Film of the Week: The Killer

John Woo's The Killer, a seminal action masterpiece from which much of the modern genre owes its influence, opens on a quiet, solemn note: Ah Jong (Chow Yun-Fat) sitting in a church, quiet and contemplative. It's a quiet opening, but an effective one that is violently contrasted with the next scene, as Ah Jong departs on a hit, easily eliminating his targets but leaving Jennie (Sally Yeh), a kind nightclub singer, partially blind in the crossfire. From the get-go, Woo manages to connect the dots of one of the film's central ideas, and arguably it's most compelling: violence, no matter how effective or cool, wears on the soul, it's inescapable grasp refusing to let anyone go.

Throughout each of The Killer's kinetic, exhilarating shootouts, there's a sense of weight and consequences to it that make the action far from mindless. Jennie's blinding. A group of hitmen critically injure a little girl in their effort to kill Ah Jong. Detective Li Ying (Danny Lee), Ah Jong's foil, is introduced as he rashly kills a suspect in public, only to frighten his hostage into a fatal heart attack. These actions, the kind lesser action movies wouldn't think on, take a real toll, both physical and emotional, on our heroes and the people caught up in their conflicts, from the short-lived supporting cast to civilians who have the fatal misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's an often shocking amount of heart from Woo for me, someone more familiar with his more explosive, over-the-top American work in the form of Face/Off (a classic) and Mission Impossible 2 (the worst Mission Impossible). And yet, it's this heart that makes the movie and its characters fascinatingly compelling. The Killer is just as willing to sit and let its characters breathe and ponder to themselves as it is to let them blast their way out of a beachhouse.

And man, the gunfights really rip. Goons are torn apart and sent flying by the force of the rounds blasted through their bodies in a glorious ballet of tightly coordinated chaos, our heroes pumping out endless rounds as they fight against wave after wave of foes. Even after witnessing decades of its derivatives, the work of John Woo remains fresh and a blast to watch. It even understands that any action movie worth its salt gives you characters worth rooting for, completely nailing its unlikely buddy cop aesthetic with the excellent chemistry between Fat and Lee, a delightful pairing of two men whose philosophies and mutual respect bring them together. As the duo's story moves to its violent conclusion, you find yourself pulled on a genuine emotional rollercoaster, equal parts exhilarating and heartbreaking.

It's the film's conclusion, I think, that gives it the most weight, as Woo brings his reflection on violence home with a bang. The church, once a symbol of serenity and escape from violence, is destroyed, our hero loses his life, and his newfound friend loses everything in search of vengeance. It's a shocking, brutal close—the final fate of a blinded Ah Jong crying out for Jennie as he dies just inches from her a genuinely heartbreaking sequence. It's gutsy, bold, and it sticks with you just as much as any of the glorious, influential action.