The Killer

It's not the worst thing you can watch. It has its moments. Every once in a while it wakes up and remembers it's an action movie. The rest of the time it's down wallowing in a rut of character moments that try too hard to convince us that we should care about these characters. Sam Worthington does a terrible Irish accent despite his character having no reason to be Irish.

The action is fun, everything else is boring because despite the effort it's hard to care about these characters and what they're going through. It's Jon Woo without the charm. It can't shake off the wrapper of NBC TV production despite desperately trying.

I had to stop after 50min where I couldn't take it anymore, I mean it might be for someone but not for me.

John Woo has a style and I respect that! However I'm not sure if I would still have stomach for that in 2024, nearly 30 years after Faceoff.

You might ask how about the story then? Enough to know that a Killer with misplaced conscious caused a lot of civilians to die to avoid one particular civilian to die because she was against killing civilians. I know it's stupid. But that's the main theme, at least up until I said enough is enough. The plot has so many wholes and it looks so fake that even popular faces couldn't save it for me.

Do not waste your precious life with this movie, Mr Woo, please grow up.

I don't know how many action clichés John Woo made and then piled up during his carrier, but I guess a lot. This picture is really like mocking himself. Probably, rather than maybe, he is. Well, it is a remake of his own film, once considered pioneer of modern action movies, but it does nothing original at all. Rather, it delivers basically the same but with much less intensity, commitment and flair. The soul of the original is absent. There is no fire in it, just ember - to say the least. The characters are good but apparently most of them are restricted, blocked even, to show raw emotions (with the exception of Cantona). It is a weak remake, as they usually are.

Let me begin by saying I love John Woo, Omar Sy, and Nathalie emmanuel, but this movie doesn't go anywhere, do anything, or offer up anything in the way of real entertainment aside from the good action sequences that stitch the diolgue sections together. In fact were it not for these three actors the movie would be immeasurably worse. I'll try to be conciese here.

The plot is simply ridiculous. Who decided to make a movie on a story so preposterous? Just imagine how good this movie might have been if the person creating and detailing the plot had an imagination, a lick of common sense, or a brain to create a proper conept. I'll not go into detail but suffice to say the story isn't worthy of any of the talent enlisted in the movie, nor does it conjure up the slightest modicum of interest, intrigue or investment in emotion.

The actors do a good job with the meterial... such as it is, but nothing can rescue this plot from the underhand vice of creativity that is lacking. Sam worthington is a very capable actor; I like him, and in spite of his relegation to mostly lower profile movie categories in the past few years, his talent nevertheless persists. Here he's cast as an Irishman, and I'm not even sure if he's supposed to be Northern or Southern but not only is his accent is terrible, but the requirement to have him play an Irish national at all is mind boggling. It has no relevance to the proceedings and only makes sense if confusing the audience with what he's actually saying is by design. In his first scene I wondered if he was speaking turkish, I kid you not! I could not understand a word he was saying.

Woo does a good job with the action sequences and to be fair, as an action flick and in dipicting excitement and intensity in general, especially the relevant places, it does well. The shots are great, the actors do well with the sequences, and movie comes alive considerably, but there isn't anything pinning this together except a stupid story that lulls atrociously outside these spaces where Woo's influence isn't primarily on display. "Between the panels" It's just rubbish.

Shame really as I had high hopes for this one. Yes they should have had a better plot, writers etc, but this is where we are and unfortunately as I've said, as an entertainment piece there is little on offer.

There are some good points though, Emmanuel is delectable in much of the attire she dons and indeed there are some nice shots in the movie which can be appreciated outside of the project as a whole, hence my 5/10

Still, that said, watching it is a not much more than a waste of time.

Why John this is just not neccesary, this is simply an excuse to put two charismatic actors kicking assess, this is not a neccesary remake my guy, it's just like the original but without the essentially of that film, you should make a remake one of your American Van Damme movies, those are not good

The crow and now this one, stop remaking solid and classic movies please, you people should remade something like Waterworld or the Travolta alien movie, try to improve bad movies instead of remaking good ones, this is not a good remake and its feels forced and weird sometimes, you can do better ok guys.