of Killer
     
        
Director: Andrew Kam
Year:  1995
Rating: 6.0
Kwan (Max Mok) and Brother Lap (Yu Rong Guang) are good buddies and generally very nice guys. They live together, go out drinking together, tell one another of the girls they love and are there for each other. Pals. This being a Hong Kong film, they are also professional killers and business is good. Before the opening credits even finish there have been three separate killings. Nothing fancy mind you - just going up to the target on the street and shooting him and walking away. No one seems to notice or mind - it must be a daily occurrence. Bodies just falling from the trees. But just because they kill without any remorse - great hours, good pay and somebody has to do it - these are not hard-hearted men. They would not hurt anyone unless paid to do so - or if someone insults a girl they care for - then all hell breaks loose.





When they are not busy killing people they both fall in love from a distance - Kwan with the lovely Bin Yee (Eileen Tung) whose father owns a company and Brother Lap with Miss Sau-yu (Joyce Geung) who is a torch singer as well as being their contact for contracts. Over time they all fall in love which is very sweet and we get a typical HK romantic gooey montage to a saccharine ballad of sunsets, laughing, playing. This brings the film to a dead stop but why not. We all like love. Two happy couples. Then they get married and have children and live happily every after,





Like that is going to happen in a hitman film. A few small obstacles get in the way - turns out Brother Lap killed Bin Yee's father before he knew her - these things happen - and then the people behind that killing come after Bin Yee. And we get a hell of a good action set piece that is brutal and rough. But there is some other solid action along the way mainly provided by Yu Rong Guang. Max Mok sticks to gunplay but Yu has a few good martial arts scenes.





He is one of my favorite martial arts actors from the 1990s with some great films on his resume - Iron Monkey, Project S, My Father is a Hero - but over time his roles seemed to shift from the good guy to the villains - which he could be quite good at with his slightly cruel eyes. Directed by Andrew Kam (The Big Heat, Fatal Termination) who gives the film a real polished look - some shots that look like we are in a Wong Kar-wai film. It died at the box office though and Kam has never quite recovered from that career wise. It is too bad because this, The Big Heat and Fatal Termination (famous for hanging a little girl out the window of a moving car) are all good films. I just don't think any of the actors were big draws. I hope the film got a water sponsor though because Brother Lap has a lot of oral sex with water bottles.