John Woo is a director who is known for Face Off and other action films. Mainly in Japan. He’s gotten so far in his career that he’s making remakes of his own films from years ago. That’s the case with The Killer which is a remake of his 1989 movie. He’s modernized it for an English-speaking audience and it has premiered on the streaming service Peacock today.

Zee (Natalie Emanuele) is a single woman in Paris, France living on her own with her goldfish Y who likes to play the daily crossword puzzle. On the side, she works for Finn (Sam Worthington), her handler as a hit woman. She is given a job to do to kill a man and his crew in a nightclub, but something doesn’t go right. She doesn’t complete her job. She leaves a civilian singer behind. A woman who loses her vision during the hit. This doesn’t sit well with her bosses who called for the hit. Little does anybody know that the blind girl has a connection to a thug named Coco who stole a bunch of heroin from these men. He had a detective on his tail named Sey (Omar Sy) who has become deeply intertwined in this whole affair. It’s a complex scenario of events that are happening.

Natalie Emanuele has come on the scene in James Bond films, but since then she’s done a lot of other action films. This might be the best role of her career. She is able to flex her wings and do a lot of crazy wonderful things. She’s got the range as an actress to handle all the dialogue, but she also has the ability to do all the action scenes and hand-to-hand combat fighting.  She has come a long way as an actress and this is the performance of her career.

Being that this is a remake of his very own film John Woo changed things up enough to make it original as its own thing. Setting it in France helped that. It brought a different element to the story as well as the vibe of the movie. The French aspect is different from the Japanese version of this story. Throw in an Irish gangster and some police corruption and you have a mix of a lot of things that make this movie so very thrilling and just as exciting.

Omar Sy is an actor who’s had a few good roles in his career including in  X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Jurassic World, but I  loved him as the personal assistant in the French film The Intouchables. He was funny and touching in that role. In this film, he brings some of those same sensibilities to his performance.  He has to do more action scenes and fighting as well as gunplay. This is a much more intense role for him in his career.  He is an actor to watch in the future.

I’ve seen a lot of movies involving hit men and or women. They are usually pretty good. This one has some interesting characters that have good motivations and developed them quite well. There are quite a few moving parts to the story which I like quite a bit. All the various things that are going on in the movie help add to the intrigue and excitement that occurs.  For a direct to Peacock movie, this is quite good.

One part of this fantastic film is its score. by Marco Beltrami. This is an intense nature to the music but a lot of the score is very subtle in nature. The music has a way of making it calm while there are intense scenes that are going on. Beltrami is a well thought of composer and this score is one of his best. Woo enlisted him for the right reasons. His music compliments this story quite well.

The Killer is not to be confused with Killer starring Michael Fassbender and directed by David Fincher which premiered on Netflix last year, is an action-packed thrill ride. It has two wonderful performances from Emanuele and Sy with a very good supporting cast on top of those. There are a handful of car chases and hand-to-hand fight scenes that are quite exciting.  I’m not usually a fan of very many remakes, but this Woo remake of his own movie was very entertaining. It has taken the Hit Man genre in a great direction. I hope as many people as possible have the chance to see it on Peacock.

Streaming on Peacock August 23rd, 2024

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen