John Woo’s The Killer was a true gamechanger and truly inspired hundreds of imitators. The thought of remaking a flawless film feels cinematically heretical. Directed by Woo himself, the 2024 version of The Killer is obviously competently made – the Hong Kong director still knows how to stage an action sequence, well into his 70s – but the truth is that this version of the film does absolutely nothing better than the original. It’s a movie that’s generally watchable but almost instantly forgettable, which the best of Woo never is.

Nathalie Emmanuel (Ramsey from the later Fast and the Furious movies) plays the mysterious Zee, a stealthy assassin for a powerful organisation run by the vicious Finn (Sam Worthington). The Avatar actor nails a certain kind of slimy power figure, the one who will pretend to have your best interests in mind but only as far as it suits him personally. When Zee gets a job that requires an assassination via samurai sword in a Parisian nightclub, the assignment goes sideways with the blinding of a singer named Jenn (Diana Silvers). Despite the fact that she can’t exactly point the finger at the killer, Finn insists that Zee take out the witness, leading to moral crisis for the murderer for hire. While Zee tries to keep Jenn alive, a Paris cop named Sey (Omar Sy of Lupin) gets this incredible case and crosses paths with Zee, giving The Killer most of its narrative thrust in that it’s a story of a criminal and a cop who may not be as different as they first believe.

Clearly, a lot of the narrative beats of the original remain, although the gender swap naturally makes a pretty big difference both, in the Zee/Jenn relationship and the dynamic between Zee & Sey. Changing race, gender, and location should give The Killer a different flavour, but the truth is that there’s just no seasoning. It’s as if the writers (Brian Helgeland, Josh Campbell & Martin Stuecken) figured the swaps alone would be interesting enough that they didn’t have to do anything more. It also just reeks of a script that has been in development for so long that all of the passion has been drained from it with rewrites, producer’s notes, and focus groups. The original hums with energy in not just its ace filmmaking but its narrative structure, and there’s just nothing to care about here in terms of plotting, while additions, like a few flashbacks to Zee’s origin story, feel half-hearted and cheap.

Part of the problem here is that Emmanuel just isn’t an interesting enough performer to sell the strong, silent cipher that Zee needs to be. Sy makes out much better, reminding viewers how charming he can be, but Silvers is a non-character, used almost entirely as a device. Of course, most people aren’t here for performance, and they just want to know about the Woo of it all. He once again leans into his clichés –there will be churches, candles, birds, and slo-mo – but there are some undeniably nifty stunt sequences in the film, especially in the final act’s graveyard shootout. It’s nice to see real stuntpeople showing off what they do best under the direction of a genre master, even if it does feel like he’s lost a beat in terms of pacing both, in action scenes and overall.

John Woo movies used to strap you into your seat, making the rest of the world fall away as you appreciated their action artistry. That’s just not the case here. And your biggest concern would come in the overall sunsetting of physical media and lack of curation on streaming. Want to watch the original The Killer? It’s not streaming for rental anywhere and would likely cost on some platforms. And that means that this faded copy is now easily the most accessible, and there will certainly be people who don’t even know about the first film when they watch it. In that sense, it’s not just a remake but a replacement. And that just too sad for the fans of the original.