John Lee (Chow Yun-Fat) is in the service of Mr. Wei (Kenneth Tsang) a crime boss. Mr. Wei's son is killed by Stan Zedkov (Michael Rooker), a police officer. John is then instructed to exact Mr. Wei's vengeance on the Zudkov family. When he finds himself unable to perform the task, John puts his life and the lives of his family in China in jeopardy. Wei tells his right hand man (Jurgen Prochnow) to take care of John and hire some replacement killers to finish the job. In order to get back to China and save his family from Wei, John needs a phony passport. He goes and sees Meg Coburn (Mira Sorvino), a forger. Unfortunately for the two Wei's men anticipate this move and try to kill the both of them. John and Meg from a quick partnership in an attempt to survive, help the Zudkov family, and get John to Hong Kong.
As a fan of Chow Yun-Fat and his Hong Kong films I tried not to set my expectations too high for this, his first US film and found that action justified. Replacement Killers is not on the same level as his HK movies, once excepting that the movie was easier to enjoy. Chow Yun-Fat did well considering he was limited by his english skills. Given more dialogue the character of John could have been better developed and not seemed as shallow as he did at some points. Sorvino did not add much to the movie, serving mainly as eye-candy, evidenced by Meg wearing nothing but skin tight clothing and spending the last half of the movie with her shirt unbuttoned. Not something I have a problem with, it just didn't do much to further the story. If Hollywood wanted to make a Hong Kong movie it should have hired a HK director, like Ringo Lam or John Woo. Compared to past HK action movies The Replacement Killers comes up short but compared to US movies it's better than most.