Chow Yun Fat Movie:

Editorial Review:
This 1989 rouser is apocalyptic pulp--the bloodiest, showiest, most shamelessly sentimental specimen of Hong Kong's gangster melodramas. A torch singer named Jennie (Sally Yeh) is accidentally blinded during a slaying in a night club, and Chow Yun-fat's sad-eyed Jeff, a self-lacerating assassin, drags himself out of retirement to take on one last job--rubbing out a major mobster for major bucks--so he can pay for the singer's cornea transplant operation. But Jeff pauses to ferry a wounded child to the hospital during this final outing, and because of this a cop finally gets a good look at him: "He was seen on the job," snarls a saturnine Mr. Big, "and I want him wasted." Armies of thugs converge on the saintly slayer. Some of writer-director John Woo's flourishes are kitsch classics (doves flying upward in a candlelit church), while the action sequences are rapturous. "Life's cheap," a character opines. "It only takes one bullet," but in this case it actually takes about a dozen spewing bullet hits to kill anyone, as soulful triads in mirror shades and duster overcoats blaze away with high-tech weaponry. (A favorite trick involves grasping an enemy by the lapels, pulling him into a waltz embrace, and pumping several slugs into his duodenum.) Danny Lee, Chow's costar in City on Fire, is the intense, young officer who fixates on the killer's contradictory personality. --David Chute

The Killer Reviews:
For John Woo Fans
2009-09-12 - The killer has more action in the first minute than most action films have in the first hour. Don't miss this gem!

John Woo's Masterpiece:Action meets Existentional Drama.
2009-04-11 - One of the genuine trendsetters in Action history was this 1989 Action masterpiece from one of the genre's most skilled directors. After building his own "gun-foo" style througout the 80s with the classics,"A Better Tomorrow(1986)" and it's sequel in 1988, Woo hits paydirt here.

Basically retelling to some degree, Jean Pierre Melville's "Le Samourai(1967", Woo adds a high octane sense of action and his ever present theme of male bonding to the mix for one of the decade's classics.
The sweet story about the Hitman's attempts to fix the eyesight of a beautiful singer whom he blinded in a hit, is handled with the appropiate amount of sensitivity.

Chow Yun Fat is one of cinema's great Action heroes, at once both cool and imposing, yet full of humor and sympathy, this is still one of the actor's great performances, not equalled in sheer coolness until Woo's Hong Kong swan song with 1992's "Hard Boiled".

The action scenes are among the most riveting and intense ever filmed, notably the explosive climax. A masterpiece of substained mayhem that nearly reaches the operatic, this is perhaps the best gunfight we've seen since "Bloody" Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch(1969)".

The DVD is presented with both English language and Chinese versions and are UNCUT, however the prints utilized, leave much more to be desired. There is also audio commentary by the man himself, John Woo and Trailers for the film and Hard Boiled.

It's sad that this is out of print, especially considering it's now classic status and the amount of films that it inspired in the States that ARE still annoying us on the big screen. I reccomend that if you really want a good film, skip that Matrix-knock-off and go for this John Woo classic that started it all.

Except no substitutes.


Not just dead bodies
2008-12-02 - This film has been categorized as an action movie with a great deal of bloodshed. Superficially this is true but Woo's masterwork can easily stand beside Once Upon a Time in the West as a beautifully shot, highly stylized film that reaches far beyond the confines of a mere genre film. The acting is superb and the editing is Academy Award level. Only the score does not quite come up to the level of Leone's films. Don't hesitate to view this movie because of it's violent reputation. It is so much more than that.

For those who don't "get" the violence in Woo's films
2008-09-19 - John Woo is a director who uses a style known as Heroic Bloodshed. The messages of the movies are always in the symbols, not in the story. The movie isn't designed for those who can't look past the violence. The movies are also heavily laced with Protestant Christian themes concerning the souls of his characters, usually exagerrated for the purpose of making them larger than life. For Example: Inspector Tequila in Hard Boiled. He kills, yes. He kills a lot. But the overall message is not the violence, it's that the hero has to do what must be done, that he values the righting of wrongs done to a weaker character. You have to read into Woo films before you can say that they are "Garbage", because if you understand him, they're really not. I'm sorry more people can't enjoy his movies, but sometimes you need to look past the attitude that violence is never the answer. While killing is bad, being dead and allowing others who are above the law (a problem almost alien to the modern Western World) to exploit those who can't help themselves is worse.

Absolutely Horrible!!!
2007-10-19 - I found this movie absolutely horrible--overloaded with gratuitous violence, violence for violence sake. It's for people who enjoy watching people murder people. There were no real characters in this monstrousity of a movie--only killing machine people. No one, that's right, no one was believable. Even the so-called story line--a hitman killing to raise money to enable a blind woman, whom the hitman accidentally blinded, to see, was a farce. Movies like this only raise the potential level of violence in society, make it glorifiable, without the slightest redeeming virtue. This piece of junk is strictly for the serial killer who's looking for inspiration for his next hit. I trashed my copy--I wouldn't even give it to charity because of what it stands for. Do yourself a favor--don't buy terrible heap of garbage!!!!!