The Killer is a classic action film by John Woo (Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II) that debuted in 1989 and starred Chow Yun-fat (Hard Boiled, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End). Woo is back as the director with the remake, which is now available on Peacock and stars Nathalie Emmanuel (HBO’s Game of Thrones, the Fast Saga) as Zee and Omar Sy (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Jurassic World) as Sey.
Nathalie plays the Killer, an expert assassin who gets into trouble for sparing the life of a young woman.
“That’s kind of how I choose my projects as well,” Emmanuel tells Nerd Reactor during the film’s red carpet premiere. “I’m like, ‘This should feel like a challenge.’ I feel like I’ve got a mountain to climb, and I’m like in a train and work really hard to get to the top and that’s how I felt on this project. I knew I had to dedicate myself to training. Practice, practice, practice. Yeah, it’s been an amazing experience. I’m so proud of it.”
Omar Sy plays a cop in France who is on the hunt for the killer.
“Nathalie, she is the killer,” Sy said about his co-star. “She killed it. She’s amazing. Just seeing her with the two guns, all the typical John Woo shots with her is just so special that the movie is bigger than everything.”
About 15 years ago, John Woo and the creative team started developing the remake, and at the time, Woo didn’t want to helm it since he already directed the original film. A writer talked to producer Lori Tilkin deFelice, and together they pitched the idea of the remake with a female lead. As a result, Woo was on board to direct.
“When we pitched that to John, John thought, ‘I have not made that movie before. That’s the one I want to do,'” deFelice recalled. “And we couldn’t have picked a better project. Because the original film is based on a French film Le Samouraï, and this is really his love letter to French cinema. So to be able to kind of come full circle and shoot this in Paris with a female lead, it couldn’t be a more elegant return of this movie.”
About The Killer (2024)
Synopsis: The kinetic action thriller stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Zee, a mysterious and infamous assassin known, and feared, in the Parisian underworld as the Queen of the Dead.
But when, during an assignment from her shadowy mentor and handler (Avatar’s Sam Worthington), Zee refuses to kill a blinded young woman (Diana Silvers; Ma, Booksmart) in a Paris nightclub, the decision will disintegrate Zee’s alliances, attract the attention of a savvy police investigator (Omar Sy), and plunge her into a sinister criminal conspiracy that will set her on a collision course with her own past.
The film’s cast includes French actors Eric Cantona (The Fragile Colossus, Elizabeth), Saϊd Taghmaoui (Wonder Woman, The Kite Runner), Tchéky Karyo (Nikita, A Very Long Engagement) and Grégory Montel (Call My Agent!, Thirst for Life), and also features Angeles Woo (Silent Night, Manhunt) and Aurélia Agel (Halo, Black Widow).
Based on the 1989 motion picture written and directed by John Woo, The Killer is directed by John Woo, from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River) and the screenwriting team of Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken (10 Cloverfield Lane, Knights of the Zodiac) and is produced by Charles Roven p.g.a (Oppenheimer, American Hustle), Alex Gartner p.g.a. (Uncharted, Warcraft), John Woo p.g.a. and Lori Tilkin deFelice (Silent Night). The film’s executive producers are Terence Chang, Mark Gordon, Matt Jackson and Robin Mulcahy Fisichella.
The Killer is now available on Peacock.
