You Better Believe The Trailer For John Woo's Remake Of The Killer Features Doves

John Woo, who got his start making films in Hong Kong before directing bombastic Hollywood blockbusters like "Face/Off," "Broken Arrow," and "Mission: Impossible II," is one of the unquestioned masters of the action genre. He's one of the most influential directors of all time and the maestro of "heroic bloodshed," a subgenre about violence, brotherhood, and redemption populated by thieves, killers, cops, and scoundrels. In his movies, Woo was able to infuse his action scenes with a style, liquidity, and balletic sense of movement that was unlike anything moviegoers had seen before. After a long break from Hollywood filmmaking, Woo returned last year for the theatrically released "Silent Night," and now he's back again with an unusual new film for Peacock: "The Killer," which is a remake of his own 1989 action classic that starred Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee.

This time around, Nathalie Emmanuel ("Game of Thrones," the "Fast and Furious" franchise) faces off against Omar Sy ("Lupin") in the lead roles. The original movie is infused with such heavy subtext between the two men at the center of the story, so I'm curious to see how Woo will be able to recapture the magic having swapped the gender of one of the main characters. Woo has also said that he essentially made the first movie on the fly without a proper script, so it remains to be seen whether having more of a plan this time around will result in something as memorable as the original.

Take a look at the first trailer above.

This trailer has everything. John Woo's signature doves flying through a mostly empty church! Australian actor Sam Worthington doing an Irish accent! A script that features a reversal of a classic "Terminator" line! ("If you want to live, come with me.") A hospital shoot-out! (Fans of Woo's "Hard Boiled" know what's up.) A gun battle in a cemetery! The hero sliding across the floor shooting a pistol in slow motion! (Another Woo staple.) A ..."Matrix"-style moment where Emmanuel seems to be rigged up to wires as she fires two guns at the same time! A moment that seems like it could have been ripped out of Woo's "Mission: Impossible II" in which a motorcycle ramps above a shooter, who aims upwards and blasts it out of the air as it explodes!

Honestly, this all looks ... pretty bad to me. But it's just a trailer, after all, and a huge part of the success of films like these is whether they can capture and sustain a specific type of tone, and that's often a difficult thing to translate into a two minute trailer.

But I must admit, the fact that Emmanuel's assassin character is nicknamed the "Queen of the Dead" is pretty rad.

"The Killer" begins streaming exclusively on Peacock on August 23, 2024.