8. The Killer (1989, Hong Kong)
And now we move from something that is really not for children. Even jaded adult audiences will be awed by the body count in this film. Please don't judge John Woo on his American films, while he directed Face/Off he is also responsible for Wind Talkers and Paycheck. In his defense, he has made some of the most violent movies ever made on Earth. Pretty impressive if you've seen any of his competition. A hitman (Chow Yun-Fat) takes one last assignment to get money to pay for surgery for a singer he blinded in a previous shootout. To make it clear, the plot is not why you watch a John Woo movie. You watch and sit in astonishment that someone actually made this movie. Just check out the trailer; it's only two and a half minutes and over twenty people die! Before working in America, John Woo made bullet ridden movies in Hong Kong. He is credited with creating "Gun Fu" which has been imitated many times, most notably in The Matrix. John Woo shotgunned the violence into a different level. The Killer is the best of his gun-fu movies. It has a gleefully high body count as Woo figures out unusual ways to fill bad guys with bullets. Another excellent Woo film is Hard Boiled which also stars Chow Yun-Fat.