Toronto

Fulltime Killer

Chunchik Satsau (Hong Kong)

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Freely adapted from a bestselling 1998 novel by Edmond Pang, film shows all the imprints of co-scripter/director Wai Ka-fai in its self-mythologizing take on gangster heroics. It's also a smartly packaged, pan-Asian production -- in four languages, with actors from Japan (TV star Takashi Sorimachi), Taiwan (Kelly Lin) and Hong Kong, and a storyline that flits halfway across the Orient.

Antsy opening, zooming from Kuala Lumpur and the River Kwai to Singapore and Pusan, sets up the leading characters -- cool professional O (Sorimachi) and larky film fan Lok Tat-wah (Lau) -- as they go about their business. A relative newcomer on the scene, Tat is anxious to prove he's "better than O" and goad him into a showdown.

In Hong Kong, Tat romances Chin (Lin), a Taiwanese working in a Japanese vidstore who cleans O's apartment. He also sends O an email, baiting him: "The further you run from death, the closer you get."

Meanwhile, O has other annoyances, with Interpol cop Albert Lee (Simon Yam) and his assistant Gigi (Cherrie Ying) on his tail. Lee gradually discovers Tat is a failed Olympic marksman with a personal agenda, fulfilling the pic's mantra: "In our business, you're bound to rub out someone you know."

Lau, who also co-produced through his company Teamwork, applies his boyish charm full-throttle to the character of Tat, calmly interrupting a drink with Chin to take out a target in full daylight and completely losing it when he thinks people aren't taking him seriously. In comparison, Sorimachi is all tightly coiled business as O.

However, pic's unexpected star turn comes from Yam (for some reason acting in English throughout) who in the final 20 minutes comes into his own. Not for the first time in a Wai script, the movie takes a sudden left turn at the 75-minute point, just when the main story seems finished, completely shifting the goal posts and putting Yam's character centerstage.

Action sequences, with more f/x than usual in a To/Wai movie, are OK, though only a long mass shoot-out between O and the cops in an apartment block has potential classic status.

Camera (color), Cheng Siu-keung; editor, David Richardson; music, Guy Zerafa, Alex Khaskin; art directors, Silver Cheung, Jerome Fung; sound (stereo), Sammy Lee, Real Gauvreau; stunt coordinator, Wong Chi-wai; special visual effects, Stephen Ma; associate producers, Emily Chan, Bob Wong, Esther Koo; associate director, Law Wing-cheong. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Midnight Madness), Sept. 8, 2001. Running time: 98 MIN.