THE STORY – An assassin tries to make amends in an effort to restore the sight of a beautiful young singer.
THE CAST – Nathalie Emmanuel, Omar Sy, Sam Worthington, Diana Silvers, Saïd Taghmaoui & Hugo Diego Garcia
THE TEAM – John Woo (Director), Brian Helgeland, Josh Campbell & Matt Steucken (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 126 Minutes
It’s not easy to reimagine international films in English, especially when they’re beloved. It’s often futile to recreate something many people deem perfect, but a studio often mandates it to be produced while the iron is hot. You rarely get an English adaption that veers into “The Departed” territory compared to films, most often reminiscent in quality to that of the “Oldboy” remake. So, after years of being stuck in development hell, Hollywood finally deemed itself ready to take a crack at John Woo’s iconic feature, “The Killer.” The original 1989 film isn’t just a staple of Hong Kong cinema but action films as a whole. Woo’s “gun-fu” combat and ability to integrate slow-motion while keeping a sense of fluidity is unmatched by anyone else. It’s no surprise that every American filmmaker has failed to successfully get this project off the ground, which is why Woo is throwing a hail mary and taking the reins himself. With this new adaptation of “The Killer,” Woo attempts to bring a fresh spin to certain aspects of his original film, yet as a whole, sacrifices what truly made the original classic attain the everlasting legacy it more than deserves.
In this iteration of “The Killer,” audiences follow Zee (played by Nathalie Emmanuel) as the titular hitman for hire. Zee, ready to leave aside a life of death and decay, agrees to do one more job for her fixer Finn (played by Sam Worthington). As expected, the job doesn’t go swimmingly, and Zee finds herself watching over a witness, Jenn (played by Diana Silvers), from her botched assignment that was caught in the crosshairs (and blinded). Soon, Zee, alongside a hardboiled detective Sey (played by Omar Sy), forms an unlikely alliance warding off crooked cops, relentless assassins, and millions of dollars of stolen drugs involved with international ambassadors. Overall, Woo’s approach to “The Killer” feels watered down in almost every aspect this time. In terms of the action, each setpiece is unmemorable, minus a section towards the final act where Emmanuel gets to let loose in all of Woo’s slow-mo glory. It comes off as if Woo is pulling back his punches, constructing each backdrop for all the mayhem in a manner that never hits the same as the original. “The Killer” is a clear visual downgrade from its predecessor. It looks more like the glossy digitized nightmare most often associated with straight-to-streaming titles than an evocatively captured dance of bullets and corpses.
Besides Woo’s singular sensibility in constructing action, the dynamic between the leads of the original iteration of this story was far more compelling, especially for a film of this genre. Two men from opposing sides of the moral compass bounded together through honor and mutual respect. While that sounds fairly standard, It perfectly blurred the lines between this mutually beneficial friendship with maybe something deeper beneath the surface. With this version, none of that subtextual layering exists. Woo approaches the dynamic between Zee and Sey on a far more rudimentary level. Gender-swapping “The Killer” could have lent itself to an interesting exploration of Zee’s place in an overtly male-dominated field (and it’s equipped occasionally). It also never entirely takes advantage of its Paris setting either. What doesn’t help is that there’s very little chemistry between Zee and Sey, even down to a platonic level. In their defense, most of their cutesy exchanges are riddled with terrible dialogue, so both Emmanuel and Sy are already struggling to move above the material they’re given. Emmanuel tries her best, but you’re already at a disadvantage following in the footsteps of what Chow Yun-fat brought to the 89 version. At least the dynamic between Zee and Sy works to a degree because everything between Zee and Jenn in this film is underdeveloped. The relationship by The screenplay by Brian Helgeland, Josh Campbell, and Matt Steucken latched onto the least exciting aspects of the original film, clearly missing what makes “The Killer” work as a whole.
Even the swapping of significant plot points leaves little to be desired, as it neither introduces anything captivating nor adds any recontextualization to what we’ve already seen before. One has to wonder what compelled Woo to even return to this story in the first place. This is only the second American film Woo has directed since 2017 (including last year’s slight yet entertaining “Silent Night“). Lately, his ventures haven’t always hit the same level as his earlier work, but you can see what would allure Woo to be a part of a project. This remake only reaffirms why the original “The Killer” is an all-time staple of action filmmaking and should have never been taken off the shelf. It’s a reminder of what not to do as audiences watch a stripped-down replica of an superior masterclass film.
