In Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, Linda Williams breaks down the three “body genres,” films based on emphasizing physical reaction on-screen and delivering a similar subconscious, physical experience to the viewer – those genres being horror, pornography, and melodrama (or “weepies”). These three genres center on distinct yet equally powerful physical reactions: fear, orgasm, and crying, and traditionally turn their focus towards women as the objects or vessels through which these reactions take place, most often clearly through the male gaze. However, there is perhaps a fourth genre, a masculine counterpart to the most overtly feminine of the body genres, the melodrama – one which does not escape the male gaze through its focus on the male body, but turns it in on itself: the action film. As William describes the genre of weepies: “These are films addressed to women in their traditional status under patriarchy – as wives, mothers, abandoned lovers, or in their traditional status as bodily hysteria or excess, as in the frequent case of the women ‘afflicted’ with a deadly or debilitating disease.” (pp. 4). By contrast and perhaps in compliment, action films focus on the male body’s most basic role in patriarchy – as an instrument of violence, as the hunter in the hunter-gatherer dynamic or as later manifested in the masculine ideal of the soldier. Traditional action cinema focuses on both giving and receiving masculine violence, on the sadomasochism of fulfilling your most murderous fantasies entwined with the equally powerful subconcious fantasy of seeing and feeling your own body broken and maimed – and exceedingly few films unabashedly exemplify these ideas as effectively as John Woo’s Hong Kong action masterpiece, The Killer.

After essentially creating the “heroic bloodshed” subgenre of Hong Kong action films (films centered around hyper-stylized gun violence and themes of redemption and brotherhood) with A Better Tomorrow in 1986, a falling out with producer Tsui Hark during the production of the film’s sequel led to John Woo striking out on his own on his next project – 1989’s The Killer, a film which, while underperforming in its home country, would gain massive attention internationally and spawn countless imitations by Western filmmakers in the years to follow. The Killer is perhaps the ultimate culmination of Woo’s formula for action cinema – meticulously choreographed and visceral violence mixed with equally heightened emotion, and symbolism which dares to reach far past the realm of subtext.

 Early in her definition of body genres within Film Bodies, Williams argues: “It would not be unreasonable, in fact, to consider all [body] genres under the extended rubric of melodrama, considered as a filmic mode of stylistic and/or emotional excess that stands in contrast to more “dominant” modes of realistic, goal-oriented narrative. In this extended sense melodrama can encompass a broad range of films marked by “lapses” in realism, by “excesses” of spectacle and displays of primal, even infantile emotions,” (pp. 3) – and by this definition, The Killer is a perfect illustration of melodrama in the realm of action cinema, and an argument for action film’s place within the realm of body genres. In fact, The Killer, despite its categorization as an action film, is unquestionably also an example of the rare “male weepie” which Williams describes as “mainstream melodramas engaged in the activation of the previously repressed emotions of men and in breaking the taboos against male-to-male hugs and embraces.” (pp. 9). In The Killer, Woo uses violence both to compliment and heighten the emotions of the films characters, as well as arguably using it as an excuse to create a type of film that likely couldn’t exist on its own in any mainstream film market of its time – an unabashed masculine melodrama unafraid to delve headfirst into the realm of the homoerotic and homosocial. When words fail to express the heightened emotions of The Killer’s cast – violence is always able to, reaching past the realm of the “real” and forming an almost impressionistic world around these characters and the carnage they are forced to both deal and endure.

The Killer centers around the titular professional assassin, Ah Jong (played by Chow Yun-Fat, a towering figure in modern Asian cinema, in one of his greatest performances), who in the immediately tone-setting opening scene extravagantly shoots up a mob-owned club in what he vows to be his last job before retirement – until he accidentally blinds an innocent nightclub singer named Jennie in the process. Driven by his guilt and personal obligation to pay for Jennie’s vision-saving eye surgery, he takes on more assassination jobs while forming a budding romance with Jennie, still none the wiser that he is the man who stole her eyesight. In the process of a public hit on a high-ranking triad (Chinese mafia) boss, he is seen by police, escaping by speedboat after saving the life of a small boy caught in the crossfire. Li Ying, a police officer who was at the scene and witnessed Ah Jong’s act of saving the boy (played by venerable cop-character actor Danny Lee), becomes obsessed with this incongruous act of selflessness by the assassin, and vows to track him down. However, after Ah Jong’s clients are made aware the killer was spotted by police, they decide to cut their losses, forcing one of Ah Jong’s closest friends, Fung Sei, to betray him and unsuccessfully attempt to kill him during the supposed money hand-off. Ah Jong escapes, going on the run from both the police and triads as he attempts to protect Jennie and find a way to pay for her surgery. In the process, Ah Jong and detective Li Ying are forced to come together from opposite sides of the law, creating a deep, mostly unspoken bond which forms The Killer’s thematic backbone.

One may expect The Killer’s twin focuses on heightened, cathartic violence and soul-bearing emotion would perhaps be incongruous, and are certainly a departure from the stoic musclemen of contemporary American action films – but instead, the two intertwine, becoming inextricably linked, feeding off and into each other. The closest comparison to how violence functions in The Killer would perhaps be to the musical, where when characters’ emotions become too great for words, they burst into song to release them. In The Killer, when emotions reach their peak, they are released through bullets. 

The scene of Ah Jong’s betrayal by Fung Sei, his most trusted confidant, midway through the film, and the violent shootout which follows it, works as a microcosm for how The Killer uses violence as emotional expression. The scene begins slowly as a moody piano score follows Ah Jong in a moment of silent contemplation in his home draped in red neon lighting, before suddenly cutting to Ah Jong outside of Fung Sei’s apartment for the agreed dropoff of his payment for the triad boss assassination, slow and quiet – before a burst of energy begins with Ah Jong quickly pointing his gun to Fung Sei’s head, his experiences leaving him unable to let his guard down with even his most trusted associate. The scene slowly builds tension from there as Fung Sei grabs the briefcase of money for the handoff, taking a seat down across from Ah Jong as he pleads for the assassin to trust him. However, as soon as Ah Jong puts down his pistol to open the briefcase, Fung Sei grabs it from him, pointing it point blank at his head. Ah Jong responds with nothing but despondent laughter as he opens the case, revealing it to be filled with blank paper, before Chow Yun-Fat’s face twists into a heartbreaking expression as he allows the bullets he had removed from the gun beforehand to fall from his sleeve. 

The film holds on Ah Jong’s sorrow for a moment as he stares at Fung Sei wordlessly, pulling out his second, loaded pistol from his side. Before the vocal outburst of emotion one would expect from Ah Jong, however, he sees a glint in the corner of his eye and suddenly springs upward as the scene shifts disorientingly quickly into a flurry of gunfire as Ah Jong quickly dispatches the triad goons positioned around Fung Sei’s home, his emotions released in a blaze of bullets, broken glass, and bursting viscera. What follows this cathartic violence is not satisfaction, but emptiness as Fung Sei bears his guilt for what he had done to Ah Jong and the affection he truly has for him, the assassin coldly replying “I never want to see you again,” the pain on his face belying his words as he turns and walks off.

Woo’s films are perhaps most renowned for their kinetic, masterfully planned action sequences, displaying its protagonists as superhuman in their marksmanship and ability to make foes double back as if shot by a cannon as a burst of blood explodes from their chest. However, his heroes are certainly not immortal – far less so than the hulking protagonists of American action films. Woo puts his protagonists through the absolute ringer both emotionally and physically, and rarely gives audiences the happy, satisfying ending they want. In the end, while his protagonists are bestowed with the power to kill in mesmerizing and almost impossible ways, the violence they commit almost always catches up with them. Though, this element certainly doesn’t detract from the bodily fantasy these films provide – it completes them. They are films of sadomasochism instead of pure sadism, allowing one to indulge in the subconscious thrill of punishment, of the inevitable conclusion to the murderous fantasy. As Woo’s films, and action cinema as a whole, suggest – there is perhaps no such thing as the fantasy of killing without the subconscious fantasy of dying. In defining the function of pornography and the female orgasm therein, Williams argues: “Even when the pleasure of viewing has been traditionally been constructed for masculine spectators, as is the case of the most traditional heterosexual pornography, it is the female body in the grips of an out-of-control ecstasy that has offered the most sensational sight.” Action films, and The Killer especially, perhaps prove that there is a function of the male body which produces the “sensational sight” of the male gaze – but instead of pleasure, it is pain. However, these concepts of pleasure and pain are often difficult to pull apart from each other, especially within the realm of body genres – as William argues regarding sadomasochistic pornography and its relationship to horror films: “But even in the most extreme displays of femine masochistic suffering, there is always a component of either power or pleasure for the woman victim.” (pp. 8). By this same token, the fetishized pain of male bodies within action films always contain this subtext of pleasure, both for the film’s spectator, and often for the characters experiencing this pain themselves.

Woo exemplifies these ideas in perhaps the most iconic action sequence of the film, the bombastic, climactic shootout at the end of the film – where Ah Jong, Jennie, and detective Li Ying are cornered inside an old church and beset on all sides by triad members looking to slaughter them, the carnage bathed in the holy light of stained glass as Ah Jong and Li Ying desperately cut a swath through the goons, the former adversaries’ relationship evolving into one where both men are clearly willing to die for one another. The camera pans around the two fighting back to back, their struggle growing more desperate with every passing second. Up to this point, Ah Jong has remained mostly unscathed, fulfilling the role as the unstoppable action hero – until the sadomasochistic circle is completed. Despite being a non-fatal injury, a shot to Ah Jong’s shoulder is treated with more gravitas than almost any death in the film, everything coming to a halt as Chow Yun-Fat’s body doubles back, the camera lingering on his viscerally pained (and perhaps pleasured) face, a bust of the mother Mary holding a baby Jesus sitting just above his slumped form – before a shotgun blast transforms the statue into a clump of ceramic chunks. The struggle of Ah Jong to keep his battered body going becomes fetishized just as much as any of the thousands of bullets he himself fires during this scene, forced to lean further on Li Ying for support as the battle comes to a climax outside of the church, the mad triad boss Wong Hoi, the one who put a price on Ah Jong’s head, being the last adversary remaining. 

However, before Ah Jong is quite able to finish off the injured triad boss, Wong Hoi riddles Ah Jong with bullets, the camera focusing on Ah Jong’s blood spattered suit as he collapses to the ground, grabbing Li Ying’s gun from his side – though he has been blinded by the gunshots, unable to get off more than a few his own as his eyes, the one thing he wished to ensure remained intact in case of his death so he could donate them to Jennie, grotesquely swell up as he writhes on the ground, attempting to reach Jennie who has fully succumbed to her blindness as he passes away from his wounds. As police arrive, Wong Hoi surrenders – but in his rage and grief, Li Ying kills him, the film ending as he collapses to the ground in tears for the loss of the man he had grown so close to. The sadomasochistic fantasy is completed by an ultimate failure, a stark contrast to its Western contemporaries – and yet, this failure brings a subconscious satisfaction of its own. An ending like this seems to be the inevitable conclusion for someone who commits such acts – and such an ending brings the fantasy of identifying with this character full circle, providing the ultimate form of release and closure to the perverse thrill of killing – one’s own death.

The Cantonese title of The Killer, translated literally is “Two Heroes, Flowing Blood” – perhaps the most succinct summary which could be given to the film, not as a description of two concepts – but as a singular, tied entity. Violence, the flowing blood in question, is how the two heroes bond, how their relationship forms and grows – and in a homoerotic reading of the film (a particularly obvious, and certainly not unintentional reading), the violence acts as the consummation and release of their bond, the substitute for the act of sex. While John Woo’s films never focus explicitly on homosexual relationships, essentially all of his most iconic work in Hong Kong centers around devotional homosocial bonds – and The Killer is no exception. However, in contrast to some of Woo’s other films like A Better Tomorrow and Bullet in the Head, which focus on lifelong friendships strengthened and broken by the horrible circumstances the characters endure, The Killer’s two central leads are brought together within the film by and through violence. 

Beginning as opposing forces, with Li Ying’s obsession with capturing Ah Jong bringing the two into conflict, circumstances force the two to grow closer, this bond shifting with almost no dialogue into an almost brotherly camaraderie, expressed most outwardly by the synchronicity of their violence as a team. This relationship, one which easily could have bloomed under far less dire circumstances if these characters’ lives had gone differently, is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the film – one which truly takes hold only in its third act, only to be cruelly snuffed out by the inevitable consequences of the life Ah Jong leads. Li Ying is only able to express his despair with one last act of violence, the killing of Wong Hoi, before he breaks down in tears. Intentional or not, this tragedy acts as a microcosm of The Killer itself – a film about emotion, an unabashed “male weepie” – but one which is only truly able to exist because of its violence, while refusing to shy away from said violence’s natural consequences. As Williams details the link between body genres and the idea of “gender fantasy,” she argues: “There is a link, in other words, between the appeal of these forms and their ability to address, if never really to “solve,” basic problems related to sexual identity.” The true tragedy of the relationship between Ah Jong and Li Ying is that their relationship lays these ideas of homosocial and -sexual bonds just barely beneath the surface, but through the circumstances of their roles in society and the consequences of the actions they take because of those roles, that tension, those “basic problems related to sexual identity,” are left explicitly and intentionally unsolved.

Action films, when viewed as a body genre, allow the male gaze to be shifted to one of active participation and embodiment instead of the voyeuristic detachment found in horror or pornography. Action films allow the male gaze to look at and fetishize itself – even if, and perhaps especially, if that fetishization does not take the form of the infallible ubermensch but of the vulnerable, emotional human form. The Killer allows the viewer to embody the ideal of the hyper-competent assassin glorified in so much popular culture, but also forces the viewer to indulge in the inverse of that fantasy, that of the death drive which is buried deep inside all of us. By doing so, The Killer remains a relevant piece for understanding how societies view the role of masculinity across cultures and its deeply woven relationship with violence and the power it provides, both as it pertains to the social climate of the late 1980s as well as today. The Killer revels in the chaos of the abyss of violent masculinity and the bodily sensations it provides to the spectator and perpetrator of it, but shows the self-destruction that chaos brings, simultaneously viscerally challenging the audience and completing the subconscious cycle of the masculine fantasy.

Works Cited:

Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 1991, pp. 2–13., https://doi.org/10.2307/1212758.
Woo, John, director. The Killer. Film Workshop Co., Ltd., 1989.