1989 / 104 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I only recently watched this film, but I am already secure in saying that it is easily one of the best action films ever made. It moves really quickly, the action is extremely fast-paced, full-blooded (bloody) and brutal, and the acting and plot are all startlingly well-done.

But the main reason this movie works, and works above and beyond the call of duty, is due to its surprising amount of heart. This is far from being the average action movie. In fact, I hate to compare it to most other action films, in which the plot exists only to drag the viewer from one explosion to the next. In this film, as in all the best action films, the action stems directly and organically from the plot.

“The Killer” is about a nameless hit man (Chow Yun Fat). He works for a boss he has never met, but is very well paid. He goes from one hit to the next and does not worry about the inherent hollowness of his life…. until one evening. He goes to a bar and shoots his intended target. In the melee and confusion, he also accidentally shoots a young singer (Sally Yeh), blinding her.

Later on, he meets the young lady at another bar. He saves her from being robbed and raped on her way home and then helps her home. It is there that he realizes who she is. This realization hits him, and hits him hard. He decides, there and then, that he can no longer kill for a living. But he agrees to take on one last hit for a very important reason: so he can afford to pay for an operation which will restore the young woman’s sight.

At the same time, we meet a police officer. The officer is involved in a police chase one night and, in this chase, he accidentally shoots an innocent person. With this lingering on his conscience (not to mention his record) he is then assigned to protect a shady politician: the same man that The Killer has been assigned to kill.

Also, the Killer’s boss has decided to have him killed upon the completion of his current hit. He believes that The Killer could be a liability if the police ever get a hold of him.

Chow Yun Fat is very magnetic in this film. Now I see what all the fuss is about. In fact, he and the police officer assigned to stop him are both excellent actors, conveying most of their characters through their eyes and the sadness inherent in their faces. They may be on opposite spectrums of the law, but they have more in common than brothers. Each of them has an innocent victim on their conscience, although The Killer has the power to help his. Both men are haunted by their own separate demons, you can see it in their eyes.

These characters lend amazing weight to this story. And the story itself is powerful. You can see influences as diverse as Chaplin and Sergio Leone in the story, not to mention the fact that you can see this film’s stylistic influences over Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, among countless others. Woo is in top form here. The shootouts are ballets of bullets and blood, yet they do not glorify the violence onscreen. No one with half a brain would watch the carnage in this film and still think that violence was the solution to any problems, no matter how brilliantly staged it is.

Woo’s symbolism works very well here. In “Mission: Impossible: 2″, I thought the uses of symbolism, particularly the doves, were distracting and heavy-handed. Here, they are subtle and beautiful. The whole film is, actually. And it has an energy level somewhere in the stratosphere.

I have seen other examples of Hong Kong action, and have always enjoyed the way that the action was choreographed but have always held disdain for the flimsy plots and hollow characters. I guess I was watching the wrong movies. In “The Killer” at least, everything has fallen perfectly into place. In fact, it is nothing short of mesmerizing throughout.

Movies like this were why action films were created.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2000 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.