by Rich Elias, Apr 24, 1998

• Rated R
• 93 Minutes
• 2 Stars

Otherwise Ben Ramsey's screenplay seems pasted together from bad ideas, such as:

Bad Idea Number 1: Hit men are people too. Mel Smiley (Mark Wahlberg, "Boogie Nights") has murdered about 150 people in his brief career. But he wants everyone to like him. This conflict causes chronic stomach pain which makes him swig Maalox constantly. Ever since Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta were kibbitzing on their way to waste a roomful of college kids in "Pulp Fiction," the movies have insisted that, when you get down to it, hired killers are just regular guys.

Bad Idea Number Two: Hit men need love too. Or two. Mel's girlfriend (Lela Rochon) has no problem with his vocation as long as he turns over every cent. She zeros him out every month. Meanwhile, Mel's engaged to Pam Shulman, a California mall rat, Miss Mastercard 1998. "Prizzi's Honor," about the complicated love life of a Mafia killer, wasn't that long ago, was it?

Bad Idea Number Three: The problem with contract work is you can't choose who you work with. Mel's stuck with Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips), Crunch (Bokeem Woodbine), Vince (Antonio Sabato, Jr.), and Gump (Robin Dunne). The last two are just plain dumb. Crunch, with six pack abs, has recently discovered masturbation and carries a hand exerciser wherever he goes. Cisco, more inventive, gets Mel into an idiotic scheme which leads to . . .

Bad Idea Number Four: Kidnapping is a real challenge if you're working on improving your interpersonal relationships. Cisco talks Mel and company into nabbing the daughter of a millionaire Japanese industrialist. Nothing works out as planned, naturally. Among other problems, Keiko turns out to be the godchild of his boss. This does not bode well for employee relations. Also, Keiko and Mel seem to hit it off pretty well. Only handcuffs and a gag keep their relationship from developing faster.

Bad Idea Number Five: When you're stuck for laughs, try reverse casting. Like you pick a newcomer named China Chow to play Keiko. (She's Chinese, not Japanese, a joke which executive producers John Woo and Terence Chang probably appreciate more than the rest of us.) Or you have Mark Wahlberg engaged to a Jewish girl played by (get this) Christina Applegate and trying to win the approval of her mom and dad (Lainie Kazan and Elliot Gould).

There are more bad ideas in "The Big Hit," but you get the point. What the movie adds to this collection of improbabilities is its Hong Kong bullet ballet style. Che-Kirk Wong, the director, is the protégé of executive producer John Woo, the man behind "The Killer" (made in Hong Kong) and, since coming to the U.S., Van Damme's "Hard Target," "Broken Arrow" with John Travolta, and last year's "Face/Off" with Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Action sequences in "The Big Hit" are a shot-by-shot homage to Woo's brand of choreographed violence.

Like his master, Wong appreciates the comic possibilities in stylized mayhem. Everything goes over the edge here, sometimes literally so. Nothing makes sense. "The Big Hit" is awful in many, many ways. It's predictable, cliched, violent, and vulgar. Everyone except Wahlberg, the straight man here, plays it over the top, especially Lou Diamond Phillips. There's no reason to recommend "The Big Hit." But I have to admit it was fun to watch.