With a fresh reinterpretation of The Killer, John Woo mints another action star
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
It’s not unheard of for a director to remake one of their most significant works. But it’s rare for it to work out as well as John Woo’s remake of his classic hitman action movie The Killer.
Michael Haneke famously gave it a go with his shot-for-shot English-language remake of his disturbing 1997 meta slasher Funny Games. Olivier Assayas recently remade his 1996 masterpiece Irma Vep into an intriguing but largely less successful HBO show. But with Woo’s new version of The Killer, released on Peacock in late August, the godfather of the heroic bloodshed genre shows he’s still got it, both as a technical master of the genre and as a minter of new action stars.
Woo returned to Hollywood for the first time in 20 years with his 2023 revenge thriller Silent Night, which pits a mute protagonist against a violent gang. While the silent gimmick and the relentless bleakness of the narrative held that movie back from being an all-out success, Woo’s control of action sequences — how they look, sound, and feel — remained unparalleled. Even as a die-hard fan of the original The Killer, I was excited by the prospect of returning to a more familiar Woo setting with promising new actors in the iconic roles.
As reviewers have been quick to point out, The Killer (2024) doesn’t match the Everest-like heights of The Killer (1989) — the original is one of the slickest, most atmospheric movies of all time, and was one of a group of excellent collaborations between Woo and action star Chow Yun-fat that helped elevate both to global stardom. Trying to match the original Killer beat for beat like Haneke did with Funny Games would be a mistake, even for a master like Woo. Instead, Woo uses the bare bones of the narrative and characters to make a new experience, one that feels like a throwback to his dual-wielding, dove-flapping days of yore — but with a fresh new spin on the action.
It’s also nearly impossible to watch the original movie. 1989’s The Killer isn’t available to digitally rent or stream anywhere; the Criterion Collection’s version is out of print; the last physical copy released in the States was a 2010 DVD on The Weinstein Company’s Dragon Dynasty label. Woo has wanted to release 4K restorations of some of his Hong Kong classics, including The Killer, but says he can’t because he doesn’t own the licensing rights.
Like the original movie, this version of The Killer follows a contract killer who’s dissatisfied with life. When they accidentally blind a young nightclub singer during a shootout, the chance encounter forges a protective relationship between the killer and the singer, leading to an unlikely alliance between the killer and a police detective. All those notes are the same, but with a new setting in Paris and new faces — Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones’ Missandei) is the contract killer, now named Zee. Omar Sy (Lupin) is the detective, Sey. And Diana Silvers (Space Force) is the young singer, Jenn.
As you might expect from a John Woo movie, the action sequences are excellent: car chases, shootouts in hospitals, sword fights, hard stunt falls, the whole Woo experience. They feel appropriately dangerous, big in scope for a streaming movie, and like a breath of fresh air after the green-screen-heavy action sequences of many modern blockbusters. In one sequence, a car flips on its side after making contact with another car, then rolls into a motorcyclist who has fallen off their ride in anticipation of the impact. The impact between rolling car and stunt performer is real enough that it made me wonder whether it was a planned part of the shot or a fortuitous roll of the car. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter — the effect is heart-racing and visceral, and I immediately rewound to watch the stunt again.
The shootouts are tense and balletic, with terrific sound design punctuations of gunfire, something that was also a strength in Silent Night. The loud bangs play well off the dramatic, moody score from composer Marco Beltrami, which, like the movie, balances romance and excitement with shades of classical orchestration and jazz. And the movie just looks great, even though it’s a straight-to-streaming production: The colors pop, the city of Paris buzzes with life, and the way Woo moves his camera to follow and augment the action is unparalleled.
But perhaps the biggest gift of the new Killer is the minting of an action star. Emmanuel shines in previous supporting roles in action-centric universes: Game of Thrones, the Fast and Furious movies, Army of Thieves — but with The Killer, she finally has the chance to be a full-on action hero. And she makes the most of it.
The fight choreography employs Emmanuel’s dance background with great success — Woo has aptly described her movements as “elegant.” She does a lot of her own stunts in the movie. As she told EW, “The way that John Woo likes to shoot lends to us doing as much of it as possible because of the way his camera moves. It’s often picking up a lot of things and switching between lots of things, so it has to be quite practical. […] I love using my body in this way in storytelling.” Seeing Emmanuel perform intense jumps and flips mid-combat, only for the camera to hold on her face so you know she actually did that is the kind of exhilarating stuff great action movies are made of.
The movie’s first extended action sequence involves both gunplay and hand-to-hand combat, as Zee uses swords and pistols to eliminate a group of thugs in a nightclub. She arrives at the club in a chic black get-up — scarf, fedora, and a long black coat — feeling more than a bit like a modern version of original The Killer influence Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic Le Samouraï. Zee is immediately drawn by Jenn’s mournful ballad about “living for today,” which Emmanuel subtly communicates with the slightest movement of her eyes. It’s a brief respite for a character who otherwise constantly scans rooms to plan for intense violence.
One standout moment in a later sequence sees Emmanuel floating gracefully in the air, dispatching foes with dual-wielded pistols in a deconsecrated church as pigeons and doves fly around her. If that’s not John Woo, I don’t know what is. But Woo isn’t content to just rely on his old staples — The Killer implements judo into the gunplay in a way that feels indebted to the John Wick franchise, and the action doesn’t just feel like a rehash of Woo’s greatest hits.
Emmanuel excels as Zee beyond the action. The part tasks her with playing many different versions of Zee in her relationships to other characters, and she delivers with layers of expression and emotional subtlety. With her manipulative handler Finn (Sam Worthington), she’s completely closed off and robotic — a tool to be used for violence. With the singer Jenn, she’s tender and protective, like a gentle lover or a big sister. With Sy’s charming detective, she’s a playful flirt and rival. It’s not an imitation of Chow’s ultra-cool performance in the 1989 movie, but her own spin on the conflicted killer archetype, and the result is a delight. There can never be another Chow Yun-Fat, or another The Killer (1989). But The Killer (2024) has made it clear: There will also never be another Nathalie Emmanuel.
Bizarrely, The Killer (2024) now makes it three years in a row where a movie called “The Killer” is one of my favorites of the year, following David Fincher’s offbeat 2023 thriller and Choi Jae-hoon’s 2022 action romp. While none of them can hold a candle to John Woo’s original The Killer, one of the greatest and coolest films of all time, they’re all still worthy additions to the genre and the title.
John Woo’s 2024 The Killer is now streaming on Peacock.
