Bullet for Hire is a 1991 Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed movie, reuniting Simon Yam and Jacky Cheung (from their previous year's collaboration, Bullet in the Head) where this time they are sworn brothers who becomes triad hitmen and assassins.
Hon (Simon Yam) and his partner Ngok (Lo Lieh) are triad hitmen, but besides their covert jobs as killers, they also have to contend with their daily lives, with Hon and his happy-go-lucky roommate and adopted brother Shan (Jacky Cheung) being nosy about Hon's true career, and Ngok being a single father trying to keep his job a secret from his daughter. But when a botched hit had Shan finding out Hon's job, Shan instead decides to join Hon and Ngok into becoming triad assassins.
The movie contains multiple parallels to Scarface (1983), to the point of becoming close to a Foreign Remake. Similar elements including a nobody rising in power in a triad syndicate, torture scenes involving a chainsaw, a montage depicting the characters' rise to power with a roaring energetic song playing in the background, morally ambiguous main characters, and a final shootout in a mansion.
This film provides examples of:
- Aloof Big Brother: Hon and Shan aren’t related by blood, but they are blood brothers working in the same triad syndicate, and Shan being Hon’s protégé, Hon tends to fulfill the big brother role watching Shan’s back.
- Anti-Hero: Hon and Ngok are the main characters who works as hitmen and hired killers. And Shan, Hon’s younger protégé, a naïve, happy-go-lucky young man, ends up being groomed into a killing machine by Hon.
- Anyone Can Die: By the time the credits starts rolling Shan is the only named character still alive.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Hon and Shan in the final shootout against Dick’s thugs.
- Berserk Button: Shan doesn’t take it kindly when people call him a "bumpkin".
- Big Fancy House: The final shootout where Shan and Hon battles Dick’s legion of thugs takes place in Dick’s mansion. In typical Hong Kong fashion, the entire mansion gets blown up by the end of the climax.
- Bolivian Army Ending: Hon dies in the final battle, and as Dick tries to escape, he ends up running into a heavily-wounded Shan, who then stabs Dick multiple times in cold blood. Cue Shan’s Skyward Scream, and then the credits roll.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Shan, after taking part in his first hit alongside Hon, have this reaction.
- Dark Action Girl: There are actually female triads and gangsters, who ends up being gunned down by Hon and Shan in the multiple shootouts throughout the film.
- Foreign Remake: The whole movie is a rather blatant one to Scarface (1983). Numerous references shows up in this movie, including the Good-Times Montage showing Hon and Shan and their rise to power, a scene where Shan is hung by his wrists while Gui, a rival mobster threatens him with a chainsaw, Hon’s subsequent rescue providing a Heroic Second Wind that culminates with Shan personally shooting Gui in public (the camera angle is even deliberately filmed to imitate Tony Montana executing Hector from Scarface), and the final mansion shootout.
- Gangland Drive-By: Part of the Good-Times Montage involves Hon and Shan performing a hit, with Hon driving their vehicle and Shan firing an Uzi out of the windows killing three rival mobsters in the process.
- Good-Times Montage: A short one featuring Hon and Shan rising in their ranks as triad hitmen, lifted straight out of Scarface (1983).
- Gory Discretion Shot
- Ngok killing a child with a Neck Snap. Although at least it happened offscreen (The audience hears a Sickening "Crunch!", but didn’t see anything). The most we get is a Reaction Shot of Shan wincing.
- The chainsaw scene where Gui kills Shan’s partner, which is ripped off from Scarface and much like its inspiration, doesn’t show the execution in graphic detail.
- Guns Akimbo: Ngok does this in an early scene, as shown in the above poster.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Ngok uses himself as a meatshield taking multiple bullets meant for Hon, repaying Hon for saving him in the earlier banquet shootout.
- I Have a Family: Ngok, while being a hitman and assassin, is also a single father to a teenage girl. Try to imagine how he feels when he’s forced to execute a little girl to Leave No Witnesses…
- Impersonating an Officer: The opening hit have Hon and Ngok carrying out their assassination while disguised as traffic cops.
- Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: The waterfront banquet assassination had Shan and Ngok infiltrating while disguised respectively as a waiter and a cleaner. Ngok hides his pistol in a tea kettle, while Shan hides his machine-gun together with brooms and cleaning supplies.
- Hon, being more practical, instead opts to sneak in from the pier while wearing a wetsuit.
- Leave No Survivors: An assassination assignment ends with Hon and Ngok killing a mob leader and his wife, but leaving behind the mob leader’s young daughter. When Hon questions about what to do with the child, Ngok responds by executing the poor girl with a Neck Snap.
- Not Quite Dead: Dick, the Big Bad in the final scene, staggering out of the ruins of his mansion which just got blown up… only to find Shan, the only other survivor of the shootout, waiting for him. Shan then finishes him off by stabbing Dick multiple times through the gut.
- Pool Scene: One scene in a public sauna owned by the mobsters, with Simon Yam, Jacky Cheung, Lo Lieh and several Hong Kong megastars walking around with their abs exposed.
- Rule of Pool: In the final shootout, Shan ends up cornered on the edge of the mansion’s roof, with Dick’s minions behind him. Shan then jumps off the roof into the swimming pool below, and miraculously surviving.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Ngok went through hell and back to provide the best for his teenage daughter, even begging Hon to look after her as his Last Request. Barely a day after Ngok’s death, assassins coming after Hon attacks and Ngok’s daughter ends up being killed in the shootout, a few minutes after learning of her father’s demise. To rub hydrochloric acid into the wound, both father and daughter died taking bullets meant for Hon.
- The Stoic: Hon displays absolutely no emotion as he guns down targets left and right, only with a cold, motionless grin when performing executions.
- Taking You with Me: Attempted by Hon in the finale; while struggling with Dick in the mainsion’s kitchen and hearing more thugs coming, Hon decides to instead pull out the cord of a gas canister, and then ignites a lighter. Hon succeeds in blowing up himself and the remaining thugs, but Dick survives the explosion.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In the opening chase, Hon, on a motorcycle, lobs a grenade into his target’s car, blowing up half of the vehicle and causing it to crash, but somehow his target survives (well barely, being an Almost Dead Guy with an arm ripped off as result of the crash) and is trying to crawl out of the car’s wreckage. Hon then shoots the crashed vehicle’s fuel tank, blowing up the almost-dead target into bits.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Hon (Simon Yam) in a bathrobe early on in the film, while discussing his next assassination assignment. And later on, in a sauna with Ngok.
- Hon is basically the token Mr. Fanservice of this film, spending at least 5 scenes shirtless with plenty of focus on his pecs. In a couple of these examples he’s wearing pale briefs.
- White Shirt of Death: Many mooks are shown wearing white, which inevitably gets splattered with blood when Hon and Shan mows them down. Especially in the waterfront banquet assassination who goes wrong, and Ngok ends up wearing a white tux stained red with his own blood after being shot in the chest and falling into the water (but surviving).
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: For their first onscreen kill, Ngok and Hon stages an accident, with Ngok (disguised as a motorcycle cop) crashing his bike in front of the suspect’s car. As the targets get out to check on Ngok, Ngok then gets up and starts shooting, while Hon pulls up behind their target and blasts away bodyguards using an Uzi.
- Workout Fanservice: Shan (played by a rather young Jacky Cheung) doing pull-ups in a bathrobe.
