Film Review: A Killer's Expiry Date (殺手再培訓) (1998) - Hong Kong
Rating: 6/10
2025 Review Count - 48
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Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
Tagline: A middling but earnest entry in Hong Kong’s crime canon, worth watching for Lai’s performance and its haunting snapshot of a city—and a man—caught between eras.
Yeung Yat-Tak’s “A Killer’s Expiry Date” is a film that flirts with poignancy but never fully commits to it—a crime drama caught between the grit of Hong Kong’s underworld and the sentimental pull of a hitman’s redemption arc. Set against the fraught backdrop of post-Handover Hong Kong (1997), the film tries to mirror societal unease through its characters, but stumbles in pacing and focus, leaving its sharper ideas half-buried beneath genre tropes.
Wayne Lai Yiu-Cheung stars as Ah Dian, a weary assassin seeking to abandon his trade for the sake of his pregnant wife (Rain Lau Yuk-Chui) and a shot at legitimacy. Lai’s performance is the film’s backbone—his stoicism tinged with desperation feels lived-in, particularly in quieter moments where he grapples with the futility of his trade. Eddy Ko Hung, as a fading gangster boss, adds gravitas, though his subplot—a dying man clinging to a crumbling empire—feels undercooked, a missed opportunity to tie the personal to the political.
The script’s most compelling thread is its setting: a Hong Kong in flux, where even hitmen face a destabilized job market. Foreign assassins undercut local rates, sparking a price war that turns the profession into a metaphor for capitalism’s ruthlessness. Ah Dian’s struggle to “retire” becomes a silent rebellion against this decay, yet the film shies away from deeper socioeconomic commentary, opting instead for tense standoffs and familial melodrama. A scene where Ah Dian negotiates his “last job” in a neon-drenched mahjong parlor crackles with atmosphere, but such moments are diluted by meandering subplots, like an underdeveloped rivalry with a younger, mercenary hitman (Benny Lai Keung-Kuen).
Yeung’s direction oscillates between stylish and functional. He frames Hong Kong’s alleys and cramped apartments with a documentarian’s eye, contrasting the city’s claustrophobia with Ah Dian’s yearning for open skies. Yet action sequences lack urgency, and the emotional beats—particularly a third-act confrontation with Ko’s ailing kingpin—land with muted impact. The script’s repetition of Ah Dian’s motivations (“for the baby”) borders on cliché, begging for more nuance in his relationship with Lau, who is relegated to anxious wife archetype.
“A Killer’s Expiry Date” is neither a taut thriller nor a trenchant allegory, but it has soul. Its flaws—the uneven pacing, the half-baked themes—are balanced by Lai’s grounded performance and Yeung’s clear affection for his city’s shadows. For all its stumbles, the film lingers like the smoke from Ah Dian’s cigarette: a fleeting glimpse of what might have been. (Neo, 2025)
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