John Woo's The Killer Remake Is a Disappointing Return to Heroic Bloodshed

John Woo’s Hollywood remake of his 1989 Heroic Bloodshed masterpiece The Killer, after languishing in development hell for almost as long as the original has existed, at long last sees the light of day.

John Woo's Hollywood remake of The Killer finally arrives after decades in development hell, largely sticking to the original story but setting the action in Paris instead of Hong Kong. The film follows contract killer Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel), who blinds bystander Jenn (Diana Silvers) during a hit and refuses to murder the woman to tie up loose ends, forming an unlikely alliance with a noble cop (Omar Sy).

Woo showcases his visual signatures early on, with gliding tracking shots, low-angle compositions, and doves (or at least, one dove and two pigeons) painting Zee and Sey as heroic figures. The action also arrives swiftly and frequently, delivered with panache.

For instance, when Zee's handler Finn (Sam Worthington) realizes she won't kill Jenn and will put them at risk, he quickly schedules a hit on her that explodes into a high-speed chase leading back to the hospital where Jenn is recovering, culminating in a massive shootout. Woo deftly tracks these interlocking set pieces, first sending numerous vehicles flipping and spinning out on crowded streets before the shootout uses earlier mapping of the space in Jenn's ward to guide the viewer through corridors as both Zee and Sey dive in and out of cover while henchmen are blown into walls and through windows by gunfire.

However, Woo's old-school methods, once balletic on film, lose some of their elegance in the digital realm. Where his manipulation of film speed often resulted in slurred, impressionistic movement, digital's faster and more precise handling of the same changes renders each change in frame rate in sudden, jerking motions. Additionally, Woo's love of filling the frame with sparks and explosions becomes distracting as the camera renders every minute detail of muzzle flash or electric discharge so vividly that it draws your eye from the larger flow of a given action.

More pressingly, this remake lacks the far richer character development that made the original as much a melodrama as a shoot-’em-up. The 1989 film quickly established and then complicated the relationships between the three main characters until it became difficult to separate platonic friendship, professional respect, and even romantic intrigue. Here, Zee, Sey, and Jenn are thinly sketched, with Emmanuel, Sy, and Silvers spouting their lines with perfunctory, plot-advancing flatness.

Zee is especially baffling given the naïveté this seasoned assassin regularly displays, and compared to the more cynically aware triad politics of the original, Zee's relationship with Finn is oddly docile and childlike, with the killer regularly asking for assurance that her targets “deserve death” with doe-eyed innocence.

The 1989 movie understood the moral torpor barely hidden behind facades of professional honor, culminating in an agonizing finale that confronted its dubious heroes with the violent ends awaiting their violent lives. The remake, though, cops out, validating Zee's self-absolving ethical denial with a more hopeful conclusion that, in context, feels dishonest and patronizing.

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