I'm not going to waste too much time on this movie; it sucked. I have no idea why everyone is so enamored of John Woo. His filmmaking is cliched and pretentious. If you feel that Mexican standoffs and slow-motion shots of birds are seriously underrepresented in cinema today then Woo is your man. But if it's a decent plot, interesting characters or well-written dialogue you're after you'll have to look elsewhere. I honestly could not believe it when Chow Yun Fat told the detective to have the doctors save his corneas for Jenny if he was killed! How embarrassingly corny was that!?! Chow Yun Fat is a much better actor than he shows here, though that's probably attributed to Woo more than anything. Roger Ebert, in his review of "Le Samourai" (the French film that supposedly inspired Woo to write and direct "The Killer"), says "Better to wait for a whole movie for something to happen (assuming we really care whether it happens) than to sit through a film where things we don't care about are happening constantly." I can't think of a more fitting condemnation of "The Killer" than that.
Review of The Killer
