The Killer

What's old is new again as Hong Kong action maestro John Woo revisits one of his classics.

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I was curious when I heard director John Woo was remaking his 1989 action classic “The Killer.” It’s not the first time Woo’s engaged in such behavior – he remade his 1991 offering “Once a Thief” as a Canadian TV movie of the same name five years later. “The Killer” (2024) (now streaming on Peacock) doesn’t match up to its inspiration, but it’s a marked improvement over last year’s “Silent Night” and a surprising return to form for the 77-year-old auteur.

Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel) escaped prostitution when she offed her pimp and became a professional killer working for a fixer named Finn (Sam Worthington, the Aussie’s playing “Oirish” with a coming-and-going accent and emerald duds). She always asks her handler if a target deserves termination before accepting an assignment … and generally they do.

Her latest victims are a gang of thieves who stole a whole bunch of heroin from gangster Gobert (Eric Cantona) and drug-trafficking Prince Majeb Bin Faheem (Saïd Taghmaoui). She turns up at a nightclub to take the crew out and finds a young singer named Jenn (Diana Silvers) there doing a respectable cover of the Grass Roots’ “Let’s Live for Today” (the song has gained cinematic traction this year also appearing in “The Last Stop in Yuma County”).

Jenn gets injured and blinded during the skirmish. Zee’s under strict instructions to kill everyone in the room, but can’t bring herself to whack this seemingly innocent young woman and won’t allow anyone else to do so. This makes Finn an immovable object and Zee an unstoppable force. Further complicating matters is a police officer named Sey (Omar Sy) who’s investigating the robbery and subsequent eradication of the thieves.

Woo moves the action from Hong Kong to Paris and the Jean-Pierre Melville-obsessed director seems psyched to have filmed in the City of Lights. The movie starts somewhat weakly, is arguably 15 minutes too long (the exact difference in runtime between this iteration and its predecessor) and has some atrocious CG bullet hits (let’s get gloriously gooey and gory with some squibs, dammit!), but once it finds its footing in the back half it’s a good deal of fun. The script from seasoned scribe Brian Helgeland and “10 Cloverfield Lane” writers Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken is sharper and snappier than I expected. Emmanuel and Sy sell the material well and have real deal chemistry with one another. Emmanuel especially is impressive in action – Louis Letterier should watch this, take notice and give her Ramsey more to do than just sit behind a laptop in “Fast X: Part 2.”

While “The Killer” has its problems, it’s cool to see a filmmaker at this stage of their life and career appear reinvigorated revisiting one of their greatest successes. Woo throws everything and the kitchen sink at the screen – he’s dropping split screens and wipes like he’s Brian De Palma, he cast his daughter Angeles (who also served as associate producer) in the picture only to depict her character graphically getting her brains blown out (arguably cheaper than therapy) and a dude on a motorcycle pulls a pin on a grenade, is shot to shit and then gets hilariously blown into an empty grave. Some of this works. Some of it doesn’t. But you can tell Woo is having fun … I did too.