You Might Not Have Seen It: John Woo's The Killer

You know in this day and age, I'm getting sick of action movies.  I know this is going to make me sound old, but seriously, action movies used to be so much better.  These days it's nothing.  No really, nothing.  No characters, no stakes, nothing to really make you care.  Just dumb vapid crap meant to just impress you with the pretty 'splosions, fast cars and women with no personality in skimpy outfits.  And I really want this to end.
Did we forget that half the fun of the "Die Hard" series was actually the character of John McClaine?  Or that editing doesn't mean cutting every two seconds to cover up lazy shot design?  Or even that  an action movie CAN have a good story?  Apparently!  So as I'd rather not stew on this throughout the whole review, I'd like to talk about one of my favorite action movies of all time, John Woo's "The Killer".
John Woo is a director that some of you may have heard of, he had a few big budget studio movies like the John Travolta/Nicolas Cage actioner "Face/off"  and the WWII film "Windtalkers".  But what got him noticed was he stylized Hong Kong action flicks such as "A Better Tomorrow 1&2", "Hard Boiled" and of course, "The Killer".
To explain why I love "The Killer" so much is both simple and at the same time tricky, but let's get the easy out of the way first.  The movie has a great story.  Action legend Chow Yun-Fat plays an assassin for the Triad, but he actually is not an evil psychopath, he has a moral code and during one of his hits, he ends up essentially blinding a young woman.  To make amends for this, he goes out of his way to try and make her life better, in the process falling in love with her, leading to him accepting one last job.  At the same time, there's a police detective (Danny Lee) that's trying to track him down and added to this the Triad now wants him dead since he wants out, and while this is all going on he and the detective begin to form a mutual respect and eventually friendship paid off on in the film's truly amazing climax.  The acting is superb on all fronts.  Chow Yun-Fat just owns this character from the word go, with an imposing presence during his gun fights, but during the character scenes an undeniable charisma that makes you like him despite how he earns a living because he literally just sees it as a job.  At the same time Danny Lee blends the right amount of determination and moral justice onto his character, not to mention that he and Chow Yun-Fat have great chemistry together and you really see a friendship develop between the two.  Not to mention the way the bad guys act just adds so much suspense to every encounter with them there is.  These are guys to do not mess around and you really want to see the heroes come out on top because they both have great motivations and because of the films shockingly brilliant climax has a huge amount of weight that the audience is greatly invested in.  Especially when the ending goes a different direction than what you'd think, but is much more fitting for the story.
And on top of all this, the great story, terrific acting, we have Woo's amazing direction.  There's an elegance to every scene and you can tell that every shot was planned, and every gun fight was staged so intensely and yet at the same time looks almost improvisational in how natural it feels.  Woo grabs the viewer from the word go and keeps you on the edge of your seat during all the intense action, which has such a frenzied chaos and yet isn't jarring, or over done, at the same time finding ways to let the audience breathe while still keeping a pace that is engaging and adding to the story and even more dramatic weight to each successive action sequence.  Plus this movie drips of nice mood and yeah, it's 80's-ness shows but that truly adds to how interesting a watch it is and it just feels so right.
The photography is gorgeous compliments of Wong Wing-Hang.  Creating a nicely morose color palate to give rise to that great atmosphere I was just talking about and the editing actually takes the time to let you see it and doesn't need to cut all the time to allow for a feeling of chaos and tension, just a well thought out and executed pace with cuts made when they are needed for dramatic effect, not to cover up directorial failings.  
There's nothing that Woo didn't think of for this movie.  It's just a classic of the entire action genre and I can't recommend it enough.  I actually showed this to a friend while re-watching it for this review and at one point he turned to me and ask:  "Why don't they make action movies like this anymore?"  I don't know, but I honestly think it has to do with the fact that action movies just seem lazier these days.  There's no passion to them and that doesn't make for an engaging movie.  "The Killer" is just a great film and if you claim yourself to be any kind of action movie fan, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.  You won't regret it.

The Killer gets

5 awesome shoot outs out of 5