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THE KILLER (1989) Two men stare into each other's eyes, each with his gun pressed to the chest of his opponent, a gentle smile on their lips as they chat to their blind companion, who sees none of this and assumes they are old school buddies. Sound familiar? The Killer is THE film that broke Hong Kong gangsterism and action cinema onto Western consciousness, and this image from director John Woo's masterpiece has been quoted in numerous Hollywood films -- including Woo's own Face/Off, or indeed his earlier HK flicks like Bullet in the Head, which replay many of these themes. All of Woo's films are great, but The Killer distils them down to their essentials: three main protagonists -- our killer with a heart of gold, his mentor and the cop who comes to sympathise with his enemy. These characters -- together with the hyper-evil bad killer and the piteous blind woman accidentally injured in a gangland shooting -- form a closed circle the drama revolves around, in bold, ideographic sweeps. And what about the direction? Well Woo -- like Sergio Leone -- is both restrained and fantastically excessive. Moments are frozen and repeated, while literally hundreds of bodies fly across the screen. Though a classic of HK cinema, this film reveals how misguided ideas of irrevocable cultural difference between East & West. This is an intensely Catholic study of guilt and redemption through spectacular violence (graphically emphasised in the final showdown in a disused church). And it doesn't get more spectacular than this. This is the film that put me and many others onto HK cinema, and especially the superb coupling of Chow Yun Fat and John Woo that was the high point of late 1980s HK cinema. See this film or die (preferably in a church, full of doves, covered in blood). JONATHAN MARSHALL Jonathan Marshall is a Melbourne arts critic writing on cult-film, dance, theatre, avant-garde music & general weirdness. He teaches at the University of Melbourne & is working on a PhD on the public presentation of insanity & hypnosis in late 19th century France. His Hong Kong film reviews appear in Melbourne street newspaper INPress, and are archived here. His Top Ten marked his Heroic Cinema debut.
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