Domande frequenti

The Chinese title of The Killer literally means Bloodshed of Two Heroes. Dip (Mandarin: Die) means shed, hyut (Mandarin: Xue) means blood, sheung (Mandarin: Shuang) means two (or a pair) and Hung (Xiong) means hero hence Bloodshed of Two Heroes.

It is neither. Due to the poor state of translation in Hong Kong, it would become the source for all foreign prints. Prior to the UK Hong Kong Legends DVD (released in 2002), all names and conservations were simplified or completely mistranslated. Chow Yun Fat's character is supposed to be Ah Jong not Jefferey or John as shown in the UK HKL DVD.

In Taiwan a special cut of John Woo's cult classic was released that features several scene extensions. Most of these new pieces are only a couple of seconds long but they can be found throughout the movie.

John Woo's masterpiece was released in Taiwan as a about 25 minutes longer version on VHS. In the bonus material of the French DVD, John Woo talks about some longer cut of the movie, which had to be shortened down to less than two hours due to demands by the producing company. It seems to be a reasonable guess that the Taiwanese VHS contains exactly this version.

Of course, such a VHS from Taiwan is hard to get these days. However, there is another interesting release, the French DVD by the enthusiast label HK Video. The 2-disc edition contains a cut called "version longue" with forced English subtitles on disc 2. This version is actually based on the Taiwanese version and contains almost every extension. Almost. With a running time difference of about 7 minutes it is clear that those versions cannot be identical.