The Killer (1989) is bursting with wild action sequences, living up to the promise of the film’s bananas movie poster. All those explosions, automatic weapons, and body count? Yeah, it’s got all that and a bag of slow-motion.
But you may not expect the side dish of filmatic poetry served alongside that beautifully choreographed carnage – a dark, dreamy pondering by men who puff on too many cigarettes and wonder about, perhaps, the meaning behind all those bullets they’ve sent rocketing away.
Strangely, the film did middling business in China. But it would go on to receive international acclaim, grabbing John Woo Hollywood’s attention.
And like completing a circle of movies, Woo started the project with (among other influences) Western filmmakers in heart. He intended the film as a tribute to directors Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai) and Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets).
With its trademark gun-fu action sequences and continuation of Woo’s deep dive into male bonding, this entry in the so-called heroic bloodshed genre is considered by many to be Woo’s true masterpiece and most complete, free vision of the auteur’s expression.
And as Woo has been dubbed the so-called “Orson Welles of action,” his dancelike, “bullet ballet” style, imitated around the world from its emergence in the 1980s until now, this could be, in its own way, one of the most influential films….ever.
But I had never seen it!
So with a remake (directed by Woo himself) recently released on Peacock, I thought it an appropriate time to go back, right this cinematic wrong of mine, and explore the groundbreaking original.
So is The Killer 1989 a good movie?
The Plot of The Killer 1989:
When hitman Ah Jong (Chow Yun-fat) accidentally blinds Jennie (Sally Yeh), a nightclub singer, during one of his hits, he is overcome with guilt. To make amends, he befriends Jennie and decides to earn the money to pay for an operation to restore her sight.
Luckily for Ah Jong, his best friend and manager, Fung Sei (Chu Kong), has a big target and payoff lined up for him – perfect for his last hit before retiring.
Unbeknownst to Ah Jong, a highly-skilled, protocol-breaking detective, Li Ying (Danny Lee) is part of the police forces protecting his next target.
Can Ah Jong pull off the hit and escape his life of crime?
The Rest of the Main Cast includes:
- Kenneth Tsang as Sgt. Tsang Yeh
- Shing Fui-on as Wong Hoi
- Ricky Yi Fan-wai as Frank Chen
- Barry Wong as Chief Inspector Dou, Detective Li’s police superior.
You can watch a trailer for the film on IMDB here.
Note: For English audiences like myself, the names of the characters depend on the subtitled version you get. For example, Ah Jong is called “John” or “Jeff” in various movie releases (I was stuck with Jeff, and I’m bemused as to how that is the American equivalent to Ah Jong).
For the purposes of this review, I’ll use what I believe to be the original Chinese names.
The Action Movie of Dreams, +4 Points
While some have accused Woo of glorifying gangsters, there’s nothing but sentiment about a life of crime here.
In its quiet moments, subdued but not dour, the film has a contemplative style, like an elegant repose.
And the editing ups the romanticism. You’ll see lots of fades scene-to-scene. There are many freeze frames and tons of slow-motion – this time not just for those John Woo gunfights but also for the dramatics. We frequently flash back to events – even those that just happened – to hit the audience with that thought or reveal again.
Ah Jong expresses to his manager, Fung Sei, his fondness for sitting in the church – not for religion but to enjoy the tranquility.
Detective Li Ying sits in Ah Jong’s chair with a cigarette, perhaps imagining this killer he’s becoming fond of doing the same, with the film flashing back to Ah Jong’s choice moment in the recliner. It’s a nifty visual parallel, showing you the fascination with his foe growing in the detective.
And this is the movie that popularized those symbolic doves in John Woo’s work (though they first appeared in A Better Tomorrow).
Yes, these birds became a Woo trope that could sometimes drive you nuts (looking at you, Mission Impossible 2) and lead to parodies like in Scary Movie 2 (at 2:10).
But here, it’s actually eloquent as the creamy white flyers flop about the church setting, incidentally blowing out candles – like messengers of doom from beyond.
Got It, Good Pacing, +3 Points
You need not worry about being bored here. By just minute eleven, we’ve already done the ill-fated hit that blinds Jennie, seen her hospitalized, and she and Ah-Jong reunited.
And when we’ve gotten to that all-important 24/25th minute point, which is usually the inciting incident in most films, even Detective Li Ying has done a whole undercover operation and debrief.
That’s some serious speed without feeling rushed, and the rest of the film keeps the momentum.
Now That’s a Standoff, +2 Points
It’s as if this movie is an entry in a most standoffs competition.
Scroll through photos of this film on IMDB, and you’ll get picture after picture of men pointing guns in each other’s mugs – a visual Woo uses in many of his works.
But the crazy volume of these tense moments isn’t what I’m rewarding here.
I’m giving points for the strangely flirty scene where Ah Jong and Detective Li Ying face off in Ah Jong’s apartment. Each of them, gun drawn, has to keep their sidearm pointed at the other while Jenny, blind and oblivious, serves them tea.
Further complicating things for Ah Jong, Li Ying’s partner, Sgt. Tsang Yeh, is ready to bust in and rock out with his pistol out.
The men fake small talk, lying about the situation for Jennie. But when she’s out of the room, they slip in threats or jostle for the upper hand.
Their game of pointed handguns adds severe tension to dialogue-heavy scenes.
I Love the Way You Point that Gun At My Head, +3 Points
Woo helped establish the heroic bloodshed genre with A Better Tomorrow, and those male bonds are stretched and explored here.
Ah Jong and his best friend, retired hitman Fung Sei, are each other’s keepers. Fung Sei may be the only one who knows Ah Jong’s reality. In their isolated world of the hitperson, only they can comment on each other’s honor or lack thereof. As Fung Sei wonders what the meaning of his life has been, he asks Ah Jong if he’s been a man of honor or merely a dog.
And an admiration grows between Ah Jong and Detective Li Ying. Li Ying’s struggles with the police force are a dirty mirror for Ah Jong’s life in crime.
The two men, both struggling against the forces that try to control them, have their own sense of honor that they respect in one another. Li Ying admires Ah Jong’s freedom, and his determination to bring him to justice molds into a fascination and desire to help him escape.
Like I’ve said about other Woo films, I find the admiration and friendship among men a nifty alternative (and in some cases antidote) to the buddy cop formula (the deliberate pairing of opposites) that’s been, rightly and wrongly, infecting cop movies for decades.
And you’d never imagine the cynical John McClane (Die Hard) or brawny Harry Tasker (True Lies) bursting into tears like Ah Jong.
Crashing Gunfights, +8 Points
The movie’s exhilarating action sequences (a whopping 10-15 of them, depending on how you count them) will absolutely entertain you. Close-quarters shootouts with bullet dives and slides, attempted drive-bys, or all-out assaults – yes, yes, and yes.
Some consider this Woo’s finest action (which is saying something) and among the best chaos put to film in general. Armed with 90 days of shooting time, Woo was careful, as he always is, to put the fine touches on those intricate details – like flying drops of concrete from errant blasts – that make it.
But it’s not all joy. At times, it’s almost comical in its excesses.
Like video game mayhem, the villains spawn anywhere. There are enemies on the top of a roof you’d need an extending ladder to get up to, and you tactically wonder what the point of the climb was.
The assassins after Ah Jong tuck and roll sometimes, which seems more for show and not for any strategic reason, and they only approach in a couple of groups at a time because of course they do.
Also – and I hate to be harsh – I swear to have spotted a few moments of characters not even looking where they were firing (and not in that no-look pass, I meant that gunshot kind of way).
But these complaints go against the grain of John Woo violence. Your task is to forget about reloading, physics, or odds.
Once you move with the mayhem as the mythopoetic exploits of master marksmen, it’s great.
What’s Not Working So Well Here:
Love is Blind, -2 Points
It’s a tough ask to find a fault in The Killer, but I’ll give it one nitpick here.
The love story between Ah Jong and Jennie gives the film a dark romantic weight, but I wished for more character depth in Jennie.
Other than being a lounge singer losing what’s left of her sight, we don’t know about her life. What draws her to Ah Jong, other than his company? She’s a victim, but as a love interest, hollow.
To be fair to Woo, with a runtime of 110 minutes, tucking more scenes exploring Jennie makes for a challenge. And as Jennie is the object of Ah Jong’s guilt, she does function as is.
Still, there is the opportunity to take this deeper, which would give the relationship and the urgency to save her even more punch.
Go Watch The Killer 1989:
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 18 Points
The Killer 1989 is John Woo going elegiac.
Mixed with that groundbreaking, so-called “balletic” violence, Woo taps hard into dark fatalism.
Filled with fantastic imagery, be it another slow-motion flashback of emotion or unhinged violence, the film’s visual style will sweep you away.
But it’s not all fiery muzzle flashes. There’s collateral damage for men who find common ground as honorable, if not always moral, people struggling against the forces that oppress them.
The movie gives you much to ponder while blowing you (and a whole lot of people) away.
As entertaining as it is important to film history, if you’ve never seen The Killer 1989, plug it into your watchlist.
The Killer 1989’s Legacy:
So what’s the legacy of The Killer 1989?
Well, many would call it John Woo’s best film from the high point of his Hong Kong action period, where he was working chiefly with Chow Yun-fat.
I think the brilliant thing about John Woo is that some could say his best in that period is A Better Tomorrow, Hard Boiled, or the politically-charged Bullet in the Head.
So I’d say The Killer is part of the late 1980s, early 1990s period where John Woo films were a must-watch for action fans.
I touched on how this movie was influential, and to be more specific – I don’t think you can watch it and miss how its DNA flowed into the work of Quentin Tarantino, the Wachowskis, Luc Besson, and Robert Rodriguez. It also has to have influenced the John Wick series.
The excellent American action maestro Walter Hill was also a fan. It’s been said he tried to remake the movie in 1992 with…Richard Gere and Denzel Washington?
If Denzel is the cop, okay, that makes sense. And he has the charisma to play the killer too.
But Richard Gere? I guess because of films like American Gigolo, you’d think he has the swagger for the contract killer role? I can’t see it. And there’d be so many other early 1990s options for the cop than Gere.
It’s also said there were concerns about Americans interpreting the relationship between the two main characters as homoerotic. And that’s funny to me because it is a bit homoerotic, though not romantic.
So it’s clear at that time you couldn’t do two men having a bromance in America without fears of stigma.
But not to get on a tangent, had Hill and Giler seen how homoerotic Top Gun from 1986 is? If that greased-up shirtless volleyball scene was okay, I’d have thought liking someone else’s style would not have raised too many eyebrows.
But let’s get off this subject.
There was the Netflix remake of The Killer I mentioned, coming out in 2024 and remade by Woo himself. That one switched it up, making the lead female.
But what’s strange to me is that Netflix also made David Fincher’s film The Killer, released in 2023. That movie is based on a French graphic novel, not John Woo’s material. Why Netflix would let the exact same title happen with Woo’s remake just a year later, I have no idea. It’s confusing.
The Killer 1989 did not pave the way for the many, many movies we have where a contract killer is a main character. But I’m going to argue it kept it in the frame as a dangerous outsider and morally grey or downright criminal type for directors to continue to explore.
Unfortunately, we seem to have a rash of “I used to be a contract killer and now I’m a family man, oh no, the past has come back to haunt me,” or “you started dating me, but it turns out my secret is I’m a contract killer,” films. But I won’t name names, and maybe they’re better than I’m giving them credit for.
It’s sad what has been a type for brilliant movies like this one and, say, Leon: The Professional has come to this saturation.
You could also say The Killer introduced Chow Yun-fat to audiences around the world. In the 1990s, when the Hong Kong stars and filmmakers came to America, like Woo, and Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat was right there with them. Though in Chan’s case, that was coming to America again, but let’s not get into the weeds.
I covered Chow Yun-fat’s career writing about A Better Tomorrow. He’s among the biggest worldwide film stars there is, and has appeared in over 100 television drama series and films.
Danny Lee, who played Detective Li Ying, is a prominent actor, producer, screenwriter, and director.
Not only did he get the role in this movie, he seems to have influenced Woo himself.
It’s said that a film Danny Lee was in, The Brothers, which is actually a remake of a Bollywood movie called Deewaar, showed two brothers on opposite sides of the law. And that movie partly inspired Woo’s plot for A Better Tomorrow.
And Lee’s 1984 directed film Law with Two Phases inspired parts of the shootouts that John Woo did in A Better Tomorrow.
So it only seems fitting that Lee would get a part in this Woo film. Although, you can see lots of crossover in this Hong Kong film actors and directors at this time. For example, Lee also worked with the famous director Ringo Lam and with Chow Yun-fat in City on Fire.
A cool thing about Lee – it’s said on his Wikipedia page that he, quote, has “received numerous awards from police organizations for his dedication to showing realistic police procedures and donating money to the families of slain officers.”
Lee also was a producer who backed Stephen Chow when he was getting off the ground and put him in his 1990 movie Legend of the Dragon. And if you don’t know Stephen Chow, that’s the guy that made Shaolin Soccer and Kung-fu Hustle, among others.
Lastly, some of John Woo’s films, including The Killer, have been notoriously hard to get ahold of for collectors or to find streaming in America.
Shout! Studios, in April of this year, 2025, announced that they acquired the rights to a treasure trove of Hong Kong Cinema Classics. The list includes The Killer, Bullet in the Head, and plenty more previously hard-to-find physical releases of Hong Kong movies.
So if you’re finding it hard to see this movie, it says the Shout! Studios release is coming July 22, 2025. And that’s right around the corner.
That’s all I have. Thanks for reading.
And for more John Woo, check out:
A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow II, or Hard Boiled
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
