Well, it only took me 31 years after its release to actually get to sit down to watch the Hong Kong action movie titled "Bullet For Hire" (aka "Zi dan chu zu"). So was its worth the wait? Well, not overly so. Now, don't get me wrong here, because "Bullet For Hire" certainly is a watchable movie, and proved adequate enough for what it was. It was not, however, really a contender to the numerous many other action movies to make it out of the Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s. The storyline told in "Bullet For Hire" was pretty straight forward, although it seemed a bit shallow at times, as if writer and director Chun-Man Yuen didn't really delve fully into the material required to produce a wholesome storyline. Again, it was watchable for an action movie, but the storyline just lacked depth. Needless to say that it was my fascination with the Hong Kong cinema that first and foremost lured me in to watch "Bullet For Hire". But the fact that Simon Yam also starred in the movie definitely helped lure me in. And I will say he performed adequately in this movie; not his best work, but good enough. And he was joined in the lead role with Jacky Cheung. "Bullet For Hire" feels like one of those action movies where quantity weighed more important than quality. It was a shame though, because there was potential for something more than the lukewarm mediocre result that the movie ended up as being. My rating of "Bullet For Hire" lands on a very mediocre five out of ten stars.

When it comes to deliver action, Hong Kong rarely disappoints and this film is no exception, every action scene is well made, from the first action scene to the last one, the action is mostly "John Woo'ish", but there are also a few brawls. Jacky Cheung's character provides the humorous moments of the film, it wasn't annoying as expected, the comedic moments were good enough to give a few chuckles, Lo Lieh takes part of the movie, but don't expect him to kick a lot of ass, since he was pretty old when he made this film. The violence is also brutal and bloody (slightly bloodier than John Woo's most famous films) and in a few moments it doesn't fear to break some taboo's, one of the violent scenes seems to pay homage to Scarface (the Al Pacino version).

It is always great when a movie turns out to be great when you don't expect anything from it. Bullet for Hire is a very good Hong Kong actioner that is unfortunately very hard to find. The story is about a mainlander that comes to Hong Kong to become an assassin (Jacky Cheung) while being assisted by super cool Simon Yam There are some funny parts thrown in as well as Jacky Cheung's character tries to learn the ropes about the life in Hong Kong. The action in Bullet for Hire is quite good for heroic bloodshed fans and there are even some martial arts thrown in. Recommended.