Is there still a place in modern action cinema for John Woo?
As a crazed fan of his revolutionary 80s/90s Hong Kong era and an unabashed lover of both Face/Off and Hard Target, it’s a legitimately difficult question to answer, but while his influence on modern action simply cannot be debated (no Hard Boiled, no John Wick – it’s that simple), his flamboyant, ballistic, ballistic and decidedly uncynical style didn’t really translate too well at the years went on and soon started to resemble out and out parody. However, after returning to Hong Kong for a time, Woo returned to American filmmaking in 2023 with Silent Night, a movie that, while fun, contained only a fraction of the velocity that the director once wielded. However, now Woo has returned with a bit more luster courtesy of the streaming service, Peacock with a remake of The Killer, arguably his greatest triumph. But can replacing Hong Kong with France, Chow Yun Fat with the translator from Game Of Thones and one of cinema’s most moving bromances with a spot of flirting put Woo back where he belongs?
Zee is an impossibly capable hitwoman who can obliterate a roomful of targets with a samurai sword, yet is somewhat nerfed by her inability to finish crosswords – and yet as her reign as the legendary “Queen Of The Dead” prevails, she is only so successful because she adheres to a strict moral code of only killing “bad” people. However, her ethics take something of a battering when her latest hit goes slightly sideways and a young club singer named Jenn receives a blow to the head that causes her to lose her eyesight.
Zee is mortified that she’s actually hurt and innocent person, but is put in something of a bind when her handler, Finn, tasks her to clean up her mess and kill Jenn while she convalesces in a hospital. Trying to convince herself that Jenn was merely part of the gang that stole a shot lead of heroin from a Kingpin that earned them their death sentence to begin with, she’s accidently foiled by hard boiled police inspector Sey who has been investigating the drugs heist from the opposite end and soon the two realise they’re only players in a larger game.
Opting to keep Jenn alive as penance for ignoring her, Zee has to fight of a slew of sharply suited gunmen in order to stick to her code and keep the blind woman from catching a random hollow point or twelve, but as the bodycount steadily rises into the stratosphere, she finds she has an unlikely ally in the form of Sey, presumably for no other reason than game recognizes game.
Bullets fly, people die and the streets of Paris are turned into their own personal shooting gallery as this mismatched pair take on a twisted plot that’s been brewing from within the French criminal underworld for quite some time. Cue the doves – it’s Woo time.
I have to admit, when I saw what form this new version of The Killer was taking, my inner 80s action geek was starting to panic; after all, to many, The Killer is John Woo at the very peak of his powers that brings together virtually all if his motifs into one, emotionally affecting experience. Respectful bromance between enemies, religious iconography, slo-mo, tragic romance, soulful killers, faith doves up the wazoo? The Killer has them all and if you didn’t get an absurdly large charge of remorseful endorphins when our heroes stared in despair when a villain’s stray shot shattered a statue of the Virgin Mary, then maybe cinema isn’t for you.
However, in this new version helmed by Woo, virtually none of this has remained (except the doves) and in its place is a weirdly cheerful, emotionally sanitised remake that, at times, feels like the same Woo who cheerfully remade his own Once A Thief in Canada in order to jump start a TV series and at times I was openly wondering why anyone would even bother. And yet, while it lacks the majesty of the original, Woo’s second crack at The Killer is actually quite a fun, if utterly forgettable, romp that may be the closest we’ll ever get to classic Woo since 1997’s Face/Off. Of course, to some, that will be the most depressing news they’ll hear all day, but as a fan, even mid-Week is better than no Woo and if nothing else, there’s still more of the old maestro here than there was in Silent Night.
The actual plot is the same type of clunky, professional killer in Europe shit that Luc Besson’s sloppily been producing/writing for decades now and it’s a little disconcerting that Brian Helgeland – the man who wrote L.A. Confidential – can’t seem to do much better thanks to the clunky dialogue and an over familiar set up. On top of that, despite the fact that Nathalie Emmanuel admittedly has presence to spare, 50% of her line readings sound like she’s still toiling away of Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks no matter how many cool costume changes and wigs they put her in. To add even more distractions from the muzzle flashes and shattering glass is that Eric Cantona is playing a Parisian crime boss, Sam Worthington is grappling with an Irish accent that he’s having way too much fun with and Woo seems to have cast his own daughter as a rival hitwoman – but as confounding as a lot of that is, that doesn’t stop things from being quite fun when things finally start to ramp up.
Let’s be honest, nobody is coming to a streaming based remake of one of the most influential action movies ever made to see if Woo can still direct spot of flirting over a crossword puzzle and the real question here is whether the director can still cut it when the guns start blazing. Well, I’m kind of relieved to say that even though The Killer 2.0 never even touches the heights of of his most celebrated firefights, the action still manages to elevate the rather basic plot. No, there’s no sign the raw emotion of his Hong Kong period or the frenzied scale of Face/Off (or even Hard Target), but there’s enough dual-handed gunplay, flapping doves, impractical diving through the air and exploding motorcyclists to prove that the 77 year-old god of gunplay still has that spark of old.
Woo purists may complain that the remake is essentially a soulless affair that systematically removes everything that was special about the original (a happy ending, guys are you serious!?), but as I wasn’t really expecting much from this film to start with, the bland cinematography, basic characters and half-hearted alterations to an action classic all came secondary to the fact that Woo can still shoot an action scene that still kicks ass and elevates everything else. However, if even Woo can’t equal his pass glories, spare a thought for poor old Adam Wingard who has the unenviable task of remaking Face/Off…
While much of his aim is noticably wide of the mark, it seems that even Woo can’t quite kill The Killer…
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