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To coincide with the new clip from The Crow which I served this morning, we now have our first extended look at an action sequence from Peacock’s remake of The Killer which sees action maestro John Woo helming. While dealing with essentially the same plot as the original version, Woo now does a gender swap and replaces action icon Chow Yun-Fat with Fast & Furious star Nathalie Emmanuel. After delivering a trailer a few weeks back, fan reaction was lukewarm, and I don’t see this clip doing anything to win the naysayers over. I’m on the In Woo We Trust train so I’m hoping that the acclaimed Hong Kong action director will deliver a serviceable remake of his own classic shoot ’em up. Check out Emmanuel in action in the new clip below!
Official Synopsis: Zee is a mysterious and infamous assassin known, and feared, in the Parisian underworld as the Queen of the Dead. But when Zee refuses to kill a blinded young woman in a Paris nightclub, the decision will disintegrate her alliances, attract the attention of a savvy police investigator, and plunge her into a sinister criminal conspiracy that will set her on a collision course with her own past.
Woo helms the film with a cast that includes Nathalie Emmanuel as the steely eyed assassin Zee who has a change of heart when she’s given a target to eliminate just like Fat did in the original. She’s pursued by a law enforcement investigator named Sy played fitting enough by the actor named Omar Sy (how original) who takes over the role that Danny Lee made famous. Diana Silvers also stars as the blind woman Zee is ordered to kill by her handler Finn (Sam Worthington) which sets bloody events into motion as millions of bullets are spent in the service of action cinema entertainment.
The clip is from the hospital shootout where Zee rescues her mark from a hit squad and aside from a lot of collateral damage, the scene is a little underwhelming. There are traces of Woo’s signature action design with Zee dropping to the floor and sliding down the hall all while firing off with her pistol in ultra slo-mo. I’m banking that they released this clip to entice fans without giving too much away in terms of how the major set pieces are. the trailer did offer some Woo brilliance so we shall see when the film hits the Peacock streaming service on Friday, August 23rd.
All I know is the finale better include henchmen wearing all white like in the first film so we can see the red blood squibs explode off of them in grand spectacle. I do like how Woo incorporates the same style of church location for what will ultimately be the finale, but we also get some female-on-female fisticuffs as it looks like Zee takes on another woman assassin. On the surface, it looks like a hyper-kinetic good time, but it probably won’t be up to par and why we needed this is beyond me.
Nothing against Emmanuel, who looks to have put the work in and looks great, but she doesn’t ooze the charisma that Chow did and still does to this day. That might be the biggest problem circling this remake but hopefully Woo will give us what we want. After all, you can like this film and love the original like I always say.
August 23rd is the date as Peacock will release the R rated actioner on their platform so fans will surely line up to see if Woo still has it in him or if this one will suffer a horrible fate at the hands of the iconic original. Make no mistake, some serious firepower will erupt during the film’s running time and stunt pros will fall like dominos from start to finish. I’ll be watching…what the hell.
Watch the official trailer again below!
