Fulltime Killer

A film set across several Asian cities. O is a hitman. He is counted number one. He is silent. He talks to nobody, does not show his face, and works clean. He lives in a flat. His cleaner Chin comes every week and likes him. She does not know what he does. Tok is a second hitman. Japanese; loud, showy, and he wants to be famous. He works in masks. He wears the masks of film characters and talks at the scene. He wants O's place. From there the film is a race. Tok starts stealing the jobs. Two hitmen go to the same target. Chin enters the narrative too. Tok moves into her building and gets close to her. She learns who both of them are. There is a policeman as well. Lee works for Interpol and has been on this file for years. He can catch nobody, and it is finishing him. What the narrative is interested in is not assassination but performance: its idea is that Tok is really a fan; he does his work as though inside a film and wants to be famous. The references to cinema never stop. The characters talk about films, the scenes resemble known productions, and the narrative does not hide it. The telling breaks. At the end Lee writes a book and says part of the events is invented. How much is true; the narrative does not answer. It was shot in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Korea. The speech is in several languages. The characters speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, English and Korean. The action leans on slow motion and is formal. Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai directed together. Andy Lau, Takashi Sorimachi, Simon Yam and Kelly Lin are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Hong Kong action and films that reference cinema. Who it is not for: anyone looking for consistency; the narrative is deliberately scattered and the last section undoes its own construction.