The Killer (2024)

Let me tell you about a band I loved. 

The Allman Brothers could honestly lay claim to being one of the best bands in the world. At least the first version could before Duane Allman tragically died. 

Without their star guitarist the band soldiered on. The second version of the band was really good. They may not have had the sound and the power of the original line up but it was still great music and great times. 

And, as successful bands will do, they kept playing and performing down through the decades, a third version formed, a fourth and a fifth. Each a little less electrifying than the original. 

And that’s what I’m thinking about as I’m watching John Woo’s remake of his own classic The Killer. 

Almost immediately, Woo announces that he is still at the helm because the movie opens in a church and the heroine claps her hands to make doves fly through the frame. 

Doves and Christian symbolism and crazy action scenes that could not exist in the natural world are to John Woo films what the dolly shot is to a Spike Lee joint. 

Hong Kong had become a Mecca of action cinema when Woo hit it big with his first version of The Killer in 1989. Hard Boiled showed up in 1992. 

Thanks to the rise of DVDs and eventually Netflix even kids in rural parts of the Deep South could discover these flicks.

These movies, along with others from that era rewrote the rules of action cinema. Woo’s gun ballet was entirely different than anything happening in the rest of the genre. 

It was such a revolution that Woo and his star Chow Yun-Fat were whisked off to Hollywood to try their luck. Both had real success for a time. 

Face/Off has a wild premise and insane performances but Woo’s perpetual motion as a director makes it work. Or at least never lets you slow down long enough to think about the ridiculousness of every single scene. 

So Face/Off and Windtalkers are the high points of Woo’s journey in America. Maybe not quite as perfect as his Hong Kong movies but strong entries into his canon. 

And I don’t know what happened for us to get new John Woo movies in 20 years after he mostly faded away. 

I wish I could report that he made another Hong Kong classic or something on par with his Hollywood work. But, no, this thing is pretty lifeless and I had a tough time getting from the start to the end. 

Nathalie Emmanuel, Omar Sy and Sam Worthington do what they can. Sy and Emmanuel are meant to have some chemistry that just isn’t there. Worthington feels like he’s walking into a different movie. 

Everything looks like streaming crumovision. I was never one of those guys who would scream, “I miss film!” 

But I certainly do miss when every movie didn’t look like pale copies of each other because they were all shot and lit under the same cheap conditions. 

There were moments where the action approached the old days. A nifty sequence with a sword and the finale both swing with style. 

But there is far too much dialogue, and scenes where people in English or French detail every aspect of the plot. 

I didn’t come to a John Woo flick for the story. 

The thing about any revolution is that if it succeeds the revolution eventually becomes part of the establishment. Filmmakers took what John Woo did and remade it, sometimes lovingly and sometimes cynically. 

I’m not gonna name any names here because the simple truth is that if you have enjoyed just about any shoot-em-up in the last 40 years it probably owes a debt (and maybe it’s entire being) to Woo. 

Finally, you can’t legally stream the original Killer or Hard Boiled or the most of the other 80’s and 90’s Hong Kong flicks. But you owe it to yourself to try and see them. 

No matter how many copies there may be in the world the originals still contain that old magic.