Sam Cool (Fong) and Yat-tiu (Chan) are triad wiseguys who fall on hard times when Yat-tiu becomes attracted to gangster's moll Ling (Chow). She's young, very pretty and irresistible, but turns out to be an ambitious femme fatale waiting for her chance to be picked up by the likes of heavyweight mobster Doctrine King. After the inadvertent murder of gang boss Jimmy Ma, Yat-tiu and Sam lose everything while on the run from the cops and underworld enemies, finding their status reduced to lowest ranking thugs.

Injured and traumatised by their conflict with Doctrine's men, Yat-tiu suffers from drug addiction and impotence (his biggest fear, as he told Ling) while Sam - no longer very cool under fire - has become a hotheaded 'cheap killer' since his wounding. Though director Ford can handle action scenes with a certain vigour and skill, he lacks the style of Ringo Lam or Ronny Yu. Furthermore, his tendency to emphasise homoerotic closeness between the two leads detracts from the film's posturing machismo. Still, the final showdown at an exchange of prisoners is well choreographed, and sees old scores settled once and for all with knives, shotguns and a flamethrower!

You might think the reunion of the team that brought us Naked Killer might produce something a bit more interesting than this. It offers up a good amount of violence and a bit of sex but really nothing new. A lot of Wong Jing's movies seem rough and unpolished -- he doesn't believe is spending a lot of time on pre (script) or post (editing) production. Usually, though, his films get by with sheer visual visceral overload. Cheap Killers' Cat IIb rating seems to inhibit it a bit. I'm not saying that films need to be bloody to be good, but why do things half-way, especially when you are Wong Jing?

Cheap Killers isn't a horrible movie, just a bit on the boring side. If Wong had applied a little spit and polish, or a bit of gusto instead of just going through the motions, it might have been a better film. The core story, while not original, is handled well, giving enough twists to keep things interesting but not so much as to jumble the plot. Most of the actors (especially Alex Fong) give good performances, and the action is pretty solid. It's worth a look if you're into the action/crime genre.

This is a film with a message, summarised thus by Sam Cool (Alex Fong): "You can never trust a woman". The woman in question is Ling (Kathy Chow), who does a Postman Always Rings Twice-style seduction on Sam's suave silk-shirt wearing killer partner Yat-Tiu (Sunny Chan). (I don't think the slow cascade of water from a garden hose was in the James M. Cain original, but it does the trick.) Ling's husband is Ma, an ugly old arms dealer, and he takes violent exception to being cuckolded, forcing Yat-Tiu to sort him out with the sharp end of a pair of garden shears. It's just the first bad step on a bloody road that will soon see Sam Cool and Yat-Tiu fall out with their old boss, the splendidly named Doctrine King (you can tell he is evil by the way he smokes a cigar - oh, I guess his paedophiliac boasts around the card table are also a bit of a giveaway). Our heroes rapidly go from being stylish sportscar-driving hitmen to half-crazed low-rent killers on the run. Yat-Tiu goes completely mad (one witness describes him as "Running like a nuts!"), but you would be too if you had been on the receiving end of a Deliverance-style scene in which an evil one-eyed gweilo named Blonde issues the unforgettable command "Okay 14 brothers, let's pork this pig!"

Yat-Tiu (slang for ten bucks) cops the porking as the result of his hubris, but Sam Cool sticks by him, partly because he's a loyal old school gangster, but perhaps mostly because writer Wong Jing obviously decided "I've had it with homo-erotic subtext in triad movies - let's get it out in the open". Sam cares for Yat-Tiu day and night, calms him down when he remembers the gal that did him wrong, cleans him up when he piddles himself, cuddles him when he can't sleep - everything short of an actual kiss, and it's all genuinely tender and beautifully played by Alex Fong, who manages to pack macho and mothering into one performance. Sam also gets to deliver the film's most noirish line as he is bundling his wounded buddy into a taxi. The driver asks "Mister, where do you want to go?", and Sam replies "As far as you can go". Straight down the line, baby.

I've probably given too much away, but if you are thinking of checking this one out, and I suggest you do, don't say I didn't warn you. (And while I'm in a warning mood, here's a tip for English speakers: the subtitles don't kick in until about 2 minutes into the movie, so don't rush out for that refund right away.) This film swipes what it needs and charges on, knives flashing and arteries spurting. A little Hard Boiled here, a little Better Tomorrow 2 there, a dash of Naked Killer, some Godfather to taste, about a hundred gallons of blood, set on High for 99 minutes, and serve in a Chinatown Cinema for an audience of 30 people who are only watching it as part of a double bill before the feelgood romance Love Generation Hong Kong. They'll never be the same, and neither will you.