Metacritic reviews

John Woo's trademark style reached its zenith in The Killer, with its ying-yang relationship between a good-hearted hit man and an anti-authority cop. But underneath the Miami Vice tailoring, it's as much a doomed romance as a shoot-'em-up.

For Western viewers unfamiliar with Hong Kong gangster films, there's no better introduction.

This extremely violent and superbly made actioner demonstrates the tight grasp that director John Woo has on the crime meller genre, and his ability to twist the form into surprisingly satisfying shapes. The picture creeps up on an audience. Melodramatic from the start, it finally goes over the top to deliver a solid emotional punch.

It plays like the work of a filmmaker operating at the highest level of his abilities.

A lot of claims have been made for this campy bloodbath concerto (1989) by Hong Kong director John Woo, and I must admit that he's even better than Brian De Palma at delivering emotional and visceral excess with staccato relentlessness.

The scenes of gore and destruction are even more spectacular than Hong Kong's fog-shrouded skyline. The director repeatedly places the viewer at the center of the crossfire and turns the gyrating camera into the next best thing to a lethal weapon.

The most dementedly elegiac thriller you've ever seen, distilling a lifetime's enthusiasm for American and French film noir, with little Chinese about it apart from the soundtrack and the looks of the three beautiful leads.

This is tragedy at its most hilarious and comedy to break your heart; sweet violence in a hellish fairy tale.

For all the bullets that are spent, The Killer spends just as much time ruminating on the likes of honor, friendship and even the allure of guns themselves. “Easy to pick up,” Chow observes at one point, “difficult to put down.” The Killer is hardly a cautionary tale, but contrary to what its blunt title implies, it is a complicated one.

This violent Hong Kong thriller has more psychological depth than most of its kind, but ultimately seems like a pointless exercise in style.