The Killer (1989 film)

The Killer is a 1989 Hong Kong action film written and directed by John Woo, and produced by Tsui Hark. The film stars Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee and Sally Yeh. Chow plays Ah Jong, a professional assassin for the Triads who wants to retire, who accidentally damages the eyes of singer Jennie (Yeh) during a shootout and sets out to perform one last hit for her treatment.
After the financial backing from Hark became problematic following the release of Woo's film A Better Tomorrow 2, Woo had to find backing through Chow Yun-fat's and Danny Lee's financing companies. Woo went into filming The Killer with a rough draft whose plot was influenced by the films Le Samouraï, Mean Streets and Narazumono. Woo wanted to make a film about honour, friendship and the relationship of two seemingly opposite people. After finishing filming, Woo referred to The Killer as a tribute to directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Martin Scorsese.
The Killer was not an immediate success in Hong Kong, but received critical acclaim internationally with reviewers praising its action scenes and over-the-top style. The film became Woo's steppingstone to Hollywood and has been a strong influence on many directors, including Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Johnnie To. In the years since, The Killer has come to be considered one of the greatest action films ever made. An English-language remake of the film, also directed by Woo, is set to be released in August 2024.
== Plot ==
Ah Jong, a hitman, decides to retire after one final job. During a shootout with gangsters, he accidentally blinds a young nightclub singer named Jennie when his gun fires too close to her eyes. Over the next six months, he quietly watches over her, attending all of her performances. One night, he intervenes to save her from being mugged and assaulted; Jennie then invites him into her apartment. They grow close and begin a relationship. However, Jennie then learns from her doctor that if she does not undergo a corneal transplant, she will lose what remains of her sight. Ah Jong agrees to kill a high-ranking triad boss to pay for the operation. 
Meanwhile, Detective Li Ying performs a botched undercover sting but is scolded and demoted by his superior for shooting his enemy inside the tram and unintentionally causing the fatal heart attack of a hostage. Li later spots Ah Jong in the middle of the hit on the Triad boss, but eventually loses him. Ah Jong's client, Wong Hoi, betrays him by sending hitmen to kill Ah Jong at the location of his getaway car. Ah Jong guns down the hitmen, but a child is badly injured in the crossfire. Ah Jong rushes the child to a nearby hospital while being followed by Li and his partner, Sgt. Tsang Yeh. Ah Jong holds Yeh at gunpoint until the child regains consciousness, then escapes from the police. Li becomes obsessed with Ah Jong's act of goodwill. He and Tsang learn about Jennie; when Ah Jong visits her, he manages to outwit and elude the two cops once again. 
Li and Tsang explain to Jennie that Ah Jong was the assassin that blinded her at the nightclub. Ah Jong meets with his manager, Fung Sei, and demands the money he was promised for his last job. Sei betrays him by giving him a briefcase of blank notes and sends hitmen to take down Ah Jong in his own home. Ah Jong kills his attackers, but spares Sei out of loyalty. The next day, Ah Jong attempts to kill Wong Hoi in a drive-by shooting but fails. Wong Hoi hires hitman Frank Chen, to kill Ah Jong. Jennie is persuaded to help the police set a trap for Ah Jong at the airport, but Sei distracts them while Ah Jong flees with Jennie. Tsang follows Sei to his house, where Ah Jong and Jennie are hiding, but gets fatally wounded by Chen's gang and dies in the hospital moments after sharing his discovery with Li. 
Li goes to arrest Ah Jong, but winds up helping him, and Jennie fight their way out of an ambush. Ah Jong and Li flee, and while Ah Jong's wounds are mended, they find themselves bonding and becoming friends. Ah Jong makes Li promise that should anything happen to him, he will make sure that Jennie has her operation. Li, Ah Jong, and Jennie take refuge in a church while Sei goes to get Ah Jong's money from Hoi. He is badly beaten after trying to shoot Hoi and sustains several mortal gunshot wounds, but manages to get the money to the church. Ah Jong shoots Sei to end his suffering, and he and Li arm themselves before engaging in a bloody shootout with dozens of gangsters. 
Li and Ah Jong are wounded, and eventually find themselves in a Mexican standoff between Ah Jong, Li, and Hoi. Hoi holds a gun to Jennie's head and shoots Chen dead when Li takes him hostage. Ah Jong has his eyes shot out, and bleeds to death as Jennie, now completely blind, crawls around helplessly trying to find him. As the police arrive, Hoi immediately surrenders, but an enraged Li kills him promptly during the process of his arrest. In the end, for disobeying the law by murdering Hoi as an unknown suspect in public, Li is terminated from his career, arrested, humiliated, and surrounded by the police, and collapses to the ground in despair at the loss of his friend.
== Cast ==
* Chow Yun-fat as Ah Jong (阿莊 Ā Zhuāng, aa3 zong1), an assassin who accidentally blinds singer Jennie when he is on a mission for the triads. Ah Jong decides to take on one last mission to pay for surgery to repair her eyes. Ah Jong is called "John" or "Jeff" in some subtitled prints of the film. The nickname given to Ah Jong by Li is "Har Tau", which roughly translates as "shrimp head." In some dubbed and subtitled prints, his nickname is "Mickey Mouse" or "Butthead".
* Danny Lee as Detective Li Ying (李 鷹, Lǐ Yīng, lei5 jing1). Li works with his partner Tsang to find Ah Jong. After his first meeting with him, Li becomes obsessed with Ah Jong's morals and character. The nickname given to Li by Ah Jong is "Ah B" which roughly translates as "baby" or "kid". In some dubbed and subtitled prints, his nickname is "Dumbo" or "Numbnuts".
* Sally Yeh as Jennie (珍妮 Zhēnnī, zan1 nei4), a nightclub singer who is blinded by Ah Jong in a shootout. Jennie falls in love with Ah Jong, before learning of his profession as a killer.
* Kenneth Tsang as Sgt. Tsang Yeh, Li's police partner and only sympathizer. Tsang helps find the whereabouts of Fung Sei that lead Li to Ah Jong before getting killed by the triads. In some subtitled prints, his name is "Randy Chang".
* Chu Kong as Fung Sei, Ah Jong's oldest friend and "manager"; he previously worked as an assassin himself before suffering a hand injury that ended his career. In some subtitled prints, his name is "Sidney Fong".
* Shing Fui-on as Wong Hoi (汪海 Wāng Hǎi, wong1 hoi2), a ruthless triad boss who tries to kill Ah Jong after hiring him to kill his uncle. Both Ah Jong and Fung Sei consider him a symbol of the triads losing their honor. In some subtitled versions he is "Johnny Weng."
* Ricky Yi Fan-wai as Frank Chen, a contract killer/assassin hired by Wong Hoi to kill Ah Jong. In some versions he is "Paul Yau."
* Barry Wong as Chief Inspector Dou, Detective Li's police superior.
==Themes==
Director John Woo has described The Killer as being about "honour and friendship", "trying to find out if there is something common between two people" and as a "romantic poem". The structure of the film follows two men on opposite sides of the law who find a relation to each other in their opposition to a greater evil, Wong Hoi, a Triad boss. Li and Ah Jong's relationship was influenced by the Spy vs. Spy comics from Mad Magazine. Woo recalled "When I was young I was fascinated with the cartoon–I love it very much ... the white bird and the black bird are always against each other, but deep in their heart, they are still friendly, and the idea came from that."Heard, 1999. p.70 Woo uses Ah Jong and Li as a central motif to illustrate moral points. Scenes with this reflective doubling include the hospital sequence with Li and Ah Jong on opposite sides of a hospital hall and in the final battle scene where Li and Ah Jong are in a standoff with Wong. The focus on male friendships in Woo's film have been interpreted as homoerotic. Woo has responded to these statements stating "People will bring their own preconceptions to a movie .... If they see something in The Killer that they consider to be homoerotic then that is their privilege. It's certainly not intentional."
Woo is a Christian and instills his films with religious imagery while stating that The Killer is "not a religious film". In the opening of The Killer, Ah Jong is found in a church stating he enjoys the "tranquility". Ah Jong is later found in the church again getting several slugs pulled out of his back showing his intense pain while the altar and cross are shown prominently behind him. The idea was influenced by Martin Scorsese's film Mean Streets, Woo stated the imagery was used to show that "God is welcoming, no matter if it's a good or a bad man, everyone is welcome".
Woo draws on animal symbolism throughout the film. He filled the church with doves and pigeons, employing doves to represent the spirits of the people. This was the first film in which Woo used the dove symbolism that he would later use for a similar effect in Hard Target and Face/Off. A cat appears when Ah Jong first meets Jennie on her visit home, and secondarily when Li's partner Tsang tries to catch Ah Jong in Jennie's apartment. In Chinese culture, a cat coming into a home is an omen of ruin and poverty for its inhabitants. Both Tsang and Jennie meet negative outcomes in the film.
== Reception ==
=== Critical response ===
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 43 reviews by critics, with and average rating of 8.7/10. Its critical consensus reads, "The Killer is another hard-boiled action flick from John Woo featuring eye-popping balletic violence and philosophical underpinnings."
Stephen Holden of The New York Times referred to the film as "Alternately gripping and laughable" and that "The scenes of gore and destruction are even more spectacular than Hong Kong's fog-shrouded skyline". Variety gave a positive review, describing the film as an "extremely violent and superbly made actioner demonstrates the tight grasp that director John Woo has on the crime meller genre". Kathleen Maher of The Austin Chronicle praised the film stating that it "defies all categorization but demands comparisons, if only to prove that there's never been anything like this before." Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote a positive review, describing the film as "like eating popcorn, but it's not just any old brand; it's escape-velocity popcorn, popcorn with a slurp of rocket fuel...[Woo's] ideas overreach themselves with such a virile swagger that they border on comedy. With excess like this you can't help but laugh. This is a rush of a movie".
Later critiques of the film remained positive. The Washington Post stated that "the plot doesn't exactly break new crime-story ground. It's all the Woo flourishes...that elevates The Killer to another level". Lucia Bozzola of the online film database Allmovie gave the film a five star rating, and stated it as "One of the high points of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema". Empire gave the film five stars and proclaimed that "John Woo's trademark style reached its zenith in The Killer". In 2010, Time Out New York ranked The Killer at number 50 on their list of the top 50 foreign films of all time. In 2014, Time Out polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films. The Killer was listed at 24th place on this list.
=== Legacy ===
The Killer has been recognized as an important and influential film for both Western and Asian filmmakers.Hall, 2009. p.58 Film scholars have noted the similarities between Woo's style and The Killer with the films Nikita (1990) and Léon (1994) directed by French director Luc Besson.Mazdon, 2000. p.108 Kenneth E. Hall described Léon as having the similar character configuration of a hitman and the person he protects. In Nikita, the main character's crisis of conscience after performing a number of hits is also seen in The Killer.Hall, 2009. p.66 Lucy Mazdon described the style of Nikita as recalling "the work of directors like John Woo. Like Nikita, Woo's films show alienated and often brutal characters and graphic violence". Brandon Lee used The Killer as an influence when choreographing his fight scenes in the film Rapid Fire. In the United States, directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino developed films that were influenced by The Killer.Elder, 2005. p.121Elder, 2005. p.143 Rodriguez's films El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), & Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) contain stylistic homages to The Killer. In the film Jackie Brown, Tarantino wrote dialog referencing The Killer. No references to the film are made in the original novel. Asian-based directors were also influenced by the film. Hong Kong director Johnnie To borrows from The Killer's gunfighting style, oppositional character pairing, and parody in his films A Hero Never Dies, Running Out of Time, and Fulltime Killer.Hall, 2009. p.59Hall, 2009. p.63
The Killer was also influential on hip hop music. American hip hop artist, and Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon released his critically praised debut album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... (1995) that sampled numerous portions of dialog from the film. RZA, the producer of the album described the album's themes by stating that "Rae and Ghost was two opposite guys as far as neighborhoods was concerned, I used John Woo's The Killer. [In that movie] you got Chow Yun Fat [playing the role of Ah Jong] and Danny Lee [Inspector Li]. They have to become partners to work shit out." Woo felt honored that the group sampled The Killer and asked for no monetary return from them. In 2005, Vibe magazine placed The Killer at number 21 on their list of top fifty films that shaped hip hop.
==Accolades==
Accolades 	Accolades 	Accolades 	Accolades
Ceremony 	Category 	Recipient 	Outcome
9th Hong Kong Film Awards	Best Film 	 	
9th Hong Kong Film Awards	Best Director 	John Woo 	
9th Hong Kong Film Awards	Best Screenplay 	John Woo 	
9th Hong Kong Film Awards	Best Supporting Actor	Paul Chu Kong 	
9th Hong Kong Film Awards	Best Film Editing 	Fan Kung Wing 	
9th Hong Kong Film Awards	Best Cinematography 	Wing Hung Wong and Peter Pau	
== References ==
== External links ==
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Category:1989 films
Category:1989 action thriller films
Category:1989 crime thriller films
Category:1980s buddy cop films
Category:1980s Cantonese-language films
Category:1980s crime action films
Category:1980s Hong Kong films
Category:1980s police procedural films
Category:Films about blind people
Category:Films about contract killing
Category:Films about friendship
Category:Films directed by John Woo
Category:Films set in Hong Kong
Category:Hong Kong films about revenge
Category:Hong Kong action thriller films
Category:Hong Kong buddy films
Category:Hong Kong crime action films
Category:Hong Kong crime thriller films
Category:Hong Kong New Wave films
Category:Media Asia films
Category:Police detective films
Category:Triad films