10 Movies That Prove The '80s Was The Golden Age Of Action

2. The Killer

Die Hard
Film Workshop

1987's A Better Tomorrow may have marked director John Woo and star Chow Yun-fat's first venture into redefining the action genre in the image of Hong Kong cinema, but The Killer is where the duo grabbed the concept with both hands and ran with it.

The Killer proved to be so influential that it was homaged in everything from Luc Besson's Leon to Robert Rodriguez's Desperado, while self-proclaimed fan Quentin Tarantino even name-checked it in Jackie Brown. Woo's preference for mixing theatrical camerawork with gallons of bloodshed came to the fore in superb style, and while the plot often veers close to laughable melodrama, there's always a hail of bullets waiting just round the corner.

The climactic church-set showdown is one of the greatest extended action scenes ever committed to film as Woo revels in the expertly-choreographed mayhem and ludicrous body count, and while he may have arguably exceeded his own high standards several years later in Hard Boiled, The Killer nonetheless set the template and spawned countless pale imitations on both sides of the Pacific for years to come.

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