I normally bite my tongue and try to look on the bright side of Hollywood remakes, hoping that the talent involved just might be able to bring something fresh to the table, but I'm instantly repulsed by the latest entry into the redo machine.
According to Deadline, action legend
John Woo is himself in pre-production on a 3D English language remake of his seminal heroic bloodshed movie
The Killer, a cult classic which I first saw when I was 13 and which is partly responsible for my obsession with film. For his do-over, Woo has enlisted the services of one
John H Lee, a Korean director I'm not entirely familiar with but has has a couple of well received films in his native Korea and has cast, presumably in Chow Yun Fat's Iconic assasin role,
Jung Woo-Sung - who you may have seen in The Good The Bad And the Weird. Meanwhile the screenplay comes from Josh Campbell, another name we aren't familiar with. The Killer of course follows an assassin on his last job to raise money for an eye operation for a singer he accidentally injures during a shootout and is famous for it's direction, amazing choreography in the gun fighting scenes and for it's excessive violence. And well, it's cool. The Hollywood remake is likely to be set in L.A. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCbihqIz2eg For reasons presumably only known to Woo, the new remake is the result of years of blood, sweat and tears spent in trying to remake his already much-lauded classic. Would Scorsese go back and remake Raging Bull, no. If he were alive today would Welles remake Citizen Kane, probably not. Would McG go back and remake Charlie's Angels... okay forget that last one, but it's Woo's finest moment, and I know that people may prefer the adrenaline rush of insanity that is Hard Boiled, but it doesn't really match the emotional intensity of his enigmatic The Killer. Woo himself says of the remake;
While all my films are special to me, THE KILLER is truly one of my favorites. We are thrilled to reinvent it as an English-language film and know its in capable hands by the incredible visual style and tender emotion John H. Lee brings to all his films.
With John Woo having enjoyed a slight resurgence since his move back to China with epic hits such as Red Cliff and Reign of Assassins, it makes the bizarre decision to revisit your masterpiece and hand it over to another director seem even stranger. Surely he's not short of a yuan or two? This is one I have an extremely hard time keeping an open mind about. Bullet in the head please. Essential Entertainment will attempt to sell the film at the European Film Market next month in Berlin but with Woo's backing, it shouldn't be too hard.