The Killer review – John Woo’s gun-filled melodrama remains a blood-soaked classic

The director’s 1989 Hong Kong action touchstone is a wild melding of maximalist violence and surreal sentimentality – with added harmonica John Woo’s 1989 thriller is a reminder of the director’s habit of hitching the craziest of mayhem to a mile-wide streak of earnest emotionalism and sentimentality; a strong and under-acknowledged part of why his films are so addictive. There’s a lot of bleeding in these violent movies – and bleeding hearts also. With The Killer, Woo somehow became the Doug...

By Peter Bradshaw