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Director John Woo has remade his iconic 1989 Hong Kong action film The Killer in America. Here’s the trailer.

John Woo is, of course, one of the forefathers of the modern action film, helping to create an entire subgenre known as Heroic Bloodshed.

From his earliest martial arts film Hand Of Death through the legendary Hard Boiled and The Killer to his underrated English language debut Broken Arrow and blockbusters like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2, Woo’s action sequences are as majestic as they are brutally balletic.

The Killer, released in 1989, followed Chow Yun-Fat as a troubled hitman who injures a singer during a bloody shootout. He must commit one last hit to raise the money for her operation, without which she will go blind. It’s often cited as one of the greatest action films ever made – if you’ve never had the pleasure, it really is incredible.

Written, starred and directed for the first time by Jimmy Wang Yu, “The Chinese Boxer” is undeniably a landmark. Highly considered as the forerunner of unarmed combat martial arts movies, it even features a kung fu training sequence and besides, it’s the last time Jimmy stars in a Shaw Brothers production.

The story concerns Lei Ming (Jimmy Wang Yu), a top student from the Chung Yi Chinese kung fu school seeking revenge after some Japanese karate experts for hire destroy it and kill just about everyone there. Badly hurt and knock unconscious during the attack, Lei Ming is luckily nursed back to health by his Master’s daughter Li Hsiao Ling (Wang Ping). All this destruction is actually the result of a failed challenge by a judo combatant, Diao Erh (Chao Hsiung), which leads him to recruit the help of those karate masters.

However, recalling what his Master once said,...

In the climax of Shigehiro Ozawa’s The Street Fighter (1974), “hero” Terry Tsurugi (Shin’ichi “Sonny” Chiba) attempts to rescue a kidnapped heiress by boarding the enemy’s ship and fighting his way through a mob of henchmen. Within the ensuing smorgasbord of pain and grievous injury, two moments stand out. After vaulting over a railing and sticking a crunchy landing on a guy’s back, Terry blocks an incoming swing and plows his fist into the assailant’s stomach. A grimace or yell are to be expected, but the film gives us much more: in slow motion and close-up, we watch as the poor man’s mouth flops open and white-orange bile streams out, still chunky with foodstuffs reversing their prior course. A second thug lunges in, but this reckless charge leads to his ensnarement in an armlock. As Terry snaps the man’s limb not once but three times,...

We’ve all been there: your job is boring, it drains the lifeforce from any responsive brain activity, and you would kill to be anywhere else. Well, what happens if your job is killing people and you’re sick of it? This is the conundrum put forth by Unmasked Part 25 (1988), a British horror film that asks the question, “Can Jason Vorhees settle down, find true love, and change his ways?” An interesting posit, and one presented with some dry humor and gore galore.

This one sat for many years on unsuspecting video shelves, its artwork of a mangled face in bandages and tagline of “It’s a cold, cruel world – but Jackson can hack it!” along with the spoofy title suggesting an Airplane! style take on slashers. It may start out that way, but in short order turns into something completely different. Afforded theatrical distribution in its homeland but hitting the video market everywhere else,...