John Woo finally released that American remake of The Killer that’s been in the works almost since the first one premiered back in 1989.
Woo’s original, starring Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee, was one of the key films that introduced Hong Kong genre cinema to western cinephiles.
Today, it stands like an ancient cathedral, a monumental achievement that’s impossible to imagine being made in the year 2024.
It’s a magnificent action melodrama overloaded with heated emotions and extravagant violence, over the top in every conceivable way.
There’s plenty of blood in The Killer, but Woo also slips in moments of his patented gruesome poetry.
(La Femme Nikita got its own Hong Kong remake back in 1991; the give and take between Hong Kong action cinema and France’s “cinema du look” movement was quite pronounced back in the day.)
It was that instinct that prompted him to turn Chow Yun-fat into a Hong Kong cross between Alain Delon and Ken Takakura with a bit of Clint Eastwood thrown in.
In the “heroic bloodshed” era of Hong Kong cinema, Woo and his colleagues developed the mayhem as they filmed.
At last, he succeeded. The American version of The Killer, which has been in development virtually since the original one debuted in 1989, was finally released by John Woo. Western film enthusiasts were first exposed to Hong Kong genre cinema through Woo’s original, which starred Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee. It is a huge accomplishment that is hard to believe was completed in 2024; it looks like an old cathedral today. It’s an incredible action melodrama that is extravagantly violent and bursting at the seams with intense feelings. It is extravagant in every sense of the word. “One Vicious Hitman” was the slogan on one of its posters. One Brutal Police Officer. Ten thousand shots. That math felt a little too conservative, to be honest. You would probably have to reengineer human civilization in order to make the same movie today.
To put it another way, it would be absurd to expect the 77-year-old Woo—who just made his feature film debut with last year’s Silent Night, a picture that I enjoyed but most others didn’t—to attempt to recreate the same work of art. Thankfully, he hasn’t. Roughly following the same plot outline as the original The Killer, but with a completely different mood, is this new, half-gender-flipped version set in France, starring Nathalie Emmanuel as the skilled assassin and Omar Sy as the cop obsessed with pursuing her. It chooses a lighthearted, silly modesty in place of the grand mythmaking, the thick atmosphere, and the florid romanticism. It’s entertaining, absurd, and insanely violent in and of itself.
The Killer is available for direct-to-streaming on Peacock, and while acknowledging this feels like a betrayal, that platform may be the best fit for it. For years, the streamers have been attempting to market to us oversized, pushy action clones devoid of creativity or originality. Even though Woo is just playing the hits in his action scenes, he still knows how to create a creative effect, even though the new Killer lacks the insane grandeur of the old one. While some of the moves in the new movie seem like they were made up on the spot, others are lifted directly from the first movie, including a few memorable ones. However, Zee (Emmanuel), the assassin in question this time, is just as skilled with her hands and thighs as she is with guns and rifles. With a carbon-fiber samurai sword concealed in pieces inside her form-fitting black dress, which she assembles while swaying sensually on the dance floor with a man she’s about to split open, she defeats a whole nightclub full of goons. The Killer is full of blood, but Woo also intersperses some of his trademark graphic poetry. A man’s death is accompanied by a crystalline champagne bottle burst in one instance, and an explosion of red flower petals in another.
Jenn (Diana Silvers), a singer who appears innocent and happens to be in the room when Zee performs one of her hits, ends up becoming blinded by those glass shards by accident. We already know that Zee has morality despite her harsh profession because she always lights a candle for the dead after a kill and asks herself, “Does this man deserve to die?” whenever she receives an assignment from her boss Finn (Sam Worthington, looking like he’s having the time of his life and speaking in a charmingly goofy Irish accent). When Finn asks Zee to locate Jenn in the hospital and complete the job, our hero has a moral crisis. Her meeting with Sey (Omar Sy) also occurs in this manner, and Sey seems to sense right away that this woman is not like the others. To add more detail to Zee’s past, Woo has borrowed a few pages from Luc Besson’s 1990 film La Femme Nikita. Even the legendary Tchéky Karyo, who portrayed Anne Parillaud’s icy-cold handler Bob in that film, makes an appearance here. (1991 saw the Hong Kong remake of La Femme Nikita; at the time, there was a noticeable tug-of-war between French “cinema du look” and Hong Kong action film. ( ).
Woo told me during our interview a few years ago, “My specialty is I know how to make my actors look great.”. “I am skilled at determining the ideal angle to showcase them beautifully. It is undoubtedly one of his greatest skills. He transformed Chow Yun-fat into a Hong Kong hybrid that combined elements of Clint Eastwood and Alain Delon. This was all due to his instinct. With Emanuel, he tries something different by emphasizing her reserve at first and her physicality later. It doesn’t take him a lot of extra effort to make her look stunning. He records Sy from low viewpoints to highlight the six-foot-three actor’s stature, but he also manages to catch the performer’s slightly puzzled look, as though Sey is taking pleasure in Zee’s inability to consistently elude him. The fact that the other police officers seem dishonest doesn’t help either; he is attracted to her right away as an equal. A lively game of cat and mouse develops between this massive police officer and this sly, slippery criminal. Since this is The Killer, we can be certain that they will soon begin cooperating to keep Jenn and eventually one another safe.
Anyway, let’s get back to the action. How well-planned the carnage is is what will make or break any Woo movie. The action scenes in this new Killer are plentiful, but they never come across as forced or unoriginal. There’s a sense that each scene has been planned to highlight distinct abilities, objects, and settings, much like in the John Wick movies (even though this one is far funnier than the others). However, everything seems instinctive rather than preprogrammed. Woo and his associates created the chaos while they were filming during the “heroic bloodshed” period of Hong Kong cinema. There wasn’t always a predetermined script; occasionally, none existed at all. They would devise one move, one shot, one angle, and so on, always drawing inspiration from the previous event for the next. That was the secret to their work, and it also explains why Woo was one of the few who could successfully transition to Hollywood—he was allowed to work in his own style, at least on certain productions. It appears as though he has discovered a way to regain that feeling of independence. When The Killer’s final set piece (which, like the first one, takes place in and around a church) finally appears, we’re left wondering what new creatively ridiculous method of murder we’ll get to witness this time. Woo delivers what’s expected.
