The Killer (movie)
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The Killer (Template:Zh-stp; literally: Bloodshed of Two Heroes) is a 1989 Hong Kong thriller starring Chow Yun-Fat as the hitman Jeffrey, Danny Lee as the cop "Little Eagle" and Sally Yeh as the singer Jennie. John Woo directed the film which brought him wide-spread recognition in the West. The film was produced by Tsui Hark. It is considered to be one of the mainstays of the Asian heroic bloodshed genre of action cinema.
The Killer is a very popular and well regarded film, not only for its violence, but for its themes of honor, love and friendship, coupled with the religious motifs of salvation, (not uncommon in the heroic bloodshed genre), evoking powerful emotion. The film also asserts a higher morality above the law of man, which makes the cop question his motivations.
A Hollywood remake has been long since in development but various factors have kept it in development hell.
The plot is similar to the 1954 Hollywood movie Magnificent Obsession starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. In that movie, Rock plays a playboy who accidentally blinds a young woman, and through newly found Christian ideals and pity – and eventually love – for the blinded woman, he befriends the woman and tries to raise money for an eye operation, all the time not revealing his identify.
However, in The Killer, the film revolves around the character of Jeffrey (Chow Yun-Fat), a professional killer whose employers want rid of him for being seen "on the job". Jeffrey himself is based on Alain Delon's character Jef Costello in Le Samouraļ, a French film about a stylish, white-gloved assassin who lives by a code of honor. During a hit in the opening act, Jeffrey accidentally blinds a young nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) with the muzzle flash from his pistol. Driven to help the now near-blinded woman by securing money for a sight-saving corneal transplant, he attracts the attention of a cop (Danny Lee) who is investigating his crimes and eventually catches up. After witnessing Jeffrey save a dying girl and learning about Jennie's operation, he realizes arresting this hitman would not set things right. Together they fight the Triads through amazing action sequences which ultimately climax in an explosive shootout at an abandoned church. There, Jeffrey has Eagle swear to donate the hitman's eyes to Jennie if something were to happen to him.
The ending is tragic, in that Jeffrey dies, eyes shot out by the Triad boss. Jennie is left crawling for him in the dark, her operation unfulfilled. The boss flees to police custody, but Eagle chases after him, shooting him in cold blood. He realized the law could never give someone like Jeffrey justice, so he acted under his own sense of right and wrong.