Since watching John Woo’s landmark gangster action film The Killer (1989), I’ve come across quite a few reviews that see a homoerotic feel to the relationship between the two male leads in the movie: Ah Jong/Jeff (Chow Yun-fat) and Li (Danny Lee). Is it there or have some reviewers gone overboard with their interpretation of the said relationship?
A 2010 LiveJournal review of the movie by retroflex mentioned how some claim these homoerotic overtones are present in Woo’s films and added later in the review that the Jeff and Li share a “somewhat homoerotic, but totally not gay bond.” The same vagueness of a homoerotic tension is seen by some other reviewers in various publications with the original claim of its existence going back to two books, both published in 1999: Christopher Heard’s Ten Thousand Bullets: The Cinematic Journey of John Woo and John Woo: The Films by Kenneth E. Hall.
Having read none of these books and seen no actual explanation in the reviews of why the Jeff-Li relationship is homoerotic in nature, my own take on the chemistry of the duo in The Killer is thus strictly my own interpretation more than an analysis of the claim made in those articles. In trying to figure out why the reviewers in question would see a homoerotic chemistry between Jeff and Li, other than repeating the older claim of its existence, it seems that both filmmaking and cultural elements are involved in leading to that interpretation.
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