The Killer: John Woo's Greatest Action Movie?

In the early 90’s, when I was about 6, my older cousins in their teens sat me down to watch this movie. Have always remembered that and this movie.

John Wick is the best to ever do it.

Well you are supposed to see these movies without dubbing..Thats the trick..!!

so you dare to us the English dub for this video... hmmm.

I agree, a classic. There are sequences in this film that are simply astonishing.

I wish John woo and Chow Yun fat combo make one more movie like the Irishman .

You keep saying, "Bullet TO the Head". That's a different movie than the one you're talking about. It's even in the movie poster you showed.

Fun fact
John woo is a devout Christian so he not so subtly put pigeons into every movie as allegory to the holy spirit

An excellent movie. For me, my favorite part was when the main character's best friend, while being beaten by the gang in order to give up Fat's location, straightens his tie and states "Sometimes dogs are superior to men."

2nd* greatest action movie.
His first one is "Hard Boiled".

the killer is his magnum opus but hard boiled and a better a tomorrow are must see as well. and damn they hard to get on blu ray....lol

Thank you for covering this movie, watched it a few months ago and it became one of my favorite movies

If only the rights of this movie went to 88 Films/Eureka who would do a proper restoration attempt that wasn't filled with DNR and saturation. Also this movie is vastly out of print now

Excellent video

I love your vids Chris as you are so well versed in film.
I saw The Killer as my first John Woo film in high school in the 90's. My mates brother was into foreign cinema. I was blown away by the stylised violence. My mum and dad even liked it. After that I watched Hard Boiled and then I searched for everything John Woo had made up until that point. Could not get enough.
I remember being in the cinema way back in the day watching something I can't remember and there was a poster for Hard Boiled with Chow and the baby and I remember looking at it thinking that looks cool (no idea at the time it was a John Woo film and not old enough to watch an 18 cert). When Replacement Killers came out I went to the cinema to watch it and went for almost every JW film that was released thereafter (I missed Windtalkers).

For me, I can't decide between The Killer or Hard Boiled. I own both and I think they are equally as good but in their own way. Bullet in the Head has always been a favourite as well.......and lastly, A Better Tomorrow II is the best in the series. Chow Yun-Fat will always be a pinnacle of my love for film growing up.

This film started me on a Chow Yun Fat fan journey that lasted for years. I wanted to see everything Chow Yun Fat was in. Though some of the movies may not have aged well, this is the list as follows (Note the list stops at 1997):
1) The Killer
2) Hard Boiled
3) God of Gamblers
4) A Better Tomorrow
5) Treasure Hunt
I have seen the first two of this list more times then I can count. Definitely worthy watches. There is still regret and sadness that even as a fan, I could not get over his rather atrocious accent. He'll speak English better then I'll ever speak Chinese, but his inability to learn the English accent/hide his Eastern accent hurt him so much at the box office. Well, that and a lot of his post 2001 movies just weren't written very well. I wanted so much to see him successful in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

We, as audience members, saw some of Chow Yun Fat's greatness in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it wasn't the dual wielding, gun ballet master that so awed me as a 15 year old boy.

Discovered a Hard Boiled 2: The Last Blood except just a distributer rename of a homage

I love The Killer, but nothing will ever top the fried rice scene in A Better Tomorrow 2

A Better Tomorrow might be the most influential of his movies, Bullet in the Head his most personal, the Killer might be his best movie, but Hard Boiled has the best action.

Great movie, good video... But what's with those "funny" inserts?

The Killer is A masterpiece.

Sniper scene dope

Sorry-Not-Sorry No! A-Better-Tomorrow! 1-2

I still think Hard Boiled is Woo's Magnum Opus

I prefer The Killer to Hard Boiled. But John Woo has so many masterpieces. Bullet in the Head is so fucking underrated. It’s insane.

I got absolutely obsessed with John Woo and Chow Yun Fat over lockdown in 2020, ended up spending quite a bit of my paycheck on getting my hands on imported DVDs from Amazon. Watching the films in order of release was something of a spiritual experience. While I appreciate A Better Tomorrow (and to a lesser extent its sequel) for me Hard Boiled takes the cake over that and The Killer. A lesser known but equally rad Chow movie is Full Contact, released the same year (1992). It's way more over the top than any of his films with Woo but it has that kind of grindhouse action feel and the ending is badass. I think with Woo directing it could have been up there with Hard Boiled, alas Ringo Lam directed and as a result it doesn't quite have the same emotional impact. Still a great movie.

I rarely cry in films. Although the ending had me tearing up.

It has everything; dialogue, action, story and emotion.

Hard Boiled is the better action movie, but The Killer is the better overall movie.

I need a physical release for this film

The killer is the best action movie of chow yun fat i've seen many shooout than hard-boiled & very emotional movie.

I love the cinematography in The Killer and A Better Tomorrow.

I prefer Hard Boiled.

I cannot believe they are rebooting this film with such a shitty cast

The Killer is great. What makes me prefer Hard Boiled instead as Woo’s masterpiece, which is much better IMO, is the fact that The Killer is filled with a lot of melodrama. These scenes have not surpassed fully the test of time. That’s not to say that it is a bad film; it was in many ways influential. The Killer helped him polish his style, which made him prepare for his true masterpiece that is Hard Boiled.

I love how you're using clips from the dubbed version. I grew up with that.

The killer and Internal affairs are my favorite Chinese movies

Where can I watch The killer and a better tomorrow, Ive had a hard time finding them on anything.

I see this a lot in many videos and reviews of A Better Tomorrow. To the non-cantonese speakers, Mark Gor is not the name of the character. Mark Gor should be translated as "Brother" Mark. Gor is Mark's title. This is a casual "honorific" title used by the Triads to refer to older more senior members in the Triads. If you want to know, in A Better Tomrrow, Mark's name is actually Mark Lee. Most likely people assume Mark Gor is the character's name due to the poor subtitles

John Woo is a revolutionary,innovative genius!

🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️

When the killer came out in theaters in the us and the west was it dubbed or spoken in its original language?

Storywise this is Woo's best movie. Whe it comes to pure action I prefer Hard Boiled.

cannot wait john woo new movie remake The killer.

That mole hair!

wu tang 36 chambers is how i discovered this film

EVEN "THE KILLER" IS A TRAGIC BUDDY COP MASTERPIECE, "HARD BOILED" IS STILL THE #1 BEST JOHN WOO GUN-FU MOVIES OF ALL TIME. 🔫🥋🎞️🎬🎥☝️👍

I hope Criterion keeps working through Woo’s filmography.

Better than DIEHARD