Episode 771: The Killer (1989) - Redux - The Projection Booth Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh g is folks, it's showtime. People say good mighty
to see this movie. When they go out to a theater.
They want clothed, sodas, hot popcorn in.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
No monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone for tend podcasting
isn't boring.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Cut it off.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
One of the ten best films of the year. It
starts over the top, then blasts through the roof. It
takes your breath away.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
The damnedest thing I have seen in years.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Guarantee to tingle the most jaded moviegoer's palette. A film
concocted with nitroglycerin, the combined energy of the road Warrior,
RoboCop and the Terminator, the Ultimate Cop.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Versus the Ultimate hit Man. This looks for you. Welcome
to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining
me once again is Ms. Carol Borden.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Everybody, Also back in the booth after Far Too Long
is Jackie Stargrove?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
How's it going, Dumbo?

Speaker 1 (02:21):
We are back taking a dip into a familiar pool
by revisiting a movie we discussed on the podcast way
back in the first year of the show, twenty eleven,
John Woo's The Killer. Back then, we discussed the influences
of things like this Gun for Hire, le Samurai and Moore.
We also had a pretty well, actually it wasn't that
he did discussion around home eroticism presented in the heroic

(02:44):
bloodshed genre of action films. This time around, we're going
to go back to nineteen eighty nine's John Woolffilm, but
also discuss the twenty twenty four John woolfilm and stop
by the nineteen ninety four film Hum hayin Bemesal. Along
the way, The Killer tells the tale of a contract
hit man named Jeff in some versions, I'll call him

(03:05):
Jeff for the most part, Cheliu Fat who accidentally blinds
a shantuse named Jenny played by Sally Yeah. Meanwhile, he's
being hunted by hot headed super cop Lee played by
Danny Lee. It's an ultra violent treatuse on loyalty friendship
and honor set against the underworld of Hong Kong. We
will be spoiling this film as well as its remake

(03:27):
and the Indian film it inspired, say as we go along.
So if you don't want anything ruined, please go ahead,
turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen
them all. We will still be here. So, Carol, I'm
so curious, when was the first time you saw The Killer?
And what did you think?

Speaker 3 (03:43):
I actually have an answer for this question because you
always asked me that, and I'm like, I don't remember
when I saw this movie, but the first time I
saw this movie was Alin Gaddis's Golden Classic Cinemas on
Spadina in Toronto. Oh Wow, four ninety five. I had
seen no John Wu. I had seen no Chilian Fought,

(04:06):
and it was part of a week dedicated to Chilian Fought.
Quote the God of Cool. And after seeing the movie,
I totally understood why Colin was advertising him as the
God of cool, like I had not seen anything like it,
and I loved it right away, and it led to
a lifelong love of Chailean thought and John Wu and Jackie.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
How about yourself?

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I was in high school. I think at the time
summer of two thousand and three, so it would have
been going from like my freshmen to sophomore year, and
I remember watching it specifically over that summer, and I'd
heard about it for years because it's one of those
movies that you know, especially in the earlier Internet for years,
where people talk about movies a lot, but they're not

(04:55):
as super easy to get ahold of as you'd like,
especially when that Criterion version of it was already going
for crazy prices and our local Hollywood video had a
copy of it, and I was like, well, that's it,
I'm doing this. I had grown up with a lot
of Wu's American stuff. I'm sure at some point where
we'll get into my apologies for his American filmography, because

(05:16):
I love most of it. Still, I knew that, like
the Hong Kong stuff, was where it was, that was
what you had to see. And so even in this
weird I think it was the company was Fox Laber
that put out that old DVD that it almost felt
like I was watching something that I still wasn't supposed
to get a hold of. I wasn't one hundred percent
sure that it was like a legit DVD I'd never
heard of this company. It was just sitting there on

(05:37):
the shelf. They had that and Hard Boiled, but I
only got The Killer the first time around, and yeah,
it just blew me away. It was everything everyone made
it out to me, and I've never been able to
let it go.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
I don't think there's any reason to apologize for his
American filmography. I love Hard Target, I love Face Off.
I'm not as hot on things like Broken Arrow or Payback,
and then I still God, I did this episode twenty eleven.
I still haven't seen Wing Talkers all the way through
or Redcliff and I'm a man oh man, But yeah,

(06:11):
some of those movies are fucking fantastic.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
We're all bad centophiles here.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
I remember liking wind Talkers, but I haven't seen it
since it was brand new.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
I wish that he had had more power, and this film,
The Killer comes at an interesting time in his career
where he was I know Better Tomorrow was a huge
hit for him. He had already been directing for twenty
some years at this point, and no Better Tomorrow comes
along really helps redefine the action genre. Reie, in my mind,

(06:43):
kicks off the horroic bloodshed drama, which is a mix
of action and melodrama, real Douglas Cercian type melodrama, and
some people that's a dirty word melodrama is, but not
for me. I love it, and I love just how
emotionally in that film is and this film as well,

(07:03):
things like the little flashbacks that we have, the things
that just happened a few minutes ago in order to
put you inside of the character's head, and just that
overwrought emotion that everybody is showing. I think it's freaking fantastic,
and that, just for me helps when it comes to
the poetics of the ballet of violence that happens throughout

(07:25):
so much of this movie.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
It feels very operatic, and that extends to the emotions
as well. When you're doing operatic, you go big all
the way, and this movie goes big on every level.
It would feel like something was missing if any of
those pieces weren't present.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
It's very cool. It was very cool of its time.
It was very influential and subsequent action in movies and
in certain ideas even about what's cool in cinema and
to an extent, what's cool in life. Not to the
extent that a Better Tomorrow was where people are walking
around sound dressed like Mark with the toothpicks in their

(08:03):
mouth and wearing the trench coat. But it's also interesting
that it's unashamed of its sentiment, like it's very your
face with its sentiment. It fills up the screen with
the faces of the actors having strong emotional reactions to
each other, into their situations in their eyes, like there's

(08:25):
time where Italian fought almost looks like he's going to cry,
Like a lot of other action cinemas that are about
masculinity and male friendships and are also homo erotic try
to be like no, no, being a man is not
feeling things deeply, Like being a man is like the samurai,

(08:45):
like he's aloof he's almost detached from everything. But and
that's an influence on this. But it's like you say,
it's it's almost Circian. I hadn't considered that before. But
that's a really good point.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
The emotions are so there and so present, and also
it's so much about this inner turmoil that you're talking
about and the idea of I barely touched on it
the very first time we talked about this. I barely
touched on Sergio Leone, and I really feel that there's
a sense in this of once upon a time in

(09:17):
the West, with the whole idea of the things that
were are no longer going to be. The people like
Cheyenne and Harmonica, these almost gods of the old West
are being driven out by that railroad coming in and
this one coming in nineteen eighty nine. We're still just

(09:38):
what six seven, eight years from the handover of Hong
Kong to China, and this kind of feels like it's
really setting the stage and saying like the old ways
are not the ways that they used to be because
we have basically three generations of people in this movie.
We've got Sydney and Chang, and I love this whole.
I believe kind of hall gribes it as an h

(10:00):
figure where you've got on one side, you've got Sidney
and Jeff. On the other side, you've got Chang and Lee,
and I find it's interesting that both of those are
very Americanized names in one area, and then more of
the traditional Chinese names on the other side, with Jenny
in the middle. But the area that I really want

(10:21):
to look at too, is that new generation and the
idea of Shing fu On hiring Jeff to kill his uncle,
and Qing Kuan has no honor, he has no code,
and he is to me representing this new generation that's
coming in. And so you've got Sidney, who's this classic

(10:43):
I will call him a knight because he is so chivalrous.
Him and Chang are the older generation. You've got Jeff
and Lee as this kind of they've taken those things
from the past they but yet they have to live
in this new, more violent world of Hong Kong. And
then you've got Shing Fuana's Wang Hoi, the nephew who

(11:03):
just doesn't give a shit about anything, will kill anyone
that gets in his way, including his own freaking family.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
One thing that I noticed more this time than and
I've watched this movie like you guys a lot of times,
but I was thinking a lot about Chang ChEI and
how John Wu worked with Chang che And part of
the reason that this film was so remarkable is that
he took those one armed swordsman. He took those old

(11:33):
wushia well. Chan Chey came in in his time with
a new whushia that had like male leads, not female leads,
and focused on masculinity and male friendships and honor and
terrible choices, and usually, as in The Killer, the two
sworn brothers die in the end in some terrible way

(11:54):
for their honor and their friendship over everything else, to
uphold how things should be, how human relationships should be.
And it's it's interesting that John Wut not only takes
that and puts it in a like a then contemporary
action movie with the shootouts and chases and stuff like that,

(12:15):
but then, like you say, the handover is coming, and
so it just emphasizes and has a very specific not
nostalgia but almost a nostalgic pain for something that's about
to pass. That something isn't the process of passing. That
isn't exactly in Chang che either, because he's making his
movies in the sixties and seventies, so they're like, oh,

(12:38):
new things are coming, but it's not maybe the end
of the way things are done.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
And I want to say Chang Chi also set a
lot of his things in older periods, whereas Lou's very contemporary.
This feels nineteen eighty nine all the way through.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
It's so intangible, but like you just when you get
that feeling in the your stomach that like the glory
days are just about to pass something else, some new
generation is coming through and we might not get this
feeling ever again. And it very much folds through another
one I was thinking, I'm mentioning Once upon a Time
in the West. I also think at the Wild Bunch

(13:16):
is another one that there's no way WU didn't see
that with all the NonStop squibs, But the end of
that movie is another one where just a whole generation
of those old Western fellows is just wiped out and
they're done, their days are over.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
And that coming what right at the end of the
sixties as well, just felt like such a turning point,
especially as New Hollywood is coming to four and heck
and Paul being I mean, he's a little bit of
an older fellow coming in here, but just that felt
like such a turning point in his career as well.
I know he made a few other good films after that,

(13:53):
but then you get into things like, I know, some
people really love The Killer Lead and some of these others,
but I'm just like, yeah, Ostra Weekend, it's such weak
sauce compared to what he was doing before. And yeah,
the whole idea of especially the editing, the editing of
The Wild Bunch, the whole idea of expanding time through

(14:13):
slow motion and constantly cutting back to an a action
that is happening in slow motion, back to other action
scenes that are taking place in regular motion, just showing
like all of these things are happening at the same time,
and just by extending out the timeline of that person
that's maybe falling or getting shot. And the use of

(14:36):
slow mo in this film as well, Oh God, is
just so beautiful. The opening. I don't know how many
times I can. I've watched the opening Massacre at the Club.
I have seen it so many times, just studied every
single shot in here. I love the things like the
rack focus, or when he's out of bullets, Jeff's out

(14:59):
of bullets and sees the gun and he kicks that
table and the gun comes up again in slow motion,
and the way he grabs it multiple times. I love
that multiple camera angles that Wou's doing and the repeated
action that happens like you were seeing, Carol. This just
was such a revolution when it came to how films
are being shown and processed. And it's ironic because this

(15:24):
is so new for at least my eyes as a
Western viewer, but that he is taking so many of
these other little pieces, Like you said, Chung Che is
definitely more homegrown. But then things like The Wild Bunch
and Sergio Leone and I'd love whenever I talked about

(15:45):
spaghetti westerns, it's how are the Italians for reflecting back
American culture to us? And this feels like taking all
of these things and saying, no, this is Chinese, now,
this is my thing, and this is how I'm going
to shoot action, which becomes such a I don't want
to say it's a cliche because it's not a cliche
at this point. This is such a breath of fresh air.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, he took all the things that he loved from film,
and you can see it in this film how much
he loves film, and he processed them and then gave
us this film of I don't want to use digested,
but I can't think of another word like he's taken
in cinema. He's digested in it and he is giving
us something new and something how he wants to see

(16:32):
this kind of story and it's still so fresh. That
was the thing for me.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Watching it again, that perfect combination of influences yet where
you can see obviously like their contemporary local influence, but
mixed with especially Western cinema Like this time going back,
I was like, these are guys wearing like pinstripe suits
and stuff. I can't think of a movie from that
region in that era where anyone was dressed like that beforehand.

(17:03):
That was not a popular thing, and he brought it
over and made it cool in a whole different way.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
So one of the things that was really interesting to
me even the first time I watched it, but like
over the years, was how the suits indicate the moral positioning,
particularly of Danny Lee and Sidney Fong, and in a
slightly different way with Chilian fot because Italian Fox Jeff's

(17:29):
suit is largely this olive green and then he has
this really cool olive leopard print tie. But Sidney Fong,
when he comes in as someone who is very following
the procedures of the triad, he's in very rules based,

(17:50):
very focused on the tradition, and so is honorable in
that sense, like he follows the code of his triad.
He wears a black suit with white pin stripes. Danny
Lee comes in and he's undercover, and he's totally different.
He's wearing a white suit with black pinstripes and a
black shirt, which is revealing that he's not quite the

(18:12):
good guy that he thinks he is or that people
want him to be. And of course by the end,
he's wearing a black suit with a white shirt. Chilian
thought is wearing a white suit. That's both showing his
virtue but also tying back to the old Chang ChEI
films where the heroes wore white because white is also

(18:33):
associated with deaf and you can see all their bloodstains
when they have their big climactic battle. And Sidney Fung
in the end is wearing a gray suit with black
pin stripes. And so here's where I went pooky, because
like for years, I'm like, I feel like there has
to be a transitional suit between where Sidney Fung has

(18:54):
ultimately chosen his side on Jeff and he's still a
bad guy. He still has his little black stripes, but
he's moved into the morally gray world of gray pin
straight suits. And when I saw the extended version from Taiwan,
Allen showed that I think at the Blue Theater there's
an intermediary intermediate suit, and I felt so validated that yes,

(19:16):
these suits are significant, that he is using them like
they used to use cat hats in cowboys for cowboys
in westerns, and Sidney Funk has his charcoal suit with
his white stripes as he's begging for Jeff's money back
from Shinkoi on. So that is my long tangent and
thank you for your patients.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
No, no, I remember I was talking about the suits
in the very first time I talked about this movie,
and just yeah, how he changes, how they both changed
throughout this entire film. So yeah, you said it much
more elegant than me. And plus I really wasn't looking
at Sydney. I was looking at just Jeff and Lee.
So having that idea of where Sydney's loyalties lay, because

(19:59):
Sidney is such a fascinating character to me, especially that
he's damaged that the one hand doesn't work, but that
he makes a point when he can't catch that beer,
but then he makes the point of well it still
works for the gun though. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's nice.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, he's been saving that up and not doing it
because it would be against what you do in the triad.
Until everything is off for him anymore.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
That longer cut is really fascinating. If memory serves, this
is the one that has the two attacks of Jenny,
so you get that mirroring of Lee and Jeff even
more as far as the repeated actions, because I know
Jeff for sure in the regular version that everybody sees
saves Jenny when she's coming out of the club one
night after she's been blinded by his muzzle flash, and

(20:49):
I want to say that if it's not in the
hi Wan version, it's definitely in the deleted scenes. There's
also an attack that happens to Jenny where Lee saves her,
and that it's Jeff saving her, and I'm just like,
I'm glad that's not in the regular version, just because
all right, that she always just need to be saved.
This is probably a really bad betrayal of a female character,

(21:13):
but at the same time, Sally Yev just pulls it
off as Jenny so well, and I just love her
as a character, even though she is pretty weak and
obviously gets fooled very easily as a blind person, especially
in that incredible scene with Jeff and Lee pointing the
guns at each other and really meeting for the first time,

(21:34):
and that's when they start. The whole nickname thing that
goes on that scene is just so delightful for me.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, the nickname thing in particular has always tickled me.
This time I went, I watched that new four K
restoration that just came out, and half of my curiosity
was like, what are the names going to be? And
in this one they went with the classic Mickey Mouse
and Dumbo, which I've never understood because I don't associate
those characters as knowing each other. But I would put
like Mickey Mouse with Donald Duck. That almost makes it

(22:04):
funnier to me.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, I remember, there's butt head, there's shrimp head. Shrimp
Head seems like it would definitely be more of a
of a Hong Kong insult to me, But yeah, over
Dumbo and Mickey Mouse. But yeah, whatever, float your boat.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Apparently there's a there's a numbnuts version of what I remember.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
It was right around the time of Vivis and butt
Head on MTV, So when they start calling each other
butt head, I was like, Okay, yeah, that hits a
little different now than it would have just even a
few years prior.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
I had heard and I have no idea how true
this is And it wasn't something I looked up when
we were talking about doing this, but like years and
years ago, I had heard that one of the names
in Cantonese for Danny Lee was Danny Lee's nickname. I
don't know if that's true, but like you say, shrimp
head sounds like a very Cantonese Hong Kong nickname, because

(22:57):
like Shing Foyan's was like what big Ugly had.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I love that his nickname in Return of the Demon
was fierce or that was his character's name, And I'm
just like, if anybody portrays the word fierce, it's Shingfalon
just because of that that resting bitch face that he has.
And it wasn't it it was him versus chill Yan
Fat and tigrind Beat, the first Tigrin Beat. I think, Yeah,

(23:21):
they had that incredible chainsaw fight man that movie wow.
I mean that was the thing about The Killer was
it just opened up this whole world of other Hong
Kong films for me. And this was such a great introduction.
Not everything looked like this, not everything felt like this.
There was some that had some elements of it, but

(23:43):
just this open up that door to this wide world
of what at that point, I want to say it
was the third largest cinema production area in the entire world.
I want to say it was either the US and
then Bollywood, or it could have been vice versa and
then Hong Kong at this point in time was just
cranking out product and so many amazing films.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
You were talking about Sally Yer, though, and I think
you're right, Like she has it's almost consciously flat characterization,
Like she does a really good job making Jenny a
real person, but she's so clearly not plot development. She's
there to be in danger, she's there for Jeff to

(24:30):
feel guilty about. She's there for Inspector Lee to start
to see Jeff as more of a person. And she
still pulls it out like she doesn't have a lot
to work with. She has a very thin character, and
she makes you care about her and believe that she's

(24:50):
been fooled when she's bringing them to you while they're
having a showdown.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
She allows it to transcend the fact that, as far
as the script goes, she's just a plot device. She
really just exists for things to move ahead and get
more complicated. But yeah, she's so convincing and a lot
of her innocence that you buy into it every step
of the way.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, And of course she provides the song that's so
important for the emotional center of the movie in a
lot of ways, like that's Celie herself singing.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
The music in this movie is so incredible, and I
love tracking down where it comes from because so many
Hong Kong films they will recycle things from other films,
and so finally tracking down the soundtracks for No Mercy,
the Richard Gear film, I think with him Passenger is
in that, and then I knew about the hero and

(25:49):
the Terror and I went back through Amazon and I
was like, oh, I bought this all the way back
in twenty eleven. And then what was the other one
that that?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Red Heat, the Walter Hill film.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
I remember having the moment where I was finally getting
around to watching Red Heat and that music iked and
I went, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
I've heard that before. And then there's its own original
music in here as well. But it all just blends
so perfectly, and I just love how they will recycle
things from other action films and again showing Wu's influences
as far as what he's enjoying. And I know there
was a policea from Oh Gosh, what is the early

(27:09):
seventies that lends a lot of its elements, a lot
of its musical elements, I should say, to A Better Tomorrow,
And then of course A Better Tomorrow's got that incredible
theme song as well. But I love how much music
plays such a big part in WUS films.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
I've always had this weird feeling with Wu and he
may have even said before that I felt like there
was always a musical hiding within him that he's never
quite brought to the surface, And even to this day,
I'd still like to see because action choreography is just
one step away from dance anyway, So I would love
to see him go down that road because I think, yeah,

(27:46):
there's such a beautiful musical quality to the way he
films things that in the way he does use music
that I would love to see something like that. I've
always that's always been in the back of my mind
with him.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
I had read an interview with him somewhere, and if
I had been thinking, I would have gotten it out.
But I believe he's interested in doing a musical. But
of course he was making movies in the eighties and
he's still making movies and he probably has a better
chance of doing a musical now, but like I can
see him being like, how could I do a musical

(28:20):
action choreography.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, that's one genre that I've never seen in Hong
Kong was a musical. There of course, musical breaks and
song watifsa come back very frequently, but I've never seen
a full fledged musical coming out of Hong Kong, at
least during this period of time, and definitely not a

(28:43):
heroic bloodshed musical. But yeah, I'm game for it.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, that would be great.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
And so many of the stars in Hong Kong were
also musical stars as well as actors. Sallyer, I believe
her primary thing was music. I know, like Chaalian Fats
had albums, Jackie Chan's had albums. But I don't know
if Danny Lee's out there singing away or not.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
But probably because there was like a time when the
Hong Kong star had to sing, which is why they
are Italian Fat albums, because he's not considered a very
good singer. But if you're a star in Hong Kong,
you got to have an album. Chang Pei Pei was
in musicals in the sixties at the same time that
she was like the queen of Wushia films. But you

(29:28):
could go see a double feature with her and a
musical and then go see her and come drink with
me or whatever.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
We were talking about the whole idea of Lee and
Chang having more traditional Chinese names and Sydney and Jeff
with more of the Western names. And also when you
think about where they work out of that Jeff and Sydney,
they initially are seen in that church and you've got
the Virgin Mary statue, which of course gets exploded literally

(29:59):
in the the film. But then when you see Lee
at work, it's the statue of General Kwan, so like
the god of the police force kind of thing. So
that's like the first time you see him before he's
about to get reamed out by his boss. So this
idea of the Western versus Eastern stuff as well, and
I wonder that's got to be a conflict for people

(30:22):
in Hong Kong, just because it is a at this
point a protectorate of the British Empire and how western
are you going to go? And of course in Hard
Boiled that's a Goodbye note to Hong Kong. This whole
idea of the birds flying and being turned loose, and
that's the last time that Wu actually shoot something in

(30:43):
Hong Kong for a lot of years.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
There's that conflict with that identity, and there's the conflict
about the handover, because on one hand, people are nervous
about what they're going to lose, but at the same
time they've been colonized and the British are in charge
of everything, including the film industry. But I also think
that there's a pride in the cosmopolitanism of Hong Kong,

(31:06):
and you see it both in the film with the
characters having all these things using westernized names as well
as their Chinese names, having General Khan and the Virgin Mary,
having the missionary brother who's in the church helping them
all out. But also you can see it with what

(31:29):
we've been talking about, where John Wu has all these influences.
He has them from Melville to Sergio Leoni, to Chiang
Chi to whoever. And that for him is this is
Hong Kong film. All these things also belong to us
and we can participate in the world of these things.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, for me, the best thing about Hong Kong being
a British protectorate at this time, was the rule around
having to have English subtitles on their films. That's a
great thing for us as Westerners, being basically almost guaranteed
that we're seeing stuff with subtitles. Obviously, it is such

(32:11):
a hard time. We're going to talk a little bit
later about Comhai Bemasol and just the still the lack
of easily accessible English subtitles for Indian films as a
real struggle. Sometimes you want to watch these movies and
you just can't do it. Meanwhile, in all these Hong

(32:32):
Kong films, they're not the best subtitles. They call them
English for a reason. A lot of times it's very
questionable some of these translations, and from what I understand
it was the translations or the subtitles were done in
the script phase, so sometimes they don't match up to
what's actually happening on screen. But it's almost a fascinating

(32:53):
look at what was at one point.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
It allowed Hong Kong films not only to make it
into the West, but it's part of why it became
such a big film industry because like you can show
them in India because people in India are also English speakers.
There's a lot of English speakers in India and other
regional languages that don't have that requirement don't blow up

(33:19):
like these Cantonese movies, which is hardly a huge language
overall in China.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, that was really weird watching that Taiwanese version because
now after learning a little bit, like a smattering of
Mandarin and hearing things like oh, how to, like when
the little girls gotten shot and they're in the hospital
and the nurses like how to, and I was like, oh, okay,
I know what that means. I know what some of
these phrases are. Yeah, it's weird though to hear some

(33:48):
of the phrases that you're used to when it comes
to watching the Cantonese version hundreds of times or however
many times I've seen this movie. But yeah, and I
was before we started recording that this movie is just
such a warm blanket to me, like it has become
a comfort film to me just over all of these years,

(34:09):
and it's just such a familiar movie to me now,
Like rewatching it for this podcast was such a pleasure
just because I get to revisit these characters after a
few years. I haven't seen this for probably a decade,
probably since we did that episode on it, and going
back to this after all this time, seeing these shots,

(34:30):
seeing these images that I'm so familiar with, the whole
dragon boat festival, and the way that Chow is there
with his fake mustache, and I love when when he
lines up the shot and he does that whole thing
with the rifle like two or three times again, that
repeated motion. I'm just like, oh, this is so great

(34:50):
to see, and just it never lets up. There's no
real boring parts of this movie whatsoever. And you can
watch a lot of action movies and think, okay, yeah,
all right, we've got our action set pieces and then
we relax. But during the scenes of relaxing, there's tension
ratcheting up every single time, where you're getting here's the
next job, here's Lee investigating Jeff. You go back and

(35:15):
forth between these two characters, so well of them, Lee
hunting Jeff, Jeff not even knowing about Lee but caring
about Jenny. And then once he finds out about Lee,
then it becomes a real struggle going back and forth
with those guys. And God again, just to throw at
another scene that I absolutely love. It's when we have

(35:36):
Lee in that same chair that Jeff is sitting in
and just sitting there, and that wonderful camera move across
and cutting on those cross beams of the window just
to go from one person to the next, seeing them
sit in exactly the same position, and then seeing Lee
reenact what Jeff had done before with the gun. Oh

(35:59):
my god, that was such a mind blowing thing of
having this character just relates so much to this killer
that he actually does the exact same actions. It was
just such a chef's kiss of a moment for me.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah, it's it's so beautifully like visually told entirely the movie.
I let you come to the conclusion on your own.
It feels like it expects you to realize, like, these
two guys are are more similar than they are different.
And I'm sure we'll get into later that some movies
are a little less subtle with doing that.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, it expects you to know what they're feeling without
you telling or without them telling you. And you do
they know what they're feeling. You identify with both of them.
You feel what they're feeling, You feel what poor Sidney
Fung is feeling. You do your and then not as
much with what Jenny is saying, but when she's singing,

(36:59):
you know what she's feeling.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
There are whole swaths of this film that are completely
dialogue free, like that assassination of the uncle at the
dragon boat festival, just the whole thing of the boat
chase that happens afterwards. When Jeff shows up on the
beach and there's a little girl playing, there's no dialogue
being exchanged. There's no dialogue when he sees when she

(37:23):
looks and frowns because she sees the glint off of
the gun sight and he catches on to that, and
he also then sees the gun sight but through the
reflection into sunglasses, and yeah, not a word is spoken
for probably a good ten minutes of this, and that
for me again goes back to that Leone thing where

(37:44):
you can watch so many Search of Leone films with
no dialogue whatsoever. He was such a silent filmmaker who
just added in the right amount of dialogue. And I
feel that Wu was doing the exact same thing here.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
That very much feels almost like him laying tracks for
an idea he clearly had of making something universal, but
a lot of people don't talk about it, but I
think like the twenty twenty three he had that movie
Silent Night that came out, which it was an action
revenge Christmas movie, but it had no dialogue whatsoever, and

(38:20):
his I believe his specific intent was to make a
movie that no matter where you showed it, people would
know what was happening. And it's not the Killer, but
it is. It's a pretty strong success in making an
experiment that I felt worked pretty well and it really is.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
So accessible one I like that movie, and one of
the things I liked about it is both that it
worked with that silence, but that the guy who's gone
on his revenge bender has a wife. And even though
like in other movies or television shows where you have
a man who's anchor and getting revenge, somehow they can't

(39:03):
help portray the wife as a nag. And we hear
some of the things she said, or we see some
of the things she says because she's texting it. But
Jodwood does such a good job of conveying her as
a person that you're like, she is far more emotionally
healthy in dealing with the situation than her husband, and
we barely see her. We see her less than we

(39:24):
see Celia and the Killer, And once again, she manages
to be a person, even though she's supposed to be
the thing. That's. No, you shouldn't go off and do revenge.
You should stay home and deal with your trauma responsibly.
And I'm just I'm so impressed that he was able

(39:45):
to do that with a character that gotten prestige. Cable
is oh Skyler White such a bitch ure Rita won't
leave Dexter alone, just let him go kill people.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
I'm clearly too worped because I've seen to many Charles
Bronson movies. Because when you said the wife being a
you said a nag. I was going dead. That's the
other direction.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Well, that's so much the Yeah, let's get rid of
the wife as soon as we can, or it's the
john Wick of it. All right, the wife has died,
But really I think it's a dog dying that sets
John Wick on his whole crusade.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Totally. The dog.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, that's that's his last attachment to the humanity that
he built up.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
I don't think you understand these boys killed my dog.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
One bridge too far, thank you very much. Yeah, and
just again, like going back to the metal drama of
it all, and just the tragedy of this film that
we are taking everything up to this new friendship between
Lee and Jeff and then having to break it down

(40:54):
and break it apart and just have this massacre at
the end. There is no happy ending to this movie,
and I love it for that, the tragedy of Jeff's character,
the tragedy of Lee's character, the tragedy of Jenny will
be going blind, if not dying from wounds. Who knows
how many times she's gotten shot at the end of
this thing. But my god, I just appreciate the downer ending.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
I appreciated it so much more after we watched the
other two movies too, because while you're in it, you're like,
I don't want this to be happening. Why can't they
all be happy? Why can't Jenny receive his corne as
if he has to die? And I see the other movies,
they just make me angry about that.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah, God forbid anyone ever tried to make this movie
with a happy ending. And yeah, I was definitely blindsided because,
like I said, I saw this pretty much after his
main run of doing film in America was over, so
I hadn't seen him get even though learning in retrospect
that he wanted to end most of his movies the

(42:00):
dying and Hollywood wouldn't let him. Yeah, there was no
preparation for the fact that after all this and you
get so much, so many heroic moments, they get so
many cool moments. The shot of them right as they're
about to walk out of the church together and it
slows down tearing the brief it's like the two coolest
guys in the world. They're unstoppable, except for about ten

(42:21):
minutes later when they're entirely stopped.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Oh it's so good. That moment where they both freeze.
You get those incredible Martin scorts as he freeze frames
and just that little like how they like will nod
into one or smile into the other one, and you
just like, this is it.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
They're synchronized. Now, they are together in on this until
the end. They just hope the end probably would be
a little better than what it is for them.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
It's just it's remarkably effective if you think about it,
because like I think he's also influenced by Little Caesar
and stuff like the hat like older gangster movie, not
just with the pinstripe suits. And I think he's not
necessarily telling us that crime doesn't pay. But a recurring
theme through his films, as violent as they are, is

(43:12):
that violence is destructive and there's no good that can
come of this. Not even Jeff's corneas can be translated
into too Jenny to fix what he's done, because what
he's done is unfixable, and what these people are all
doing is just unfixable. And instead of having memoralizing ending

(43:33):
where someone comes out and says and crime doesn't pay,
we feel it. We feel the whole weight of this
terrible thing that's happened, and that has been very cool
and beautiful and amazing and emotional the whole time. But
in the end, it's like there is no other way
for it to end.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, right down to the choice of it all ending
at the most holy of places at church, Like we
mentioned the whole like the Virgin Mary statue to exploding.
It literally feels like they're at a point where nothing
is sacred anymore. There's no going back, truly.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, it's almost like it's a deconsecrated church.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah, yeah, Well we were all, oh, yeah, I see,
I almost held back on that, but yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, well, and he's not a believer too, like he
just finds it peaceful.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
But and I've also always thought that was the other
interesting thing about the movie is that that is probably
the most Western influence there is that his continued return
to a Christian church, which I don't know what kind
of hold they have over over the region there compared
to the rest of the world, but from what I understand,

(44:41):
it's not nearly as strong. So it's Yeah, it's a
very interesting visual thing, and especially hearing about some of
the scripts that didn't get made where they were going
to have it in the West and him going to
like Buddhist churches and stuff apparently to switch around and
wouldn't feel the same.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
The thing is is the church is important to John Wu.
He's a Christian. He was raped, and so part of
the reason we feel that is he felt it. And
if you just decide to switch something else in and
it doesn't mean anything to you, what does the audience
get from that?

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yeah, again, a very Martin scor says a thing because
says he was torn between the church and filmmaking, and
I think we're better off for him choosing the filmmaking route.
All right, let's go ahead and take a break and
we'll be right back after these brief messages. Looking for
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(45:39):
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Boys to do in this children?

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Some of the boys think you are legends.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
What did they say?

Speaker 2 (46:11):
They say the Queen of the dead.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Why did you save the girl?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Easy question, not so easy answer.

Speaker 4 (46:30):
I've been on a round town based in The contract
was clear you should be dead.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
You just betrayed the most dangerous man in Paris dreams.

Speaker 5 (46:38):
So the girl the witness.

Speaker 6 (46:41):
I've been having a living.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
If you want to live, come with me.

Speaker 5 (46:47):
Swings.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
So you're a good cot, then.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Then you are an assassin?

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Are you trying to do something good for a change?

Speaker 3 (47:05):
How many times to play? Don't I'm always good at
what I do.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Give up the group sand every killer in the city
after you, We're all up on CP time. How many times?

Speaker 3 (47:19):
Never sa boys to do his job?

Speaker 1 (47:23):
As the story.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
I know from s.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Why don't you drop it?

Speaker 2 (47:48):
I'm not the one out of But its all right.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
We're back and we're talking about the Killer, all things
the Killer. And yeah we were talking right before the break,
the whole idea of the church in the Killer, that
kind of nice cyclical thing we started the church. We
in at the church. Very odd that hom high bemicel.
The Indian film also starts at a church, a Christian church.

(48:18):
I had forgotten about that. I will admit I had
forgotten that I had seen this film when I went
back and listened. By the way, one of the most
mortifying things that you can do as a podcaster is
go back seven hundred and twenty some weeks and listen
to work that you did way back then. Oh my god.
But yeah, I'm glad that we're back here talking about this,

(48:38):
and I'm especially glad that I'm talking with an audience
that can actually see the homo eroticism in heroic bloodshed
films without having to like go crazy about that and
talk about how Charlian Fat does want to fuck Danny Lee.
It's like, yeah, no, it's calmed down, It's really okay.
There is there's a lot of home eroticism inside of
heroic bloodshed films. Just watch Who is the One with

(49:01):
Simon m And and shli On Fat. Oh gosh what
it's the Ringo Lamb movie.

Speaker 7 (49:09):
Yeah, Contact, Full Contact, watchful Contact if you want to
real Yeah, Full Contact is Simon M's gay in that,
he's just straight up gay in that.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
And there's homeroticism in The Killer. And that doesn't mean
that anybody wants to fuck anybody. That just means there's
homoroticism in The Killer.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
As there is a lot of action felms and hard
boiled yes.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Especially hard boiled Yeah, the genre in general. When you've
got two guys posturing against each other and the world
at the same time, it's gonna happen. It's just gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
I feel like even getting into homoroticism as only sexual desire,
because I feel like they can have love feelings for
each other, and they clearly love each other, and you
can define it any way you want. But there's a
lot of love in The Killer and there's a lot
of love in.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Hard Boil, and they both start with these characters not
loving each other. It's very much it's a love story
between Jeff and Jenny, and it's a love story with
Lee and Jeff. I think there might be a little
love between Lee and Jenny as well, but it's not
really a love triangle.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
And Sydney is like the ex, like we went out
a long time ago and now we're just really good
friends and you know each other so well.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
They still get along, but obviously those days are past well.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
And yeah, both Chang and Sydney making these ultimate sacrifices
for their tutelagees Sidney doing his best to get back
that money and also get back his self respect. That's
the whole thing. When he fixes his time and he says,
I'm not a dog, I'm just like, oh my god,

(50:57):
what a moment.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
I also think there's parallels between Chang and Jenny, that
they're both like the wounded partners, that they're both being avenged,
or like both Jeff and Lee are upset about what's
happened to Jenny and Chang and blame each other. Although

(51:19):
I guess everybody blames Jeff about Jenny, but.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Though not necessarily Jenny, because I don't know. I guess
did she ever find out that he's the one she has.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
To I think she knows. I think when she finds
out what he does, she and his focus on getting
her from Corneas. I feel like she has to know,
and in so many things in this movie, she doesn't
say anything about it, because what is there to say?

Speaker 2 (51:46):
These poor people trying to remain hopeful despite the absolute
worst things in the world coming their way one after
another until literally it couldn't possibly go any worse.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
So, Carol, you have definitely seen way more Indian films
set I have, and I'm so curious what your take
on Amhi Bamasala is.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
If you had not told me that it was a
renake of The Killer, I would think that it was
a very standard nineteen nineties Hindi action movie that had
references to The Killer in it, and I would only
really have noticed the boat scene where he does the
rifle assassination account like very like Jeff and possibly the

(52:29):
Blinded Singer. But the rest of it seems like of
all the movies we watched, these remakes seem like they're
fixing the Killer for different cultural contexts to me, and
I'm most forgiving of this Hindi one because I've seen

(52:50):
so many Hindi movies where people are, well, why do
they know each other? What's really going on? Well, twenty
years ago, their fathers knew each other and something bad happen,
and now twenty years from now, they have to resolve
the situation by teaming up and discovering that they are
either actually brothers or they might as well be brothers

(53:11):
because they share the same father figure, and they will
get revenge for their fathers and themselves against the real evil.
And I would have watched it like that if I
had not known that it was a remake, and unfortunately,
knowing it was a remake made me feel much more
unfairly towards it. I made sure to watch it first
so that I wasn't watching any of these right after

(53:33):
watching The Killer, because I too haven't seen it in
five or ten years. But I know how I feel
about it, and I could only be unfair, and I'm
still not sure that I'm not being unfair.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
I love what you just said, because that whole idea
of the thirty years ago thing. I just went to
see the new Rashna Khan film coolly, and it literally
does a thirty years ago right in the middle of
the film, so we get to see a lot more like, oh,
how do these two characters know each other? Why are
they saying this thing? What is happening with this? You

(54:06):
get that so much in these movies, and like I said,
I've only seen I would consider it a handful, maybe
a dozen, two dozen at the most Indian films from
both North and South India. And I'm doing my best
to not ever call these Bollywood movies again because they're
Indian films. They're not Bollywood films. And yeah, that whole

(54:27):
idea of the things in the past that motivate you
to the future, it's funny because we're going to get
a lot more of that in the remake of The
Killer that we're going to talk about in a few minutes.
The whole idea of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, it
gets to be a little much. But yeah, with the
hemline benasl it really isn't until about what fifty five

(54:51):
minutes into the movie where you get the blinding of
the woman, you get the bullets being removed from the
back in the church. This is within the first ten
minutes of The Killer, and then it's almost an hour
in until you get the first glimpse of oh, there's
job will influences on this.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
I had the same where I was watching it, and
I think I clocked that it was about fifteen minutes
in before the actual the Killer part of the movie started.
Everything else was just backstory leading up to it, and
then there was and I probably would have clocked it
just because they started doing like those exact shots of
him sitting in the church with the camera moving around.

(55:34):
I'm like, now it looks familiar. And then she's blind somehow,
and then and then it sprinkles in set pieces here
and there. I remember they end up in a parking
garage at some point they do the big hit on somebody,
Like all all that stuff is there. But it feels
the best way I can describe it is it almost

(55:57):
reminds me of someone's like fan fiction. They're like, I
love the movie The Killers so much, but I need
to know how do all these people know each other?
How far back do they go? Did someone give someone
water in prison? Maybe and that's why they're still friends today?
All the lore what if the villain had a parrot
that made his decisions for him.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
I love that. That's a classic candy.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
That was so really yeah yeah, Like there are so
many weird touches that like, I can't hate it, but
I'm so baffled. But that's just that it's such a
completely different culture. This is It's not the first time
I've had that experience. I watched Mahakal as well the
Indian Nightmare on Elm Street, and it's the same thing

(56:40):
where I think it starts off maybe with a nightmare sequence,
and then fifty minutes of the movie passes before the
Nightmare on Olme Street, stuff starts happening, and it just
they want to lay out their world. They want to
give you their probably highly paid comedy characters who exist
in scenes that are unrelated to anything else in the movie.
They throw in several musical scene sequences, and then those

(57:01):
things that you recognize also start popping up along the way.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Well taught me a new word, Carol. What is the
thing when you sing like a doughray me song?

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Oh that's not that's French, that's sofage, sofage.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
I had some voice like friends who are singer friend
like in classical voice training and so that is sofage
And it was like, according, I've seen it myself, and
Beth Watkins was telling me that it was really popular
for a period in Hindi films in particular, and yet
has one.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Yeah, I never heard that term before. Oh yeah, it
sure does have one in space.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Did not expect it.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, there's a lot of this movie I didn't expect.
And I will say that I feel compared to fourteen
years ago, where I probably was making fun of this movie,
I actually had a pretty good time watching this. I
don't think it was the best Indian film that I've
ever seen in my life, but I had some good
times during it and it was just fascinating to see. Okay,

(58:03):
here's this scene from The Killer. Twenty minutes later, here's
another scene from The Killer. Twenty minutes after that, Here's
another scene from The Killer. But it definitely takes a
different path.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
I think if I had watched it on my own,
I would be like, Okay, this is a very Hindi
action movie. It has our Dads thirty years ago, it
has oh look, it's veteran beloved actor Prawn as the
secret father of the two guys it has a secret father,
and then I'd be like, oh, that's a cute little
reference to the Killer. Oh that's a cute little reference

(58:34):
to the Killer. And the rest is like just set
up for melodramatic scenes about like really he's a good person,
and action set pieces and comedy set pieces and they're
all and musical numbers and so it's like basically an
action Masala film where it has a little bit of
everything for everybody, but a lot of action. And if

(58:56):
I watch it as a Killer remake, then I yeah,
I would be waiting fifty five minutes for the Killer
remake instead of being like, I'm watching an Indian action movie.
This is what I'm doing with three hours of my tonight.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
The amount of verbal justification their version of Jeffrey gives himself,
like the amount of open conflict he discusses morally within
himself and in his irredeemability or want for redemption or
whatever it might be at the moment, all the things
that Shalian Fat says by looking at the camera for

(59:29):
a second.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Yeah, well, like the censorship board in India is still
very strong, and so you get a lot more of really,
I'm a good guy and like a lot of bad
guys can't win, and so I think it affects the
form a lot too. And it's ironic because Hong Kong

(59:52):
also had a film censorship board in nineteen eighty nine.
I don't know was the killer category three. I can't
imagine it was not.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
I don't remember seeing that on anything. For me. Category
three usually has boobs, Yeah, he usually has boobs. Yeah,
usually that was the magic formula there. So all the
Amy Yip films I remember, but then you would get
some of those extreme violence things too. Wasn't like a
bull of syndrome and yeah, like those fit into the

(01:00:21):
category three.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Stuff too, the Indian one, like you probably saw. When
you watch it, there's always a certificate at the beginning
of the film saying it's okay to watch. And I
wonder how much that it's beyond people's really liking nice
speeches and people trying to decide what the right thing
to do is and justifying to other people how in

(01:00:46):
this one he's I would be you if I had
a different circumstance, and you would be me and the
police officers. No, I wouldn't.

Speaker 5 (01:00:52):
I made you made me first.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I mean I was a kid, I killed your parents.
I mean I say I made you know you're going
to say made me. How child is he get? I
wouldn't get a guy would last. So much moralizing and
so much monologuing. But yeah, it did make me think
of just even like old American films from like the
Hayes era, where you'll go through the whole movie, at

(01:01:18):
the end of it it's going to take a sharp
turn where something is going to happen that was forced
on them, and you can tell it doesn't fit the
rest of the movie quite the same way.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
Yeah, and there might even be someone saying, well, he
was a good kid who went wrong or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Well, the weirdest thing about it, I think, though, with
all the visual elements that it borrows, the one thing
it doesn't really try to do like The Killer is
the action. There's a lot of hand to hand stuff.
The scene when he saves not Jenny from being harassed
is like a full on like fight in a park
instead of him just beating some dudes up and throwing

(01:01:53):
a trash can at him. The action it did not
it specifically, the most iconic thing did not borrow, like
the Kimbo pistols. It's usually one at a time, which
admittedly is more accurate to use one gun at a time,
but yeah, the action is entirely different. And I feel
like if you're ripping off a John Woo movie, usually
that's the thing people rip off the most.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
When I saw Demolition Man for the first time and
what was that ninety three when you get that slow
most shot of Sylvester Stallone with two pistols shooting at
Wesley Snipes, I'm just like, well, Okay, Hong Kong has arrived.
We are now seeing the influence on American films.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
I was wondering when I was watching it, like I've
seen other Hindi movies where they have a lot of
faux kung fu, like better or worse fake kung fu.
But I'm like, if in ninety four what they were
really going for was Jackie Kan, that they had been
watching a lot of Jackie Chan and they were like,
you know what, we'll do this movie and we'll have

(01:02:53):
the stuff. Would be really great is to p see
Saniel Shatty doing hand to hand combat and doing roundhouse
and stuff in some kind of warehouse area.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Well, I know, Ras kicks a lot of ass and
coolly like I was talking about, whenever he punches anybody,
they literally fly across the room. It's amazing to see
the force of his punches and just thinking about, Okay,
where are they are they digitally removing the wires here
because all of those seemed like yank shots.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Did you see the Tamil Singham where he's just picking
up late posts and whacken people and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
They go play, Oh, that's I was going to say.
Singlem is probably my favorite. Singham is a movie where
that man is doing everything that we were choking about
Chuck Morris doing twenty years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
And then if you watch the Hindi Group version, that
is the most homooerotic film I have real hit. Shetty
is absolutely in love with his action hero Jay Devkin
in it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Yeah that's the version I've seen.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the Handy one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
All three main ones, and apparently there's a bunch of
spin offs that I had no idea about.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
The original one is Tamil movie. It's a South Indian movie,
so the action is even more insane and extreme and
the dancing is better.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
I just love some of these extreme action films. And
then you watch how the Americans were trying to ape it,
and just so many of them were failing so hard.
That little nod to Chilean Fat and King and everyone
and says, low down, dirty shame.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
I'm chill, young fat. Do you know what that means?

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Yeah, you come with a egg roll and me so soup.
You are not, buddy, or you get all those Chilean
fat movies here in America that were just not good,
not good at all. Replacement killers or bulletproof Monk.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
I've heard that they actually made him burn his hands
on the gun and replacement killers because he fired so
much the gun got hot.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
You've got to treat that man with some respect, these
god amongst men.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
And what a trooper he was to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Anyway, The Killer obviously it opened up in Hong Kong
in nineteen eighty nine. It would play a very fateful
screening at the Toronto International Film Festival also in nineteen
eighty nine. I just had to go back and double
check that that was when it was playing. And yeah,
it had such a big influence on so many things

(01:05:21):
and just became not necessarily mainstream hit, more of an
underground hit for a lot of folks. But It was
one of those have you seen this movie? You have
to check this out. The LaserDisc that came out on
Criterion was a huge release for a lot of people,
and that was the way to see it for a
long time, and it really just made such an impact that,

(01:05:42):
of course a remake was inevitable, but thank god. Back
in nineteen ninety two, Walter Hill and David Giler wrote
a screenplay for tri Star. The screenplay I have is
dated April sixth, nineteen ninety two, and it's been a
while since I've read it, and I just remember how

(01:06:03):
off base it was through the whole thing, and just
how everything that felt Asian had to be switched to
American and everything that was more Western had to be
switched to Asian. So rather than meeting in a church,
they meet at a Buddhist monastery and I'm like, what
the fuck are you doing? Not good whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
There's a line when he goes into that temple and
they go do you believe in the Eightfold Path? And
I'm like, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Originally supposed to be Richard Gear and Denzel Washington, and
then apparently there were concerns over get this homo erotic
subtext between the two characters, So Terence Chang suggested that
they go with Michelle Yo instead. I think that would
have been right around the time she was coming to
more American screens or world screens, I should say, with

(01:06:54):
things like the World is Not Enough. Was that the
James Bond one that she was in.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Yeah, that was about ninety eight.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Yeah, that was ninety eight. Oh, this is ninety two, Okay,
so this is still yeah, because this was even before
super Cop, right, yeah, a super cop I think we
got was it ninety five?

Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
I think you're right. Wow, So that would have been
really unusual to have her in that. I have to
see what the source is for that, because I can't
see Michelle Yo.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
I can see Terrence Cheng though, being like Michelle Yo
is bad.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
You know a legend when you see one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
And then in ninety three or was it ninety four,
there was the Jim Cash and Jack Apps junior version,
and that was a Caucasian hitman in Hong Kong. That
one's a little bit better. The Hill and Giler one
is just exorable. I just really if it had not

(01:07:47):
been a PDF, I would have thrown it across the
room when I was done with it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
That's a bummer because I generally like Walter Hill. But yeah,
there's a reason not every project makes it to film.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Well, this is right around the time of Alien three,
and I I know I have nothing good to say
about him and how he treated Fincher in Alien three.
Ironic that Fincher. Every time I look up The Killer,
his movie The Killer comes up, I will.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Give the Walter Like I looked at the scripts today
and I will give the Walter Hill one that he
mostly just copies what goes on with the original movie,
and like you say, then he's oh, this needs more orientalism.
And I understand why he was making things more American,
because I'm sure he wanted to get this movie made
and they were like, we can't have a Chinese hero

(01:08:34):
and doing that thing where they're like, it's not us,
it's American audiences. We're not racist. He made Jenny even
more of a plot device, like Jenny is much worse
a character, and everything is more explicit and as a
little bit of pettiness. There's a part where in the

(01:08:55):
nineteen eighty nine one where Jeff walks her home and
then he's just going to leave because he's not a
creepy weirdo, even though he's a killer. And a cat
knocks over her lamp and he goes into check because
something has happened in her apartment to make her scared.
And then there's that really charming scene where Chalian Fat

(01:09:16):
where jeff'sy's a cat, and then we get to see
Chalian fat mew and a cat, which I love. Walter
Hill eliminated that, and he's just would you like to
check me to check your apartment for you? And she's yes,
I've been very scared ever since the thing happened. I'm

(01:09:36):
sorry to bring it back.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Oh see, I was somehow I was expecting that to
just turn into a full on sex scene. So it's
so not sad. Never mind, Okay, we got there eventually,
but the American way, if he ain't a man, if
he ain't he had a plow, you're.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
Doing this to Chalian fots memory, Sir, He's not even
dead and you're doing it to his memory.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Yeah, then they both have happy endings, right. I think
the second one, I think that was October eighteenth, nineteen
ninety four. I was seeing ninety three before, but the
ninety four to one they don't even I think have
the showdown and a monastery. I want to say it
takes place at a train yard.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
I think it does. Yeah. And there's a Russian that
the FBIBI agent who's come to Hong Kong because Tony
Wang was an important politician in the United States and
not just a Hong Kong big, big drug trafficker. And
he shoots the Russian assassin in the face and then

(01:10:39):
tells everybody that's Jeff and lets them go. And I
think Jeff just leaves. He just gives the money to
Jenny and takes off.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
You know what I really want from a killer film
is a very happy ending. That's what I would like.
So I'm in Luck twenty twenty four, The Killer, John
Wu returning to his old stomping grounds. Should he have
even called this movie the Killer? I think Hamhin Benisol
has more to do with the Killer than this film does.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
The skeleton is there, but everything else is weird. It
feels like something that went through a bunch of weird filters.
And when you find out the person responsible is the
person who gave you the original, all you have leftter questions.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Questions were answered by It's based on his film, and
he didn't write it, so he directed it instead.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
You've got what Brian Helgalin's name is attached to this,
and Heglin's an interesting dude. I found out a lot
more about him than I wanted to know when I
was doing research about ninety seven six Evil Too, and
just that he was a most dimension hinged when it
came to that. Yeah, and so it's yeah, it's him,
it's Josh Campbell and Matt's Duckin' I believe is how

(01:12:00):
you pronounced his name. And then it's also Aaron Creevy,
so Aaron Creevy has a writer credit, and then Helgeal
and Campbell and Stuck and have a screenplay. And of
course there's an and, and there's an ampersand in there.
So yeah, it does definitely feel like this went through
a lot of hands as I was watching it, and
I guess maybe it was the presence of Checki Cairo

(01:12:23):
in here too. I just kept thinking of a Luke
Bassan film like I was thinking too, thinking some lafem Nakita,
some Colombiana, just this whole idea of this female assassin
in Paris, and I was seeing so much more Bason
than I was seeing Wu in a Wu film, which
is just a strange thing to say because for me

(01:12:44):
Basan it was a lot of his career too, John Woo.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
And more specifically for me, I wasn't thinking of Basan
in particular, but a lot of the movies that he produced,
Oh yeah, especially the mid early two thousands from like
that like that Transporter District thirty era, where he was
producing a lot of movies that involved brants but were
clearly being made for the West. But yeah, the Kids

(01:13:10):
of the Dragon of Jetley was probably one of the
better ones, but yeah, several. It fit more in with those,
in particular with despite the fact that we're dealing with
somebody who's generally considered a master filmmaker here, it doesn't
quite feel right, and a lot of those movies, depending
on who was directing them, never quite felt right either.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
If I had seen this as a response to Bisons m. Nikita,
I would feel I would really like it because I
would feel like it fixed a lot of things that
I found personally upsetting and lafem Nikita in terms of
that whole thing of she's been crapped and she's been
basically forced to become a killer. This would have been

(01:13:53):
the movie that I would have wanted back when Lethum
Nikita came out, and not the movie that I got
that felt very much like a fantasy that I did
not enjoy watching. I know a lot of people love
that movie, and please go ahead and enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
I rewatched it for this episode, and I remember liking
it a lot, but I think I really only like
the movie once Jean Renaud shows up, and I just
love He's charming. He's very charming. He's dressed like Jeff
Costello from Le Samurai again, so you have that nod
in there, but him just as this unstoppable killer who

(01:14:30):
has no qualms about murdering anybody. The way he's pouring
acid over the body and the body starts kicking, and
he's just like, oh, you fools, you didn't kill this
guy properly. I love it. I thought that every single
scene he's in, which is unfortunately what the last ten
minutes of the movie. Maybe it's weird for me to
say this, but I really like Point to New Return

(01:14:52):
better than the fam Nakita.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
I've never seen all a point in a Return, and
I keep meaning to I've got a complicated relationship with
the son anyway, just because I've learned way too much
about his personal life and can't can't go back to
leon at all.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
Oh no, thank you. I couldn't even handle that the
first time I saw it all the way back then,
I could.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
Handle it only because of Jean Renau, because he made
anything that felt like it could have been weird feel
like it wasn't. But now, knowing who Bassan really is,
I'm like, oh shit, not anymore, buddy. Sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
Yeah. And I was young at the time too when
I saw that, so I like, Gean Renau is always amazing.
He was clearly being fatherly and I was young, so
I wasn't like Now, I would watch these movies and
I'm like, your sketchy feelings about women really come through
in your films. And I'm glad that John Wu is

(01:15:46):
here to make this movie about a female killer that
I wished I had seen.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
Before, and this version of the killer talking about La
fam Nikita. I don't know if you guys have ever
seen the film Black at from I want to say
ninety one. It's very to me, that's very much the
Hong Kong repeating back Lafam Nikita, though not very good.
I don't remember really liking that movie very much. I

(01:16:11):
think The Killer twenty twenty four it's an interesting thing.
It's always interesting to me when a filmmaker goes back
to something that they've done before. There is that select
club of filmmakers who remake their own work, like Alfred
Hitchcock or Panickey or I can't remember the name of

(01:16:32):
the gentleman that did the Vanishing. But that's always an
interesting thing to see what new things a filmmaker brings
to his stuff. I don't expect Sam Worthington to be
part of that new thing because as soon as Sam
Worthington shows up on screen, I almost immediately check out
of a movie. So this was a little difficult for

(01:16:52):
me for him to be playing this kind of Sydney role.
But when I talk about how noble and just Sydney is,
Worthington is his character, not the man himself, is completely
the opposite, especially that he ends up spoilers for The
Killer twenty twenty four. I'm glad I said that at
the beginning, he ends up being the big betrayer of

(01:17:13):
the whole thing, and he's the villain of the piece.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
You spot it right out. If anybody needed a spoiler
warning on that, I'm sorry. It's insanely evident from the
second he opens his mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
I don't mind the woman that plays the Jeff character.
I think she's actually really charming. Natalie Manuel, who plays
z Zee, I really like Omar Sai as ci or say.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
Yeah, he's easily the best part of the movie for me.
He's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
I completely agree. Every time he's on screen, I'm like, yes, yes,
this is good. And there are some scenes in here
where I'm like, oh, well, this is interesting. The whole
idea of the big murder that happens at the club
and that she's got a samurai sword and that it's
hidden in her clothes. Though, this whole idea of the
tailor that Checkie Cairo plays so reminds me of John

(01:18:11):
Wick getting a suit or even Eggsy and the Kingsman.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
Yeah, there's a lot that's I feel like is the
main difference is that there's so much John Wick influence
in there, and I feel like I love John Wu
and I love John Wick. That's close for very different reasons,
Like they're they're in a similar they're both traveling along
the same path, but I don't like them for being

(01:18:38):
like the other thing. So like John Wick, as fantastical
as it is, feels like it takes place in something
more of a heightened version of reality where John Wu
at his best, like I said, is operatic. It feels
fully out there. And yeah, there's there's definitely a lot
of that John Wick. We've got the techno and the

(01:18:58):
lights everywhere, and there's just there's so much more of
that influence here. There's so much more hand the hand
combat again starting with the samurai sort.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
Yeah, it goes back to the Walter Hill because he
was having like a lot of sliding between Chinese and
Japanese things. What I think with this one, aside from
if I watch it like I see it more yes
in line with Lake French cinema, then John wos wants
a thief? I say it. And I watched this movie
and I'd tried to figure out how unfair I was

(01:19:28):
being to it and how I would feel about it
if I hadn't watched The Killer and if it wasn't
The Killer. But I feel like the best things about
this movie for me are the John Wu parts. It's
him directing Omar Sai. It's his bringing on his team
for doing the editing and everything I don't like about

(01:19:50):
this movie is the screenplay. And it's hard to separate
though when you're watching the movie right. I don't think
he's responsible for the screenwriters loving John Wick so much,
but it just makes it more apparent how well he
filtered his influences to make one of his own masterpieces.

(01:20:11):
And they tried to do the same thing. And we're
like finding chunks of John Wick and chunks of other
filmmakers and other films in it instead of being like
it's a complete whole thing on its own.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
What's weird to me that John Wick the last one?
And I said, Jean Jean Wick, Jean.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Wick, thats fine?

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Well, yeah, that was the thing is that the last
one the big I can't call it an action step
piece because it's almost like the Sissaphian challenge that he
has trying to get up those steps at Momart.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
The climax, Yah, it's fantastic. I love that he's trying
to get up those stairs and he has to go
up multiple times, and just that it's set at montmart
where that for me is bob La Flambert and is
just such a iconic thing. So when she looks out
of her window here in The Killer twenty twenty four

(01:21:03):
and she sees the Eiffel Tower, I'm like, why is
she not living in Malmar? Why is she not where
Bob Laflambert was like to me, that's where John wu
would set a remake of The Killer and instead, Yeah,
just okay, it's a Parisian suburb kind of thing, even
like the cover version of Live for Today that's going

(01:21:26):
on through the movie, which ties the that kind of
James Marston looking motherfucker at the beginning, or maybe more
like Dave Franco at the beginning, to what happens later
on at the club with said and I'm not going
to try to pronounce his last name, and I love
again another actor who is in John Wick. Yeah, it

(01:21:46):
just was so strange that john Wick four felt closer
to Melville than this film did.

Speaker 3 (01:21:55):
I think the thing about john Wick, even though there's
a million of them, is they have a clear vision
of what they want to do with movies. They have
their own rules now, but they were like ignoring a
lot of the rules about filmmaking, like but the first one,
especially ignoring a lot of the received wisdom about how
you structuring pace a film, and this one feels like

(01:22:20):
the screenwriters are very embedded in Hollywood idea, very current
Hollywood ideas of how you write a film, how you
reveal character down to it's she has to have several
little character works and character growth art, and she has
to ask if everybody deserves it, very literally, and she

(01:22:42):
has to have her crossword puzzle, and then the crossword
puzzle has to be where she could never do the
last clue and get the last word, and so at
the end showing her growth, we discovered that the last
clue of the last crossword puzzle is reborn and that

(01:23:04):
just made me so mad.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Yeah, it's it's just it's heavy handed to say the least.
I mean, again, going back to what I was alluding
to way earlier, the fact that they had a conversation
where they where the two characters are having a conversation
and one of them says, in a different world, I
would be you and you would be an me. We

(01:23:27):
would be doing what the other one is to if
you spell it out for me. Okay, I'm stupid, that's fine,
but yeah, and it really does go to give credit
to especially like people don't give enough credit to that
first John Wick movie and how intelligent it was in
Geeze by peace letting you into that world and letting

(01:23:47):
you get to know the characters and how things worked
without spelling it out for you, and still giving you
a hell of a ride along.

Speaker 3 (01:23:53):
The way, and even things like the length of the
cuts that they were willing to do in the fight
at a time when everything was choppy to be They're like, no,
we're going to let you see these people who do
things do their things.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
And that is why stuntman should direct more action movies.
Though I have to say John Wick two, three four,
somebody once said, I've never seen a movie franchise climb
up its own ass so quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:24:17):
Yes, I do not need the laurd.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
Oh my god. The lore is just oh fuck you
and your high table.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
As long as they keep throwing dunes down escalators, like,
I'll put up with the bullshit, It's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
I was going to say. My version of that is,
I am so happy to see all these martial artists
from all over the world get to do their set pieces.
And I forgave so much of was it three where
he went to Algeria.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
I think it was Yeah, with the halle Berry and
the dogs.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
It wasn't bad. It just felt too long for me.
But I forgave that film right at the end when
it gave me Laurence Fishburn as a beggar king, and
I'm like, I want to see this beggar king movie.
Give me the ticket to the next movie right now.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
Well, me seeing Donnie Yen as the Blind Swordsman that
was so amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
I was like stealing the whole movie.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Oh yeah, Donnie Yen, is that Oichi? Please thank you?

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
And not just in the action, like he gets all
the best line deliveries in that movie. He steals every
second he's on screen.

Speaker 3 (01:25:20):
Mark to Cascos as his fanboy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Oh wow, yes, that was great. We're just gonna have
to switch to the John wickcast.

Speaker 3 (01:25:27):
Well, I feel that we're at least demonstrating that we
can love in perfect movie.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
The flashbacks in The Killer twenty twenty four start around
eleven minutes in and they just carry on from there.
And they have the style of these flashbacks. I'm just
not a fan of these little half the screen and
third of the screen cord of the screen where we
get introduced to these flashbacks, the way things are sliding
around and stuff. It just felt, I don't know, like

(01:25:56):
they were bored or something, and I was getting bored
watch some of these flashbacks.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
And for me, it's just what I like about the
original movie that neither of those the unofficial nor official
remake does, is that I like that we don't need
this the entire history of our killer. We don't need
the entire history of anybody. We just get to pick
up and run. I don't and especially with this one,

(01:26:23):
because I appreciate that it's a female lead, I'm all
for that. Why does her history have to be that
she was picked up by a pimp and had to
kill him. Come on, just let her also work her
way up the chain and be a bad ass. That
can happen. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
The way they talk about her that she's the queen
of Death and she's been murdering all these people, it
sounds like for so long, And I'm like, she's not
very old. Yeah, she's a pretty young lady here. I
didn't even recognize her as being the same woman from Megalopolis,
which we're going to be talking about later on this
year as well.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
Still still haven't taken a trip yet I think she
was in I think she was in some of the
Fast and Furious movies. I think that's where I first
really was.

Speaker 3 (01:27:05):
Yeah, she's one. I think she's one of the hackers.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
I think you're right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
Crazy, because I've seen all of them, but I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
I mean the reality with those movies.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Talk about another franchise that went way up its own ass.

Speaker 3 (01:27:20):
If they give me the rock kicking a torpedo, I
feel like The Killer twenty twenty four doesn't understand how
easy I am to please.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
Yeah, just give me something so astoundingly stupid that I
can't help but love it, and we're good.

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
I will say I was. There was a part where
I literally gasped, and I'm like, it's been so long
since I've seen a stunt performer set on fire.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
Oh, I love the guy in the motorcycles almost sliding
under that red car.

Speaker 3 (01:27:48):
Give me some practical stunts, so I'm there for it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
When it comes to a awful relationship between two hardened killers,
give me fucking Hobson shaw Man, I'll take it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Yeah, And then you've got freaking Idris Elba as the
Black Superman. The way that Jen not Jenny, the way
that Jen loses her eyesight by just cocking herself on
the back of the head in the club scene, and
that she just miraculously gets her eyesight back at the
end of the film, I guess because she's in the church.

(01:28:21):
I'm like, what is going on here?

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
It almost felt like parody at that point that her
eyesight came back at the end of the climactic action scene,
like it is, oh, maybe a stretch here, but I'm
remembering Bad Lieutenant Portocal, New Orleans, where the whole movie
he's juggling all this horrible shit, and then the end
of it just like everybody just starts washing away his

(01:28:47):
troubles one after another, like hey, everything's fine, buddy, We're good.
And in there it was like clear, like humorous, satirical. Yeah,
you can keep being a piece of shit, it's fine.
But like here, it literally just felt, oh no, no,
the bad stuff is over. Now she can see again.
It's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:29:04):
Yeah. I felt like they had to fill in everything,
including that. I actually felt like she was more of
a cipher than Sally yan Yay was as Jenny and
the original and it's more upsetting to me because they
were trying so hard. They're like, Oh, we'll make her.
She'll be complicated too and have a growth arc. So

(01:29:24):
she was implicated in the bad stuff, but now she's
been redeemed along with the killer person. But it also
felt like one of those things where, well, we have
one woman who's a complicated character, so we don't need
to do it with the other one. And I'm like,
Sally Yay is more complicated and she's not implicated in
any drug running or getting herself into trouble before Jeff

(01:29:47):
by having a bad boyfriend or any of that. And
it's no shade on the actor who plays Jen in
the movie. She just doesn't have a lot to do
and John will Films or like, look at how special
and wonderful she is, but the script doesn't support it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
Yeah, it helps that the original Jenny, like, the whole
point is that she is to me at least, is
that she is something pure. She's not mixed up in
any of this. She was in the wrong place at
the wrong time, and she didn't do anything wrong. Once
you start to complicate that backstory, it complicates everything else,
especially when you're also completely removing the element of a

(01:30:27):
love story. From this, which I feel.

Speaker 1 (01:30:31):
Oh, yeah, well you have to you have to. You
can't have lesbianism in this movie, god forbid.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
Yeah, like the one major thing I was hoping they'd
have the balls to do, but I knew it wasn't
gonna happen. And at the same time, like, it's good
that they didn't set up a romance with her and
the cop because that would have also that would have
been way too hacky. But come on, girls can love girls.
It's fine. I've seen it happen.

Speaker 3 (01:30:57):
I don't know the history of these scripts, so maybe
you can lucidate, Mike, but I'm very suspicious about the
gender swapping. After you were talking about Michelle Yo, they
were like, maybe you can have Michelle Yo do it,
and then it won't there won't be homo eroticism. And
I'm like, Michelle Yo and Sally Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Yeah, I know. For a while with this one, Lapitan
Yongo was supposed to be cast in here. I know
there was also talk. Sorry to go back to the
original timeline that I put together, So nineteen ninety four
we're talking about that. Two thousand and seven, there was
supposed to be a version that John H. Lee was

(01:31:36):
supposed to do. That was going to be set in Koreatown,
kinda town in south central and let's say Jong Wu
Song was cast as the lead and they're planning on
shooting in three D. Sarah Lee was cast as the
blind singer, and John Wu was the producer. Then in

(01:31:57):
twenty fifteen, Wu confirmed that John Lee's verse installed. He
said that after filming Manhunt in twenty seventeen, he was
going to do a new American adaptation. That was twenty
fifteen when he was talking about that, and then twenty
eighteen the Universal stepped in and started to put this
thing together. And that's when all of these writers got involved.

(01:32:20):
I imagine it was probably, he said, script by Aaron
Creevy based on drefts by Josh Campbell and Martin mart
stuck In with contributions from Brian Helgalin. And that's when
Nipeter Leongo was cast as the lead in a gender
and race swapped role. Let's see twenty nineteen Wu Tel's

(01:32:41):
deadline that Jongo exits due to scheduling conflicts after a
script rewrite, so maybe she didn't like the script. Twenty
twenty two Universal confirms that was directing and then it's
going to be released on Peacock. August O Marci's cast
as the cop character. Twenty twenty three March Dead League

(01:33:02):
Manuel is cast as the lead, and then filming starts
in Paris. That is halted mid year by the SEG
after strike, and then finally in August twenty third, twenty
twenty four, it gets dumped on Mean released to Peacock.

Speaker 3 (01:33:18):
Do you think the same people have been holding on
their rights since nineteen ninety two?

Speaker 2 (01:33:23):
Thinks so, yeah, Peacock is Universal and when he even
when Wu came to the US, his first movie was
Hard Target with Universal, So there is very much a possibility,
which also, you know, I think a lot about how
like the stories about how on Hard Target Sam Raimi
produced and the studio wanted Rainy on the back back

(01:33:45):
burner just in case they thought this crazy Hong Kong
guy couldn't control the set and let you know, Rainy
take over. And I can't help but think that if
anyone was going to remake this, and maybe it wouldn't
be terrible, Rainy might have been a good one to
do it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:59):
You look at the original ending of or Sorry, the
new ending of Army of Darkness, with the whole smart
stuff that is so.

Speaker 2 (01:34:09):
Woo mm hmm. There's stuff in even like the way
he shoots, even Western stuff and the Quick and the Dead.
It's there, just a crazy action in Dark Man Like
I for a guy who doesn't do like straight action
movies very much, I think you do an incredible one.

Speaker 1 (01:34:24):
I know a lot of people weren't into that multiverse
of badness just because the script was so weak, But
some of the action, some of the special effects. Gosh,
when you've got all those demons making Doctor Strange's cloak
and everything, I'm like, Yes, this is the Raimi that
I was looking for.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Yeah, there's some fun stuff in there.

Speaker 1 (01:34:46):
You got pizza Papa Baby.

Speaker 5 (01:34:49):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:34:49):
I bet there was a lot of notes involved in
the whole process.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
I don't know if there ever was, because we've talked
a lot about the gender swapping, the race swapping, the
ethnicity swapping. I don't know if there ever was a
because you can't have and I'm saying this as a
Hollywood producer, you can't have this relationship between these two women.

(01:35:17):
Oh my god, we cannot allow that at all. And
even it probably was fear of missagenation, probably fear of
Oh my god, you can't have you can't have a
white guy with an Asian woman. You can't have a
black man with an Asian woman. None of this stuff
is going to fly.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
It.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
It's so rare, even now in twenty twenty five, first
to have mixed race couples on screen. It's fucking crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:35:46):
And there's so many mixed race couples in America. But
you probably already know the pain of having these people
use people in the flyover in the Midwest as like
their excuse to do continue doing this even though we're
right here being like we want these things.

Speaker 1 (01:36:04):
Heaven forbid, I'm just going to start clutching at my
pearls if I start thinking about, oh my gosh, this
black frenchman, this American woman, and then this white woman singer.
Oh my god, I can never this is impossible.

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
Yeah, what if they all ran off together? Oh, I know,
you become a thruple at the end. That would solve
so many problems in so many movies. We wouldn't have
wrong comblems anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:36:29):
Well, and what I like is in the first one,
if you're feeling homoerotic, that solves their problem. And they
seem to be okay with that. It's just that shing
foy On is not okay with anything because he's an
angry hot head.

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
He has one of the great cinema faces.

Speaker 3 (01:36:46):
I just love his traumatic head injury bandage in the final.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
Even in the final fight that takes place at the church,
which we get back to the church and everything here.
But it has to be a woman that she's fighting.
She can't fight them man through this, I'm like, what
are you doing that?

Speaker 2 (01:37:03):
I was pissed off about that too.

Speaker 3 (01:37:05):
And this is after Atomic Blonde.

Speaker 2 (01:37:08):
And this was after, of course, as we joked earlier,
they had to make sure you knew that the church
was deconsecrated, so that there are any fucking stakes at all.

Speaker 3 (01:37:18):
Arted to feel really bad for the writers, like what
an impossible task.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
The climax of the original being so iconic. I was like,
I watched when I rewatched it, I watched it with
a partner who had never seen it before, and she
was picking up on stuff like, oh, like the ending
of Cowboy Bebop, like that takes place in a church
and it's a more heightened version of very similar, and
that it's so iconic. But the main thing is that
there are. It feels like a thousand guys pouring into

(01:37:45):
that church, one after another. And this half of it
takes place outside in the in the graveyard area, which
kind of reminded me a hard target, which I love.
And then the other half of it is them like
hand to hand fighting people in the building for the
most part. And it just that's not that, ain't it.
Maybe that's not what I wanted.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
Her running across the backs of the views and I'm
just like talking about wirework earlier. I'm just like, Okay,
I can basically see the wires here. They're painted out.
You know what's not painted out are all the security
cameras in the church. There are security cameras everywhere. And
I'm just like, Okay, this doesn't look like it's an
abandoned church. It looks like it's very still active. With

(01:38:29):
all of the security stuff going on here.

Speaker 3 (01:38:32):
It looks like perhaps it's a historic church that they're like,
you can't put squibs all over the church or in
the historic grave yard.

Speaker 1 (01:38:40):
Oh, I guess we'll have to fight hand to hand
and I'll crack this girl's neck with the white girl druads.

Speaker 2 (01:38:46):
I think for me, that's just the hardest part though,
is that what I think Wu was best at visually
wasn't here. I think it may just be the use
of digital cameras when most of his classic work was
done on film. But it just it doesn't look right.
It feels weird. The slow mo even looks messy.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Well, tell me how cool is it in the original
when they're going up against Jinfuan at that church and
he's got that gun against Jenny's head and the way
he's like moving with the guns and everything, and Danny
Lee says to Charlie on fat You'll always have a
friend to back you up, and then you see that

(01:39:29):
he's got a gun taped in the in the back
of his pants and you're just like yes, Like that
is one of the coolest things ever, as opposed to
what size shoes do you wear?

Speaker 3 (01:39:42):
Well, and it has the friendship squishes too, your like oh.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
And that going going into we didn't really get it
the idea that everything has to have a backstory, there
has to be history, and for those who didn't watch it,
like the shoe thing is referencing that there was a
completely unrelated incident where our heroes met before but didn't
know it, and he was. The cop was about to die,

(01:40:07):
and he distracted the killer, the person who was going
to kill him, not the killer, by saying asking what
size shoes you wear? And then some mysterious angel killed
the guy and he got away and we find out,
Oh it was Natalie Z. That's her name. It was
Z the whole time, and oh they go all the
way back and he wouldn't be here if it wasn't
for her. And now they have to love each other, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:40:27):
Yeah, And it also felt like they were making this
big point where it's not that they're affectionate towards each other,
it's that they're they're both like Sherlock Holmes, and they're
really good at thinking like each other.

Speaker 2 (01:40:40):
Yeah, they've come to an understanding and I enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:40:43):
That in Cozy Mysteries, although sorry, Holmes and Watson got
their home roticism too.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
But now you're talking about the John C. O'Reilly and
Will Ferrell version.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
Now I had to wash my hair that day. I
missed it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
No, for sure, Downy and Law had that going on
in spades, and then they kind of ruined it with
the whole wedding in the second one. I'm like why
just leave these guys bachelors.

Speaker 3 (01:41:09):
I bet it's the same damn executive confirmed bachelors.

Speaker 2 (01:41:13):
Just talking about investigative skills did what I do a
lot lately and made me think of what if Colombo
got involved somehow? But that's my own problem.

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
I could see him having those little looks with any of.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
Them, and he'd never have to fire a show.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
When Colombo would respect.

Speaker 2 (01:41:33):
The Killer, they really did come to a mutual almost
a friendship a lot of the time. That those are
my favorite episodes. Sometimes the first Shatner episode is like that.
The one with the pleasance is.

Speaker 1 (01:41:46):
Like that, them sharing a bottle of wine at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:41:50):
That is my favorite period. It's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:41:54):
I just got goosebumps.

Speaker 3 (01:41:56):
Those were so wonderful that when he actively loathed one
of the killers and he revealed that, it was like,
oh my god, he hates Leonard Nimoy.

Speaker 2 (01:42:06):
And even then he's so pleasant of me. No, sirh
I don't like you very much at all, Like, oh shit,
that's the most heartbreaking thing anyone could say.

Speaker 3 (01:42:13):
They have to be like, I don't think very much
of you well at all. Oh my god. He said
he didn't think very much of me.

Speaker 2 (01:42:20):
Well, you should do a podcast about Colombo sometime.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
I could call it The Shabby Detective.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Eh, that's a thought.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
All right, guys, let's call this tonight. I want to
thank my co hosts, Carol and Jackie for joining me
on this trip back to the Killer. So, Carol, what
is the latest with you, ma'am?

Speaker 3 (01:42:36):
Everybody can find me at the Culturalgutter dot com, where
a website dedicated to thoughtful writing about disreputable art. And
we're on blue Sky and Facebook as Cultural Cutter and Jackie.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
How about yourself, I'm all over the place. Usually I
have nothing to talk about. And this year has been
the year.

Speaker 3 (01:42:55):
Of the Summer of Stargrove.

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
That's got the alliteration too. There we go. But that
summer started much earlier this year when somebody allowed me
to write a piece on their website. As I recall,
I feel like I may have submitted something to the
Cultural Cutter that was very well received at a time
when I really needed something cool to happen. But yeah,
ever since then the year has been just slam packed

(01:43:20):
with opportunities. I besides my usual work hawking tickets at
the draft House and the local comedy Club. I've been
working with a local I guess microcinema in Austin here
called the Hyperreal Film Club or I've been doing copywriting
for their website as well as hosting stuff. And they
even let me program one of our past episodes which

(01:43:42):
I plugged.

Speaker 5 (01:43:43):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):
They let me program Never Too Young to Die last week,
which considering that our the local showings that night elsewhere
were a screening of Caught Stealing? Is it Caught Stealings?
The new one with Aeronofski? Yeah, Aeronofski was there, Austin
Butler was there, and Matthew McConaughey was moderating the Q
and A. So half of the audience was probably at that,

(01:44:05):
and then the other half we're over at the Austin
Film Society because they were showing Welcome to the Dollhouse
and Crybaby, and I'm like, oh, John Waters, that would
have been my crowd. So that's fine. But yeah, I'm
just great stuff there, anyone in the Austin area, if
you ever got a chance. It is just a wonderful
little piece of cinema magic. I love it so much.
I also have a friend of mine works for a

(01:44:27):
newspaper in California the Hanford Sentinel, and he has given
me a monthly column there just entertainment stuff whatever kind
of wets my whistle. The first one it being right
around the fourth of July, I went over a lot
of the more beloved Jaws, the movies that were seen
as knockoffs at the time, even though I think they're
all great on their own. This past month I covered

(01:44:50):
a lot of the very surprisingly famous people that started
with Trouma Nobe. I think is aware that my neighbor
Totoro's first American release came through Trauma because nobody else
would release it without shredding it and editing it to bits.
And Lloyd Coffin when all the ups and downs that
he may have had professionally, like, he saw the art

(01:45:11):
in that and he just let it go and I
love that. But yeah, so just cool stuff that has
been happening all over the place. I'm also part of
a band called Air forty seven. We're going to be
at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in October and doing
a show of our own, sort of off site. But
I should also be moderating a panel regarding old FMV games,

(01:45:35):
like the old Live Action stuff from the nineties and
some of the current stuff that's happening as well. So
I'll be working that's the biggest thing I'll be doing
that people might actually be able to see on the internet. Otherwise,
if for any reason anybody wants to reach out to
me at Jackie Stargrove atgmail dot com. Is wide open
and I'm I'm pretty much all over whatever social media

(01:45:55):
because I am poor that way, and I don't mind it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
It's so nice hearing all of these updates when normally
it was oh, follow me on letterbox, here's my name, yep.
This is so great. I'm so happy for coming together. Yeah, well,
thank you so much folks for being on the show.
Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
of the other shows that I work on. They are
all available at weirdingweymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our

(01:46:23):
Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
helps the Projection Booth take over the world.

Speaker 5 (01:46:53):
Toy so lowly there some pupot wit you mo.

Speaker 6 (01:47:05):
Domos do uni total.

Speaker 5 (01:47:09):
Bon seis, some mocked p po nayet te Na lloy, lumpsy.

Speaker 8 (01:47:24):
Hang hanker, more natic, deep son, cut body, dog, imbow
loaded sing Lord yet say wing mood God, I.

Speaker 6 (01:47:42):
Came on, gossy guy young son log wooted, Dixie came on, came.

Speaker 3 (01:47:59):
On, you know, playing long John mal.

Speaker 5 (01:48:08):
Mood yeo ca nco.

Speaker 6 (01:48:14):
Dot though they dumoi per tep so John Guncer young
n Dan.

Speaker 5 (01:48:22):
Kirpte, don k do te don tinto doy, Some sis

(01:48:49):
came onto kill me pintateen trees, some lonely more.

Speaker 8 (01:49:02):
Sixty came on, Team on.

Speaker 6 (01:49:06):
A team two to.

Speaker 8 (01:49:12):
Season.

Speaker 5 (01:49:13):
Love your Gotta painting High Season Love He eighteen eighteen
teen ted Uiet Sun

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Episode 771: The Killer (1989) - Redux

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 771: The Killer (1989) - Redux