Labor Day Double Feature Paring: John Woo's THE KILLER (1989) and (2024)
Watch 'em both! You have all weekend! You're bound to like at least one! You'll definitely love the wines.
Celebrate Labor Day this weekend by watching two movies chronicling hard-working cops fighting hard-working assassins - they both slave away for their employers! đ
John Woo is considered a legend in the Hong Kong action genre. He grew up wanting to be a Christian minister, and was influenced heavily by American Westerns and the French New Wave. You can literally whirl those three things in a blender and get what became a classic John Woo action set piece - mexican standoffs with double-fisted gun-touting archetypal characters standing in churches with dove motiffs and stained-glass gorgeous iconoclastic framing.
After creating an entire action subgenre (âbullet balletâ) and taking it as far as it could go in the HK film industry with his magnum opus, Hard Boiled (1992), Woo journeyed to the West and began again in Hollywood. First with the Jean-Claude Van Damme Hard Target, then Broken Arrow with Christian Slater and John Travolta, and then what is still considered the perfect melding of East and West action absurdities in the unforgettable Face/Off with Nic Cage and Travolta.
He eventually returned to China to make a 5-hour historial war epic, Red Cliff Parts 1 & 2. (Which are incredible and worth everyoneâs time - yes, even 5 hours of your time!) But after Red Cliff, he became a bit adrift as a filmmaker.
Enter: this weekendâs release of his own remake of his own movie, The Killer (1989) and now (2024).
The Killer is arguably Wooâs crowning achievement in his original HK career, depeneding on who you ask. Itâs either this or said opus, Hard Boiled, but The Killer has more of a story to it, it really cranks up the emotional stakes, schmaltz, and âbrotherhoodâ themes, while still delivering on almost ethereal, out-of-this-world action sequences.
The remake corrects a number of issues with the original, including giving female characters more to do (heck, a woman is now the lead!) plus tones down the schmaltzy angelic vs. demonic aspect of the original and allows these characters more complexity. That said, the remake is a bit of a âgreatest hitsâ re-do, much like the recent Alien: Romulus was for that franchise.
If youâre new to Woo, you might like the remake better, as his style will be new to you, and likely this new film will surprise and delight. Itâs lighter on its feet than the 1989 version, more fun in that sense, more rounded with a diverse cast and diverse storyline. But the 1989 version in more intense, much more tightly constructed, pulls fewer punches and leaves a deeper mark.
Your mileage may vary.
THE KILLER (1989)
The world has changed. We're way too nostalgic.
I was worried THE KILLER wasn't going to hold up well on rewatch. I knew this movie was the pinnacle of director John Woo's schmaltz factor - action-oriented but also weepy and full of paper thin moralizing.
To a small degree, this was true - you can have characters that are ridiculously bad and/or ridiculously badass, such as in Woo's HARD BOILED and FACE/OFF, but what you can't have are characters that are ridiculously good.
Chow Yun-Fat plays an assassin that constantly goes out of his way to protect women and children. This is essentially the entire definition of being moral and good. He goes so far as to watch after a woman who was damaged in a gunfight he instigated, and to take a child to the emergency room while he's being chased by the police.
Then there's Danny Lee, who plays the standard Dirty Harry style maverick cop, who believes that taking down the "bad guys" is the only thing that matters, above all other considerations, including the well-being of civilians. Danny is consistently challenged by the "goodness" of a supposed "bad guy". A bad guy who cares more for the collateral damage (women and children) than his own wellbeing. This flies in the face of everything a cliche maverick cop believes.
This leads to multiple stand-offs between Chow and Danny, where the cop is challenged to care as much as the killer, and in doing so allows his target to escape, again and again. And in doing so, an odd kind of friendship/brotherhood slowly forms.
THE KILLER takes the "brotherhood" theme that Chang Cheh made infamous in his Shaw Bros days to insane new heights. This is heroic BLOODSHED, motherfucker. While spouting off lines of dialogue about brotherhood that even Chang might have found over-the-top.
2021 Ludovic Montiginot Cote du Py Morgan Beaujolais
I can think of no better pairing for such over the top wild absurdities as the Gamay grape from Beaujolais - and this particular bottle comes from a one-man show, Ludovic Montginot, who tends to his 3 hectares in the Cote du Py. This fucker prunes his own vineyard and works his own cellar unassisted. Like Woo, he is a true âauteurâ in the wine world, if such a thing exists.
This Beaujolais boasts more âmeatinessâ than most, while retaining the lively acidity the region is known for. Thereâs a surprsing structure here, itâs tightly constructed, like the 1989 Killer, offering both massive fruit flavors and bracing acidity, with slightly more noticeable tannins than most Beaujolais.
So any Beaujolais will do, but if you can find this one, imported to the States by Serge Dore, itâs got that bit of something more that makes it a true match for this classic bullet ballet masterpiece.
WineAccess is currently carrying it, fyi!
The Killer (2024)
This is a fine action movie.Â
Honestly, if it had dropped as some random French/British co-production from a largely unknown filmmaker, action fans would have sat up and taken notice. We'd be chattering back and forth about how much potential this team had, even if this particular movie is a tad overlong, a tad overly-complicated, with only a few action highlights though an absolutely incendiary finale.
But this is the latest from an action filmmaking LEGEND. And context matters.
The project had originally cast Lupita Nyong'o in the title role, with 10 Cloverfield Lane's Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken penning the script, Eran Creevy handling rewrites, and Brian Helgeland doing a "production pass". That was 2018. Then somehow we get to today with Helgeland in top-slot writing credit.
Helgeland has written some unforgettable bangers like KNIGHT'S TALE, MAN ON FIRE, 42, and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL but also some absolute stinkers like THE ORDER, BLOOD WORK, ROBIN HOOD (the one with Russell Crowe), and SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL. So he's hit or miss, and as often one as the other. His script for THE KILLER seems laser-focused on addressing the criticisms that nearly all of John Woo's 80's and 90's productions suffered from - namely, what all the female characters do.
Here, the role of the eponymous killer is given to a woman, and a woman of color at that, Nathalie Emmanuel. She fights a cadre of other female assassins by the movie's end, thus giving women plenty to do rather than standing around as objects to be pitied and/or rescued. The woman she injures but refuses to kill (played by Diana Silvers) is giving reasons to not be entirely innocent, entirely angelic. Characters here have shades of gray, including the police force that is more moved by politics than anything resembling ethics or justice.
Omar Sy is an affable, amiable foil to Zee's Terminator-like seriousness, and the duo make a great duo, but it's too little too late by the time it actually happens.
The action is by the numbers for Woo - like someone homaging a golden age Woo movie - with a few highlights. There's a car/motorcycle stunt right near the beginning, where a car flipping over actually hits the stuntman as he slides off his motorcycle and bumps off the flipping car. You can see it was a close call, that the cyclist wasn't hurt in any significant way but holy shit how did they plan that to such an exacting degree? (And maybe they didn't, but since the stuntperson wasn't harmed they left the shot in, I dunno, it's impressive either way.)
And there is an 11-minute finale in a church (because of course it is) that comes awfully close to classic Woo. As mentioned before, if this were anyone else, we'd be talking about this finale for months to come. But because it's Woo, it's more of a "last hurrah for chivalry" for the director. One more time at the bullet ballet action buffet.
2022 Chateau de Suronde LâEsquisse Anjou Blanc
The name is Blanc, Chenin Blanc.
Hailing from the Quarts de Chaume, the Loire Valleyâs sole Grand Cru, this is a rare dry white from a region best known for its sweet dessert wines. And this is a tiny region: 20 producers produce roughly 50,000 bottles annually. To put that into context, Sauternes produces roughly 5 MILLION bottles every year. Yeah.
Owned and operated by Belgians Kathleen Van den Berghe and Sigurd Mareels (a woman/man combo for a woman/man starring movie) their seven-hectare vineyard is farmed biodynamically and 5.5 hectares fall under the Quarts de Chaume appellation, and thatâs where this white Chenin Blanc comes from, though it uses the Anjou appellation because itâs dry and not sweet. (I fucking swear. Like, literally, I just did. :P)
Like the Beaujolais above, this wine is loaded with fruit flavors of green apple and pear, coupled with high bracing acidity. The same balance of weight and lightness/freshness, but white and mineral like this remake, which has a more clinical, crisper feel than the blood-and-gel-light drenched 1989 version.
Once again an import by Serge Dore, and can be found in the States via WineAccess.
Let me know what you think of these two movies if/when you see them, and what you think of the wines if you can ever try them!
Or what would YOU pair with the movies?
Happy Labor Day, everyone. Cuz weâre all laboring in this life, even if we donât celebrate this particular holiday on this particular day.