Lethal friends to have

Yet one more example of the increasing sophistication of Asian genre cinema, Johnny To and Ka-Fai Wai's thriller about two hit men of wildly different characters defies expectations in spite of the derivative set-up.

Given the opening scene, in which an ultra-cool contract killer, O (Takashi Sorimachi), strides into a railway station and shoots dead three villains with casual grace before strolling back through the panicked crowds and killing the one man who could identify him, one might expect a no more than serviceable addition to the "heroic bloodshed" genre.

But once the characters and the putative conflicts have been established - O is the reticent loner and Tok (Andy Lau) is the flamboyant exhibitionist pretender to O's position as Asia's Number One Hitman - we are deep in a tale driven by character rather than action.

With a pretty, inoffensive girl, Chin (Kelly Lin), caught between the two, the narrative twists into a kind of exotic three-way romance in which professional jealousy is compounded by sexual rivalry.

As O and Tok (who both appear to work for the same mysterious group of gangsters) continue their lethal business, their individual backgrounds

slowly emerge, uncovering a past link that will affect their fateful outcome.

Based on a novel by Edward Pang, this is an extraordinarily well-plotted movie with each successive revelation subtly altering the geography of sympathy around the two men.

The melting pot of the East is evidenced by the mongrel identities of the protagonists, and all the characters are multi-lingual, speaking in Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese and English.

The two killers flit from Hong Kong to Macau and from Singapore to River Kwai like lethal hummingbirds. Yet the cultural references stretch well beyond the limitations of the Far East, and films such as Point Break, El Mariachi, Le Samourai and Rear Window receive due mention.

O and Tok watch each other, occasionally save each other's lives, but their ultimate confrontation is inevitable.

The repeated refrain, "In our business you're bound to rub out someone you know" takes on the substance of a knell, and underscores the deceptively light directorial touch under the weight of impending tragedy.