‘The Killer’: John Woo Remakes His 1989 Action Classic
There’s arguably nothing cooler than The Killer or its star Chow Yun-fat, so John Woo’s new remake of his 1989 Hong Kong classic begins behind the proverbial eight-ball.
The action maestro’s latest is, mercifully, a cut above last year’s Silent Night, boasting at least faint traces of the signature style that made him a genre legend. Still, despite being a step in the right direction, his English-language The Killer, which hits Peacock on Aug. 23, remains merely a mediocre remix that, for all its familiar elements, fails to improve upon a single aspect of its trailblazing predecessor.
In contemporary Paris, lethal assassin Zee (Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel)—who’s described as a “monk without a God”—sits quietly in a dilapidated church, clapping to awaken its resident doves and pigeons, which flutter about as the director’s camera rotates and rises into the sky.