When it first arrived in the U.S. in 1990, ’s assassin flick felt like a shot (or rather, several thousand gunshots) to the system.
With action scenes choreographed like pyrotechnical ballets, and a gushingly romantic take on love and violence that employed slow motion, dissolves and a seemingly endless supply of flying doves, Woo’s twist on the genre would help to transform it over the next decade — whether in blockbusters or in the work of a major fan like Quentin Tarantino. The director’s subsequent career, both in Hollywood and in his native Hong Kong, had its ups ( , ) and downs ( ). But anyone making action films in his wake still owes him a debt.
His best movies were poetic fits of style over substance, turning what was mostly considered a grungy, forgettable B-level genre into a case for high cinematic art, guns and gore included. The original , which starred Chow Yun-Fat as a hitman who gets a dangerous case of cold feet, was totally over-the-top but also perfect in its own right. Why, then, did Woo decide to remake it in English (and a little French) more than three decades later? One reason, going by this well-executed but rather bland Peacock original, may have been the desire to reset the story in Paris — and Woo definitely exploits the City of Lights to the max here.
Not since Tom Cruise pummeled the French capital in have we seen so many chases, fights and shootouts staged against so many breathtaking Parisian backdrops, from the banks of the Seine to.