THE KILLER (full article at The Guardian Australia)

The 1989 Hong Kong thriller established Woo as one of the greats, with its explosive gun fights, high-speed car chases and an incorruptible hero

All of your favourite action movies from the last 30 years would look very different without the impact of John Woo. They’d be far more dull for a start.

The film-maker’s style of explosive, highly choreographed gunfights in films such as The Killer and his 1992 film Hard Boiled coined the term “gun fu” and, combined with his ethically incorruptible protagonists, set the template for the heroic bloodshed subgenre, influencing everything from John Wick to The Matrix to Kill Bill.

In the 1989 film The Killer, Chow Yun-fat plays Ah Jong (or Jeffrey, if you prefer the English dub), a contract killer with a conscience who accidentally blinds a young singer, Jennie (Sally Yeh), while on assignment. Stricken with remorse, Ah Jong decides to retire after one last job, pledging to use the proceeds to help her.

Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/29/the-killer-john-woo-gun-fu-classic

IMDB: The Killer

HARD BOILED: WHY JOHN WOO'S MASTERPIECE IS STILL THE GREATEST ACTION MOVIE OF ALL TIME (full article at Diabolique Magazine)

While the 1980s might generally be considered the heyday of the action movie, or at least the decade with the biggest wealth of nostalgia attached to it, the 1990s was an equal, arguably better decade for high octane, high concept celluloid. Action classics were hitting us left, right and centre and these films were made all the better for their unspoken but collectively loose regard for believability...

...John Woo’s prolificacy from the mid-80s onwards made his name synonymous with slow motion action, double gun wielding protagonists and a lot of agitated, flappy birds. He delivered several outright classics in the form of A Better Tomorrow (1986), Bullet In The Head (1990) and The Killer (1989) before his undoubted masterpiece, and the subject of this particular love letter, Hard Boiled (1992).

Hard Boiled a.k.a God of Guns a.k.a. Ruthless Super-Cop, sees tough, play-by-his-own-rules cop, Inspector ‘Tequila’ Yuen (Chow Yun Fat) on the trail of underworld gun runners led by the evil Johnny Wong (Anthony Wong). Unbeknownst to Tequila, one of Johnny Wong’s lieutenants, Alan (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung), is an undercover cop who has infiltrated the gang to such a degree that he behaves exactly as a genuine gang member. Justifying homicide in the service of a greater good. Not only that, but Alan’s undercover operation is being run in total secrecy by Tequila’s own boss, Superintendent Pang (played by real life ex-policeman Philp Chan).

Read the full article at Diabolique Magazine:
https://diaboliquemagazine.com/hard-boiled-why-john-woos-masterpiece-is-still-the-greatest-action-movie-of-all-time/

IMDB: Hard Boiled