# 8: The Killer
Hey babes,
What a week, huh? Blech. BLECH. I started to list all of the objectively BAD things that happened in America since I last emailed you and then I thought ya know what…they already know.
So, let’s skip all that and get straight to the part where we can actually support and uplift people.
7/21 FUND RACIAL JUSTICE/ACTION ITEM:
The men who killed Breonna Taylor—John Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, and Brett Hankison—have still not been arrested. In fact, one of them was just on vacation at the beach. Mattingly and Cosgrove haven’t even been fired. I know it may feel hopeless, but we cannot afford and we do not deserve to fall into that trap. Things we can still do: send an email to the KY Attorney General, sign a petition, make a donation to her family’s fund. This site has everything you need to know about how to demand accountability for her murder. Save it. Sending an email takes less than 5 minutes of your day.
7/21 MOVIE BY A BLACK FILMMAKER REC:
This week’s rec is actually part of the Criterion collection! I didn’t know this when I decided to watch it, but its way into the 800s in the collection so the Internet itself will probably be obsolete by the time I get to it, so no worries! It’s a a 1966 film called Black Girl by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, who is often credited as “the father of African film.” Black Girl lends an intimate and powerful voice to the colonized through the story of a young Senegalese woman, Diouana, who is taken to France as a poorly-treated maid for a White family. It’s super minimal but striking and only an hour long. Available for rent on Amazon and YouTube.
#8: The Killer
Director: John Woo
Hong Kong
Year: 1989
Runtime: 110 minutes
Language: Chinese
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
Up top: this movie is so 80s it is almost crushing. If you love 80s movies, especially 80s action movies, and you haven’t seen this film, 1) who are you 2) who do you think you are 3) do your loved ones know what a fraud you are and 4) you should see it!
The film opens inside a Christian church in Hong Kong. There are two men: Ah Jong (who goes by John in the subtitles? and is played by Chow Yun-fat, who I recognized from the poster of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, a movie I still have never seen) and another guy who hands him a briefcase and delivers maybe one of the coolest opening lines ever: “Do you believe in God?” to which Ah Jong replies, “No, but I enjoy the tranquility here.” Sick!
Thus begins the movie that has the MOST slow-mo scenes of any movie I’ve ever seen.
Ah Jong finds himself at a restaurant where a very pretty lady named Jennie is singing. Of course we find out that Ah Jong is an assassin and a John Wick-style shoot out ensues with very cool, very creative moves from pretty much everyone. Unfortunately, Ah Jong accidentally shoots Jennie in the eyes. He wraps them with a scarf but he can’t stay and help her because the cops are on their way.
Cut to 6 months later: Jennie is slowly losing her eyesight. In his guilt, Ah Jong has been stalking her which sort of pays off because he intervenes as she is mugged on the street by two dudes. This fight includes so many kicking and hitting sound effects that I think may have been the same sound. Ah Jong escorts her to her apartment which begins their completely consensual love affair that she can fully consensually consent to even though he doesn’t reveal his true identity to her as the man who blinded her and she cannot see him. Amazing job, The 80s, as always.
Now we meet another main character: Inspector Li, who is an undercover cop. He’s doing an undercover deal that goes extremely sideways and you will be shocked to hear that he, the cop, kills literally everyone (except one man who got away on a bus) plus an innocent female bystander who died from a heart attack. In their cop meeting the next day, his bosses give him a talking-to about using excessive force and bad judgment and that the deceased woman’s family is filing a complaint. Li is indignant and annoyed and says, “I’m used to all sorts of complaints. What’s one more?” and storms out. You will be shocked, again, to hear that he isn’t even a little bit fired.
We find Ah Jong (the assassin who is having a love affair with the woman he blinded) in his apartment with a friend and “colleague”, Feng Sui, who is offering him one last job. Ah Jong demands 1.5 million HKD to complete the job. Feng Sui asks him why so much and Ah Jong picks up a harmonica and starts playing it out the window as a flashback shows us that he has promised Jennie he will take her abroad to get cornea transplant surgery to save her eyesight. To get the money, Ah Jong has to kill a man named Tony Weng at a dragon boat competition, which looks like a rowing competition in more gorgeous boats with more cultural significance. The gag is that Li, the cop, is also after this Tony Weng character.
Ah Jong shows up to this assassination looking cool as shit. Firstly, he’s in a speedboat. Secondofly, he has a fake gray moustache, fake gray streaks in his hair, Rayban-style sunglasses, a brown suit, and a leopard print tie. He wraps a bandana around his hand (why???) and in slow-mo, snipes Tony Weng right between the eyes, drops the gun into the water, and speeds away.
SPEEDBOAT CHASE
(Isn’t it wild that anyone can drive a boat?)
This turns into a BEACH SHOOT-OUT where there are some more very cool gymnastics moves to avoid being shot. Ah Jong is essentially being hunted and he is NOT HAVING IT. So many people are shooting so many other people, including the cops who have caught up to him. In fact, a little girl gets shot and Ah Jong steals a car to take her to the hospital.
CAR CHASE to the hospital, which is mistranslated in English to Scared Heart Hospital :/
There is a very surreal and tense standoff in the hospital where the little girl begins breathing again and Ah Jong escapes, stealing the cop’s car keys on his way out so they cannot catch up to him. In the next scene he is on the phone, soaking wet, asking for his money for the successful assassination attempt.
Turns out that because Ah Jong didn’t flee Hong Kong immediately and was seen by the cops, that the guy who hired him for the assassination, Weng’s own nephew, not only refuses to pay him but now wants Ah Jong dead!!! So his friend who initially hired him for the job, Feng Sui, shows up at his apartment with fake money in a briefcase because if he doesn’t kill Ah Jong, then he’s gonna get killed himself. Oy vey. Of course Ah Jong is too smart for this and somehow even though probably a dozen more assassins show up, he is able to get away!
Meanwhile, the cop, Lt. Li, who is dressed in a Mentos commercial suit, is starting to piece together that Ah Jong, the guy who assassinated Tony Weng, is the same guy who blinded Jennie. And he wants to get his hands on him!
SO, from here there are a ton more shoot-outs and a ton more phone calls between Jennie and Ah Jong, where they make plans for their future together. Eventually, the cop Li gets to Jennie and tells her that it is Ah Jong, her lover, who is a hired killer and is the one who accidentally shot her. She is BUMMED so she helps set him up to be caught.
This all culminates with Ah Jong showing up at her house telling her that he vows to never kill again. They make up. Li shows up, too, and tells Ah Jong, “I’m a cop. I don’t shoot people in the back.” OKAY. Jenny ends up shooting at Li because Ah Jong said he’d never kill again and she wants to protect him, but because she can’t see him, she misses.
Eventually, a bunch of assassins in matching white sweatsuits show up to kill Ah Jong and he and Li find out that they’re on the same side now because all these dudes want to kill them both. They escape and in a heart-to-heart by a lake, they realize that they are more alike than different. Ah Jong says, “You’re an unusual cop.” Li replies, “And you’re an unusual killer.” More on this in a moment.
There is another shoot out at the church from the opening scene with Weng, Li, Ah Jong, Feng Sui, and again….SO MANY dudes with guns.
Inspector Li and Ah Jong
Unfortunately, Feng Sui is shot and wounded and he asks Ah Jong to put him out of his misery, which he does. Weng takes Jennie hostage, Li takes one of Weng’s men hostage, and WENG KILLS HIS OWN MAN.
Then, Weng shoots Ah Jong in the stomach and eyes, causing him to look like he’s wearing tanning goggles made out of blood. Jennie, who is at this point completely blind, escapes, and she and a dying Ah Jong crawl past each other, which is capital-T Tragic.
Weng surrenders, begging to be arrested. Li has a flashback to a conversation with Ah Jong where he says that he believes in justice but no one believes him because he’s an assassin. Li shoots Weng in the chest, killing him. Li says, the last words of the film: “John (Ah Jong)…my friend.”
The credits roll to harmonica music.
I didn’t think about this film very much the next day which is usually a sign that it didn’t do much for me on a deeper level. However, right after it was over my mind was reeling about two things: 1) the highly unethical relationship between Jennie and Ah Jong, obviously but also 2) the idea that “the killer” and the cop were actually more like the other than they were like many common stereotypes of their professions. The cop (who are often portrayed or believed to be in-control, heroic, respectable) was a wild, violent, unpredictable hot head with a gun. And “the killer” had some sort of moral compass: he saved the little girl, he saved Jennie from the muggers, he committed to helping save her eyesight, he forgave Feng Sui even though he literally tried to kill him, etc. And in the end, Li invoked Ah Jong’s morality and desire for justice (the reason Ah Jong ever killed anyone: he thought it was right) in order to kill Weng. Which seems ass-backwards but is also sort of moving. So my NPR movie review question is: WHO IS THE KILLER, REALLY?
Anyway, I enjoyed this movie for its pure turbo action, the super creative fight choreography, Chow Yun-fat’s stellar acting, and the emotional center, but I wouldn’t rave about it. Maybe I’ll change my tune for the female-lead remake??
Having said that, I am still very much looking forward to the next film which is another John Woo film starring Chow Yun-fat! It is from 1992 and is called Hard Boiled. One of the posters is him in a police uniform with a rifle in one hand and a baby only wearing a diaper in the other so…..should be great.
XOXO,
Steph