John Woo’s The Killer changed action films. So why did he decide to remake it 35 years later?

If you somehow stumbled upon this movie knowing nothing at all, you might, after about 20 minutes in, come up with two observations. The first is that this is not David Fincher’s film The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender. The second is that this film is bullet-riddled with just about every action movie trick you can think of. Fincher’s 2023 film of the same title does have a similar set-up, but it is otherwise completely unrelated. As for the second thing, well, The Killer (2024) plays every trick in the action-movie book because it Is a remake of one of the most influential action movies ever made. Released in 1989, the original The Killer is widely considered to be the best movie of director John Woo’s (Face/Off, Mission: Impossible 2) career. It introduced Woo and the film’s star Chow Yun-Fat to action-movie audiences outside of their native Hong Kong. It also innovated and popularised a whole new visual language for action sequences, involving slow motion and kinetic, highly stylised and choreographed gunplay. The Killer (1989) is death as dance; bullets as ballet. At 77, Woo still knows his way around a slow-motion gunfight and, after decades of rumours and speculation, he has finally given us a remake of his very own hit film. A killer for a new generation? In the new version of The Killer, the location shifts from Hong Kong to Paris, but the set-up remains largely the same. Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) plays Zee (the gender-flipped counterpart to Chow Yun-Fat’s Ah Jong), a professional hit woman who takes contracts from her handler, Finn (Australia’s own Sam Worthington, sporting an Irish accent). During a job eliminating a roomful of rival gangsters, singer Jenn (Diana Silvers, Space Force) is caught in the crossfire and loses her eyesight, but Zee spares her life. Rounding out the main cast is Omar Sy (Lupin, The Intouchables) as Inspector Sey, who is tasked with investigating the whole ordeal. Emmanuel and Sy are engaging, charming leads; their strong chemistry gives extra weight to the cat-and-mouse games between the killer with a conscience and the cop who doesn’t always play by the rules. Worthington is the stand-out, though, bringing a layered performance to an otherwise cartoonish antagonist. The plot actually has more meat on its bones than the original. The drug gang turf wars, police and international politics added to the story clearly show the inclusion of Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential, Mystic River) in the writing team. But it might be a case of subtraction by addition here. The simplicity of the original’s plot allowed the movie to keep its focus on the relationships between the main characters. Both movies really shine when the action heats up, and the remake has some impressive sequences. All the John Woo tricks and tropes are here: the Mexican stand-offs; flocks of doves flying off at the sound of gunfire; a shootout in a church. And it all works beautifully, for the most part. This update tones down the gunplay a little (for a John Woo film, anyway), trading the cartoonish number of bullets in the original for some samurai sword action and martial arts. It’s a clever move that takes advantage of Emmanuel’s natural fluidity of movement, while Chow Yun-Fat’s strength was always making minimal movements and just looking cool (well, for the 80s cool). Where this remake deviates from the original the most, however, is in its mood. The Killer (1989) is an exercise in mood and style, with a nihilistic final sequence on the level of a Greek tragedy. The 2024 version opts for a breezier, lighter approach, making for a more accessible and superficially fun film that will ultimately be less memorable than the original. A long lineage Between the mid-80s and the early 90s, Woo and Chow had a run of genre films as influential as any in history. With A Better Tomorrow (1986), A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987), The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992), they arguably provided a template for a wave of action movies to come. It also launched their respective careers outside of Hong Kong: Woo’s first Hollywood film, Hard Target, starred Jean-Claude Van Damme and was released in 1993; Chow’s English language debut was The Replacement Killers (1998), starring opposite Mira Sorvino. Now, many of Woo’s signature innovations have become action-movie cliches. Filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have openly talked about Woo’s influence on their early filmmaking. And the original’s influence goes beyond filmmakers. In 1995, Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon released his critically acclaimed album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… sampling dialogue from scenes of the movie. But as groundbreaking as it was in 1989, The Killer was itself built on the back of another influential movie — Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 French neo-noir classic Le Samouraï (starring the recently departed French legend Alain Delon). In fact, Melville’s film has served as a template for many “killer-with-a-conscience” movies over the years — Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) starring Forest Whitaker; Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) starring Ryan Gosling; and, yes, even David Fincher’s 2023 film The Killer. There’s a long pedigree to this genre. But while The Killer (2024) is an entertaining film, you have to wonder if it was necessary, and why Woo was compelled to make it again himself. Although the director says he doesn’t actually see it as a remake, just “another version of The Killer”. The film never innovates the way the original did, and the new setting, international cast and gender-flipped protagonist don’t really add any new perspectives to the story. But in an age where remakes, sequels and prequels are the only projects that seem to be getting green-lit, this all feels par for the course. And with two movies in two years that not only have the same premise but the same title, it seems the audience’s appetite for killers with a conscience is as strong as ever. The Killer is streaming now on Binge and Netflix.