Fulltime Killer

“Even bad movies have good trailers,” says Lok Tok-Wah (Andy Lau): ”Our lives should be just as exciting.” Lok puts this into practice: he is a contract killer and imagines his existence as a full-time killer like a screenplay that lets him act out his favourite films (including fetishized accessories) as the protagonist, from Alain Delon's ice-cold angel from Le Samouraï to the gangsters with US presidential masks in Point Break. The flamboyant Lok wants to secure the top spot among professional killers: his opponent is a reserved Japanese man who is in love with the same video store clerk. The urban jungle becomes a murderous playground in this virtuoso piece by Johnnie To and his congenial partner Wai Ka-fai. There seem to be no limits to the wild staging ideas and cinephile references, but the adrenaline rush of postmodern action cascades is not, as is so often the case, an end in itself, but a sleek vehicle for a meditation on fate. (Christoph Huber)