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Poetry and violence go hand in hand in John Woo's awesome gun-fu action spectacle, The Killer. It's a marriage of spectacular shootouts and fleshed-out characters that results in plenty of bloodshed, decimated environments and "quieter" moments of melodrama.

Chow Yun-fat stars as Jeffrey Chow, an unusual assassin in the sense that he believes in loyalty, honour and friendship as well as taking down targets for money. During a chaotic opening scene, we see him shooting at various enemies and accidentally blinding a singer, named Sally (Sally Yeh), in a nightclub. Feeling guilty, Chow wants out of the business, but decides to do one last job to pay for his innocent victim a cornea transplant. Though he is soon double crossed by Johnny Weng (Fui-On Shing), a ruthless gangster, who refuses to pay and is out to kill him; meanwhile, an Inspector named Li (Danny Lee) becomes involved after keeping a close eye on both sides of the argument. All-out mayhem between the alienated hitman, a determined police man and the ruthless mob is what follows.

One thing that I do really like about The Killer is that it's very dramatic. Yun-fat and Lee, particularly, give genuinely good acting performances and make very interesting counterparts, even though their characters are on opposite sides of the law. Woo's screenwriting must be commended here because when the two characters do team up to take down the mob, the cop/hitman relationship has great depth and never feels clichéd. Chow's relationship with Jenny is also handled impeccably, and is a perfect example of melodrama done right.

The Killer is also wonderfully directed and choreographed. The action scenes come at just the right time, and when they do they're definitely memorable. When Chow shoots, he just doesn't use one bullet to kill a bad guy; he empties a full clip into his flesh, and Woo uses a variety of slow motion and freeze frames to capture such moments. A lot of thought has also gone into the settings for all the mayhem, which sees the characters face/off in a variety of places, such as a hospital, car park, airport and even a church. There's plenty of beautiful imagery (Woo's re-occurring symbol of white doves was first used in this film), which really grabs you, visually, and makes all the violence seem incredibly worthwhile.

The Killer is just so intense and wonderfully entertaining that even the awful English dubbing cannot ruin the experience (but, if you want my advice, I'd definitely say chose the subtitles instead). From the no-nonsense opening shootout right up until the unforgettable showdown, the film is a deeply human experience and an intensely dramatic one at that. Woo's future American projects (The Replacement Killers, in particular, which is almost a re-enactment) owe a great debt to this one.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2010.