The Killer, 1989.
Directed by John Woo.
Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Barry Wong, Kenneth Tsang, and Chu Kong.
SYNOPSIS:
An assassin accepts one last job to pay to restore the eyesight of a woman he accidentally blinded, whilst a dogged cop closes in.
Continuing their run of releasing Hong Kong action classics on 4K UHD, Arrow Video bring John Woo’s 1989 hit The Killer to the format to sit alongside their recent – and excellent – edition of Hard Boiled, and whilst the latter is often cited as the definitive Hong Kong action movie thanks to the non-stop barrage of bullets, explosions and star Chow Yun-Fat’s uncanny screen charisma, there is a case to be made that The Killer is Woo’s masterpiece.
Here, Chow Yun-Fat plays Ah Jong, a lethal assassin who accidentally blinds nightclub singer Jennie (Sally Yeh) when he fires his gun too close to her head during a shoot-out. Feeling guilty, Ah Jong quits his chosen career and not long after he rescues Jennie from being mugged in the street. She invites him to her home and the two beginning a relationship as she is unaware who he really is, but when he is offered one last job by his old friend and manager Fung Sei (Chu Kong) Ah Jong accepts with the intention of using the money to pay for Jennie’s treatment to try and restore her eyesight.
So Ah Jong is a killer with a heart, and Chow Yun-Fat is superb as the cool-but-deadly assassin with rules and principles. However, The Killer is not just an action thriller built on adrenaline and stunts, as Ah Jong is being pursued by Inspector Li Ying (Danny Lee), a cop with a few issues of his own and who is fascinated by this gun-for-hire who seems to have a moral code, and it is this relationship that is central to The Killer, making it more of a melodrama than a mindless action movie.
Not that there is anything wrong with enjoying a no-nonsense blood-and-bullets adventure, but whereas Hard Boiled is the type of action movie you can put on late at night after an evening out and just let the endless exciting set pieces hit you like a freight train to get your kicks, The Killer is something to watch when you are in a more contemplative mood as it takes a step back from the gunfire once in a while to let you into its character’s worlds so you can get emotionally connected to them. As well as Chow Yun-Fat dominating every scene he is in, Danny Lee is also a likeable presence as we learn that Li Ying is not a just a cop who wants glory but he needs to understand who he is up against, much to the chagrin of his superiors, who just want results and don’t care who they upset to get them.
In a similar way to Michael Mann’s Heat, The Killer presents Ah Jong and Li Ying as two sides of the same coin, discovering that maybe they aren’t so different as people but their choices have led them down paths that automatically opposes them to the other. In the middle of them, though, is Jennie, who is a tragic character in that none of what has happened to her is her fault, but thanks to that particular circumstance Sally Yeh’s performance is not as measured as her two male co-star’s, and whenever the film slows down to engage with the relationship between Ah Jong and Jennie, her screechy delivery doesn’t always create the empathy that it probably should, making her extended talking scenes a bit of an endurance test, although the scene where cop and killer meet in her apartment and she can’t see that they are holding guns to each other’s faces is superbly acted and choreographed by all three.
So if the thought of The Killer being a sloppy romance fills you with dread then do not despair, because when the action kicks off it really goes for it, as blood squibs are exploding left, right and centre. For some reason, nobody in this movie dies by being shot once as whole magazines are emptied into seemingly endless waves of goons who have the accuracy of Imperial Stormtroopers, leading you to question how many rounds a semi-automatic pistol can hold. Nevertheless, it all adds up to some gratuitously violent set pieces that are less slick than what John Woo would create in Hard Boiled a few years later, although it does give The Killer that beautiful 1980s action movie vibe that is a little rougher in style than what came later but is so much more satisfying.
Presented in a three-disc set, The Killer comes to 4K UHD boasting a very crisp and natural looking image, with the neon lights during the nighttime scenes being the only real points where the colours pop. Otherwise, the nice level of detail and consistent grain that isn’t too heavy make The Killer look like a ‘proper’ film rather than it having an HD scrub that makes it lose its charm. The remaining two discs are standard Blu-rays that offer up extensive interviews with cast and crew, a feature-length career retrospective on John Woo and the 130-minute extended cut of The Killer, both in restored and unrestored versions. To be honest, the theatrical version was cut to a trimmer 110-minutes for a reason and it does lose a lot of pacing in the longer version, but it is a cool addition to have it included here regardless.
Overall, The Killer is the movie that cemented John Woo’s reputation, bringing together all of the stylistic touches he had become known for to that point – the birds, the slow-motion, the freeze-frames, the Mexican Standoffs, etc. – and making a movie that was as much of an emotional ride as it was an adrenaline kick. Is it better than Hard Boiled? In some ways it is, as it gives you more to get invested in and stays with you long after the final credits have rolled, but it also has that annoying performance by Sally Yeh and several continuity and effects errors that are very noticeable (just how many times did the same henchman with the facial hair get killed? And since when did bullet wounds produce sparks?), but if you can get past those things then The Killer remains as essential to Hong Kong action cinema as Hard Boiled, and is possibly even more influential.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
