John Woo’s The Killer (1989) became a notable work in the action cinema of Hong Kong in the late 80s and in the west a few years later. Originally titled “Bloodshed of the two heroes” (translated from the Cantonese (喋血雙雄), the movie brings drama themed on friendship and loyalty to the familiar gangster-on-the-run storyline.
The unusual friendship featured in this story is between a professional assassin Ah Jong (Chow Yun-Fat) and Li Ying, the cop assigned to arrest him. Their mutual empathy for Jennie (Sally Yeh), a singer unintentionally blinded by Ah Jong while carrying out an assassination, makes them see a friend in each other and together they take on the gang that is out to eliminate Ah Jong.
Hong Kong movies of the ’80s and ’90s were big on martial arts – mainly kung fu – but The Killer is all shootouts and gun fight. It loosely fits in the gun fu subgenre of Asian action films, equivalent to modern westerns albeit in an Asian setting. The action part of the movie has lots of bullet spraying scenes with an extended final encounter in which Jong and Li team up to shoot down a whole town of assailants from the vicious gang. Fans of gun fight couldn’t ask for more fun.
The real merit of The Killer, however, is the intense dramatic depiction of timeless values in all human cultures: loyalty, empathy, and courage. In Ah Jong, Woo shows that it’s never too late to redeem yourself of past sins; and in Ying, viewers can see a man’s courage to go beyond the call of duty in pursuit of justice.
The movie has moments of comic relief amid some really violent scenes filled with blood and death. It’s for hearts that melt with a kind word while still leaping up to the thrill of a kickass fight. For an action melodrama, Woo gave us an ageless beauty in The Killer.
Note: This review pertains to the original version of the movie released in Taiwan in March 1989 with a running time of 124 minutes.
