Movies - The Killer

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	Movies - The Killer

The Killer (; literally: Bloodshed of Two Heroes) is a 1989 Hong Kong thriller starring Chow Yun-Fat as the hitman Ah Jong, Danny Lee as the cop Li Ying and Sally Yeh as the singer Jennie. John Woo directed the film which brought him wide-spread recognition in the West. The film was produced by Tsui Hark. It is considered to be one of the mainstays of the Asian heroic bloodshed genre of action cinema.

The Killer is a very popular and well regarded film, not only for its violence, but for its themes of honor, love and friendship, coupled with the religious motifs of salvation, (not uncommon in the heroic bloodshed genre), evoking powerful emotion. The film also asserts a higher morality above the law of man, which makes the cop question his motivations.

A Hollywood remake has been long since in development but various factors have kept it in development hell.

The plot is similar to the 1954 Hollywood movie Magnificent Obsession starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. In that movie, Rock plays a playboy who accidentally blinds a young woman, and through newly found Christian ideals and pity – and eventually love – for the blinded woman, he befriends the woman and tries to raise money for an eye operation, all the time not revealing his identify.

However, in The Killer, the film revolves around the character of Ah Jong (Chow Yun-Fat), a professional killer. Ah Jong himself is based on Alain Delon's character Jef Costello in Le Samouraï
, a French film about a stylish, white-gloved assassin who lives by a code of honor. During a hit in the opening act, Ah Jong accidentally blinds a young nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) with the muzzle flash from his pistol. Driven to help the now near-blinded woman by securing money for a sight-saving corneal transplant, he agrees to carry out another hit. During his escape he is pursued by Li Ying (Danny Lee), a cop who is investigating his crimes. Ah Jong then finds himself being hunted by his employers who want rid of him for being seen "on the job".

After witnessing Ah Jong save a dying girl and learning about Jennie's operation, the cop realizes arresting this hitman would not set things right. Together they fight the Triads through amazing action sequences which ultimately climax in an explosive shootout at an abandoned church. There, Ah Jong has Li Ying swear to donate the hitman's eyes to Jennie if something were to happen to him.

The ending is tragic, in that Ah Jong dies, eyes shot out by the Triad boss, Wong Hoi. Jennie is left crawling for him in the dark, her operation unfulfilled. The boss flees to police custody, but Li Ying chases after him, shooting him in cold blood. He realized the law could never give someone like Ah Jong justice, so he acted under his own sense of right and wrong.

The film is notable for its tense Mexican standoffs, a favourite Woo scene, and a certain amount of humour. In one scene Ah Jong and Li Ying are in Jennie's flat, holding each other at gun point. In order not to worry the non-seeing girl, they claim to be old childhood friends and give each other silly nicknames. Western releases of the film vary the nicknames from "Runt" and "Shrimp Head" to "Dumbo" and "Mickey Mouse". The UK DVD release is currently the fully accurate English subtitled version with the nicknames of Ah Jong and Li Ying as Shrimphead and Runt respectively

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Movies - The Killer

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