1 of 5 | Nathalie Emmanuel is the new killer, but she’s still surrounded by pigeons. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
Aug. 23 (UPI) – John Woo joins Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Haneke in the ranks of the few directors who have remade their own films. The Killerwhich airs on Peacock on Friday, may not live up to his groundbreaking Hong Kong classic, but it is still a great John Woo film.
Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel) is a contract killer. During her last job in Paris, she accidentally blinds the singer Jenn (Diana Silvers).
Sey (Omar Sy), the French police officer investigating the murder, eventually teams up with Zee to stop another group of assassins from killing Jenn, who could be a witness.
This is the basic plot of the 1989 film. Details have been changed and updated.
There is no possibility for Jenn to have a corneal transplant, as this killer takes place within a week so that Zee doesn’t take on more jobs to pay for Jenn’s procedure. Zee’s protection of Jenn is more based on the principle that she shouldn’t die just because she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chow Yun-fat played the killer in the original, and making Zee a woman just feels inclusive. It is not explicitly stated that she is a woman. It is just great to see Emmanuel The Killer moved.
Other changes to the plot will not be revealed here, but Woo obviously agreed to them as director. If he wants to film the same material in English and French, it doesn’t have to be the exact same script.
What hasn’t changed is Woo’s ability to film actors. Not only his action scenes, but also the way Zee slowly wakes up in a Paris apartment is elegant.
Zee meets her carer (Sam Worthington) in a church where pigeons are flying around. The camera follows him as he enters, tracking him across the pews.
Woo’s technique inspired Hollywood to copy him when producers couldn’t hire him in the ’90s. This is especially noticeable in 2024, when so few mainstream films pay this much attention to mise-en-scene.
The action is just Woo’s fun. The staging of scenes in the streets of Paris heightens the violent glee as a criminal falls into the Seine after being shot.
Woo uses his trademark moves by having Zee and Sey point guns at each other in a “Mexican Standoff.” Zee fires two guns at once, sliding across the ground and jumping through the air as she fires.
Zee doesn’t just use guns like her counterpart Chow Yun-fat. Her swordplay is just as elegant, and Woo has her hopping around the scenery almost Jackie Chan-style, but murdering people from her perspective.
There are some slow-motion explosions of human entrails at bullet hits, although in other scenes it looks like Woo has embraced the modern convenience of digital bullet hits. Perhaps he has found the best of both worlds.
Of course, these church pigeons fly through the violence, and Woo uses a fast and wild variation of his style in the chases through Paris.
It would be impossible for The Killer Action in 2024 like it was in 1989, but that’s not the intention. Woo has been working on a Hollywood remake for years. And so now it’s finally being realized in a satisfying way, simply because it’s a new Woo film.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is an entertainment writer for UPI based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a critic for Rotten Tomatoes since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more about his work in entertainment.
