It’s been a little over 24 hours since the first trailer for the remake of The Killer came out and I still haven’t gotten over it. Honestly, since it’s been available, I must have watched it three or four times, but since then I don’t dare watch it again. Why? Simply because I’m in complete denial. Total denial of telling myself that it’s John Woo who is in charge of this remake with such cheap and surreal images. We know that for a few years now, things haven’t been going well for John Woo, that he’s only a shadow of himself, and it’s all the more painful when we know that it’s him we’re talking about… John Woo all the same, the master of action, the creator of gun-fu, the one who revolutionized action cinema, the one who created a unique style, copied and plundered by the whole world, especially Hollywood, some of whom claim to be his heirs, when that’s not the case. John Woo is also the one who gave birth to Hard Boiled, the greatest action movie of all time, and I mean ALL TIME, with an absolutely prodigious 35-minute non-stop final action scene. No, I refuse to believe that John Woo is behind this lousy remake, riddled with wokeness and easy money. Come on, let’s take our courage in both hands and dissect everything that’s wrong with this trailer, which is to say absolutely everything.
The first thing that shocks me when I see this trailer for The Killer version 2024 is the photography. Let’s say it like it is: the photography of the film is absolutely dis-gusting. Go take a look at the images, it’s like a French TV movie broadcast on TF1/France2/France3, delete the unnecessary mention. There’s nothing right, it’s bland, it’s ugly, so much so that the Cat’s Eye series produced by TF1 and which will arrive next fall already seems more polished than this remake of The Killer that no one asked for. If we have fun making the comparison with the original film from 1989, this remake doesn’t hold a candle for a single second. The images, the colors, the lighting, the grain, there is a patina that we obviously don’t find in this remake which seems to have been shot in DTV if I want to be mean…
ERIC CANTANA, THE BIG BAD GUY, WTF
Obviously the cinematographer cannot be held solely responsible for this disaster, and if that was the only bad thing, we would have turned a blind eye. But we have to face the facts, there are other problems, like the casting that gives you goosebumps and anguish. Omar Sy, Nathalie Emmanuelle, Sam Worthington and Eric Cantona… Eric Cantona the kids… In the role of the big bad guy who pulls faces like Robert DeNiro’s “Fuck my wife”, to which we added this catchphrase “The most dangerous man in Paris”. It’s enough to make you bang your head against a wall… But we’re not at the end of our surprises, since according to the technical sheet, there are also Tchéky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui and Grégory Montel in the film. I have absolutely nothing against anyone, let’s get along well. Omar Sy, I loved him in Chocolat by Rochdy Zem, in Le Chant du Loup, he is also perfect there, just like the Forgotten Prince where he was particularly touching; however I find that he stands out in action films. At the limit when we are on an action comedy like “On the other side of the ring road”, it works, but as soon as we have to move to a more serious register, more emotionally involved, whether in the attitude, in the look and even less in the gestures, it does not work. You only have to see what Chow Yun-Fat gives off on the screen to know that it is a lost cause. And yes, I am well aware that Omar Sy plays the role of the cop, that of Danny Lee, not that of Chow Yun-Fat, but it is the same, the gap is much too important.
The role of Chow Yun-Fat was inherited by Nathalie Emmanuelle and we can’t blame her. From her point of view, it’s a godsend, especially since it’s her first big role. Now we can be angry and blame someone, it’s against John Woo and the casting director. In any case, following Chow Yun-Fat, one of the classiest actors in the world, Danny Lee, Kenneth Tsang or even Shing Fui-on, who have an unstoppable style and real movie faces, was very complicated, even risky, especially when we’re going for a Westernized remake of The Killer. From the start, this story was doomed to failure. And it’s not surprising that they never managed to set up this remake, already announced since 1992, 3 years after the original film. There was a resurgence in 2007 with John H. Lee, a South Korean director, but he abandoned the project shortly after. It was in 2015 that John Woo confirmed his desire to take care of the remake of his own film himself, after finishing Manhunt, another very failed film of his filmography. However, there is Brian Helgeland as screenwriter, he who wrote LA Confidential, who directed the excellent Payback with Mel Gibson and Lucy Liu and the nice Chevalier with the late Heath Ledger. All we know is that the story has been modified compared to the original film. There will be similarities of course, but there will be liberties. For now, we cannot know if Brian Helgeland’s work will be above John Woo’s, but when we see the trailer, we can only be afraid.
JOHN WHERE?
John Woo, by the way, who seems to have lost all his old mojo and has been for a few years now. I told you but Manhunt was generally a failure, but at least he tried things, despite this specter of wanting to try to remake what made him famous and famous in the 90s. And that’s the whole problem with John Woo, he who was a pioneer, the guy who laid the foundations of gun-fu and modern action cinema, he can no longer surpass himself, as if he were stuck in a time loop space where he has access to nothing. The whole world has plundered him so much and deconstructed everything that made him successful that certain clichés no longer work in 2024. Especially since his cinema had a naivety in certain themes and codes that already only worked in Hong Kong or China. We can’t transpose this very romanticized HK spirit to the West, even less today, and that’s also what killed Hong Kong cinema somewhere, it which drove action cinema in the 90s was eaten up by Japanese cinema, then Korean, Thai and Indonesian cinema today. Or else we have to take another stance, that of the assumed absurdity like Indian action cinema.
All I see in this remake of The Killer is John Woo aping John Woo, but aping him awkwardly, with the added bonus of scenes that are totally ripped from his old works. Omar Sy grabbing like a child in slow motion in a heroic moment is already Chow Yun Fat in Hard Boiled or Nicolas Cage in Face Off Volte-Face. The black motorcycles on fire are obviously Hard Boiled, but also Hard Target with Van Damme. And by the way, I have a confession to make, my favorite John Woo Western is the one with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Manhunt, Hard Target, because that’s the one where I find the most of HK’s John Woo, combined with Van Damme’s martial arts. But to get back to these scenes from The Killer 2024, they are scenes that no longer work today. All these slow motions, these overly orchestrated, magnified jumps, it’s not what we expect today, it’s the realistic, raw aspect that has taken over and it’s the same for this Trinity-style jump in Matrix that looks so corny, especially since Nathalie Emmanuel is wearing a similar outfit. And this gunfight carry, no it’s too John Woo, we’re not in the 90s anymore, it doesn’t work anymore, seriously. Just see what Soi Cheang managed to do with her City of Darkness to understand that it’s possible to keep the HK spirit of the 90s by adapting it to today’s standards.
I’m really sad to see such a result. I also hope that this trailer is not a reflection of what awaits us in this film, but frankly, I doubt it very much. The Silent Night released at the beginning of the year was already pretty crap, I don’t see how John Woo found a second wind. In any case, the film comes out on August 23 on the Peacock platform in the United States and on October 24 in theaters in France and that too, in terms of a wild decision, is not bad. Because by then, you can imagine that all John Woo fans will have had access to the film before, either via a VPN or as a pirate.
