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Speaker 2: Oh g is folks, it's showtime. People say good mighty
Speaker 2: to see this movie. When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 2: They want clothed, sodas, hot popcorn in.
Speaker 1: No monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone for tend podcasting
Speaker 1: isn't boring.
Speaker 3: Cut it off.
Speaker 4: One of the ten best films of the year. It
Speaker 4: starts over the top, then blasts through the roof. It
Speaker 4: takes your breath away.
Speaker 1: The damnedest thing I have seen in years.
Speaker 4: Guarantee to tingle the most jaded moviegoer's palette. A film
Speaker 4: concocted with nitroglycerin, the combined energy of the road Warrior,
Speaker 4: RoboCop and the Terminator, the Ultimate Cop.
Speaker 1: Versus the Ultimate hit Man. This looks for you. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining
Speaker 1: me once again is Ms. Carol Borden.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: Everybody, Also back in the booth after Far Too Long
Speaker 1: is Jackie Stargrove?
Speaker 2: How's it going, Dumbo?
Speaker 1: We are back taking a dip into a familiar pool
Speaker 1: by revisiting a movie we discussed on the podcast way
Speaker 1: back in the first year of the show, twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: John Woo's The Killer. Back then, we discussed the influences
Speaker 1: of things like this Gun for Hire, le Samurai and Moore.
Speaker 1: We also had a pretty well, actually it wasn't that
Speaker 1: he did discussion around home eroticism presented in the heroic
Speaker 1: bloodshed genre of action films. This time around, we're going
Speaker 1: to go back to nineteen eighty nine's John Woolffilm, but
Speaker 1: also discuss the twenty twenty four John woolfilm and stop
Speaker 1: by the nineteen ninety four film Hum hayin Bemesal. Along
Speaker 1: the way, The Killer tells the tale of a contract
Speaker 1: hit man named Jeff in some versions, I'll call him
Speaker 1: Jeff for the most part, Cheliu Fat who accidentally blinds
Speaker 1: a shantuse named Jenny played by Sally Yeah. Meanwhile, he's
Speaker 1: being hunted by hot headed super cop Lee played by
Speaker 1: Danny Lee. It's an ultra violent treatuse on loyalty friendship
Speaker 1: and honor set against the underworld of Hong Kong. We
Speaker 1: will be spoiling this film as well as its remake
Speaker 1: and the Indian film it inspired, say as we go along.
Speaker 1: So if you don't want anything ruined, please go ahead,
Speaker 1: turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen
Speaker 1: them all. We will still be here. So, Carol, I'm
Speaker 1: so curious, when was the first time you saw The Killer?
Speaker 1: And what did you think?
Speaker 3: I actually have an answer for this question because you
Speaker 3: always asked me that, and I'm like, I don't remember
Speaker 3: when I saw this movie, but the first time I
Speaker 3: saw this movie was Alin Gaddis's Golden Classic Cinemas on
Speaker 3: Spadina in Toronto. Oh Wow, four ninety five. I had
Speaker 3: seen no John Wu. I had seen no Chilian Fought,
Speaker 3: and it was part of a week dedicated to Chilian Fought.
Speaker 3: Quote the God of Cool. And after seeing the movie,
Speaker 3: I totally understood why Colin was advertising him as the
Speaker 3: God of cool, like I had not seen anything like it,
Speaker 3: and I loved it right away, and it led to
Speaker 3: a lifelong love of Chailean thought and John Wu and Jackie.
Speaker 1: How about yourself?
Speaker 2: I was in high school. I think at the time
Speaker 2: summer of two thousand and three, so it would have
Speaker 2: been going from like my freshmen to sophomore year, and
Speaker 2: I remember watching it specifically over that summer, and I'd
Speaker 2: heard about it for years because it's one of those
Speaker 2: movies that you know, especially in the earlier Internet for years,
Speaker 2: where people talk about movies a lot, but they're not
Speaker 2: as super easy to get ahold of as you'd like,
Speaker 2: especially when that Criterion version of it was already going
Speaker 2: for crazy prices and our local Hollywood video had a
Speaker 2: copy of it, and I was like, well, that's it,
Speaker 2: I'm doing this. I had grown up with a lot
Speaker 2: of Wu's American stuff. I'm sure at some point where
Speaker 2: we'll get into my apologies for his American filmography, because
Speaker 2: I love most of it. Still, I knew that, like
Speaker 2: the Hong Kong stuff, was where it was, that was
Speaker 2: what you had to see. And so even in this
Speaker 2: weird I think it was the company was Fox Laber
Speaker 2: that put out that old DVD that it almost felt
Speaker 2: like I was watching something that I still wasn't supposed
Speaker 2: to get a hold of. I wasn't one hundred percent
Speaker 2: sure that it was like a legit DVD I'd never
Speaker 2: heard of this company. It was just sitting there on
Speaker 2: the shelf. They had that and Hard Boiled, but I
Speaker 2: only got The Killer the first time around, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it just blew me away. It was everything everyone made
Speaker 2: it out to me, and I've never been able to
Speaker 2: let it go.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any reason to apologize for his
Speaker 1: American filmography. I love Hard Target, I love Face Off.
Speaker 1: I'm not as hot on things like Broken Arrow or Payback,
Speaker 1: and then I still God, I did this episode twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen Wing Talkers all the way through
Speaker 1: or Redcliff and I'm a man oh man, But yeah,
Speaker 1: some of those movies are fucking fantastic.
Speaker 3: We're all bad centophiles here.
Speaker 2: I remember liking wind Talkers, but I haven't seen it
Speaker 2: since it was brand new.
Speaker 1: I wish that he had had more power, and this film,
Speaker 1: The Killer comes at an interesting time in his career
Speaker 1: where he was I know Better Tomorrow was a huge
Speaker 1: hit for him. He had already been directing for twenty
Speaker 1: some years at this point, and no Better Tomorrow comes
Speaker 1: along really helps redefine the action genre. Reie, in my mind,
Speaker 1: kicks off the horroic bloodshed drama, which is a mix
Speaker 1: of action and melodrama, real Douglas Cercian type melodrama, and
Speaker 1: some people that's a dirty word melodrama is, but not
Speaker 1: for me. I love it, and I love just how
Speaker 1: emotionally in that film is and this film as well,
Speaker 1: things like the little flashbacks that we have, the things
Speaker 1: that just happened a few minutes ago in order to
Speaker 1: put you inside of the character's head, and just that
Speaker 1: overwrought emotion that everybody is showing. I think it's freaking fantastic,
Speaker 1: and that, just for me helps when it comes to
Speaker 1: the poetics of the ballet of violence that happens throughout
Speaker 1: so much of this movie.
Speaker 2: It feels very operatic, and that extends to the emotions
Speaker 2: as well. When you're doing operatic, you go big all
Speaker 2: the way, and this movie goes big on every level.
Speaker 2: It would feel like something was missing if any of
Speaker 2: those pieces weren't present.
Speaker 3: It's very cool. It was very cool of its time.
Speaker 3: It was very influential and subsequent action in movies and
Speaker 3: in certain ideas even about what's cool in cinema and
Speaker 3: to an extent, what's cool in life. Not to the
Speaker 3: extent that a Better Tomorrow was where people are walking
Speaker 3: around sound dressed like Mark with the toothpicks in their
Speaker 3: mouth and wearing the trench coat. But it's also interesting
Speaker 3: that it's unashamed of its sentiment, like it's very your
Speaker 3: face with its sentiment. It fills up the screen with
Speaker 3: the faces of the actors having strong emotional reactions to
Speaker 3: each other, into their situations in their eyes, like there's
Speaker 3: time where Italian fought almost looks like he's going to cry,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of other action cinemas that are about
Speaker 3: masculinity and male friendships and are also homo erotic try
Speaker 3: to be like no, no, being a man is not
Speaker 3: feeling things deeply, Like being a man is like the samurai,
Speaker 3: like he's aloof he's almost detached from everything. But and
Speaker 3: that's an influence on this. But it's like you say,
Speaker 3: it's it's almost Circian. I hadn't considered that before. But
Speaker 3: that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: The emotions are so there and so present, and also
Speaker 1: it's so much about this inner turmoil that you're talking
Speaker 1: about and the idea of I barely touched on it
Speaker 1: the very first time we talked about this. I barely
Speaker 1: touched on Sergio Leone, and I really feel that there's
Speaker 1: a sense in this of once upon a time in
Speaker 1: the West, with the whole idea of the things that
Speaker 1: were are no longer going to be. The people like
Speaker 1: Cheyenne and Harmonica, these almost gods of the old West
Speaker 1: are being driven out by that railroad coming in and
Speaker 1: this one coming in nineteen eighty nine. We're still just
Speaker 1: what six seven, eight years from the handover of Hong
Speaker 1: Kong to China, and this kind of feels like it's
Speaker 1: really setting the stage and saying like the old ways
Speaker 1: are not the ways that they used to be because
Speaker 1: we have basically three generations of people in this movie.
Speaker 1: We've got Sydney and Chang, and I love this whole.
Speaker 1: I believe kind of hall gribes it as an h
Speaker 1: figure where you've got on one side, you've got Sidney
Speaker 1: and Jeff. On the other side, you've got Chang and Lee,
Speaker 1: and I find it's interesting that both of those are
Speaker 1: very Americanized names in one area, and then more of
Speaker 1: the traditional Chinese names on the other side, with Jenny
Speaker 1: in the middle. But the area that I really want
Speaker 1: to look at too, is that new generation and the
Speaker 1: idea of Shing fu On hiring Jeff to kill his uncle,
Speaker 1: and Qing Kuan has no honor, he has no code,
Speaker 1: and he is to me representing this new generation that's
Speaker 1: coming in. And so you've got Sidney, who's this classic
Speaker 1: I will call him a knight because he is so chivalrous.
Speaker 1: Him and Chang are the older generation. You've got Jeff
Speaker 1: and Lee as this kind of they've taken those things
Speaker 1: from the past they but yet they have to live
Speaker 1: in this new, more violent world of Hong Kong. And
Speaker 1: then you've got Shing Fuana's Wang Hoi, the nephew who
Speaker 1: just doesn't give a shit about anything, will kill anyone
Speaker 1: that gets in his way, including his own freaking family.
Speaker 3: One thing that I noticed more this time than and
Speaker 3: I've watched this movie like you guys a lot of times,
Speaker 3: but I was thinking a lot about Chang ChEI and
Speaker 3: how John Wu worked with Chang che And part of
Speaker 3: the reason that this film was so remarkable is that
Speaker 3: he took those one armed swordsman. He took those old
Speaker 3: wushia well. Chan Chey came in in his time with
Speaker 3: a new whushia that had like male leads, not female leads,
Speaker 3: and focused on masculinity and male friendships and honor and
Speaker 3: terrible choices, and usually, as in The Killer, the two
Speaker 3: sworn brothers die in the end in some terrible way
Speaker 3: for their honor and their friendship over everything else, to
Speaker 3: uphold how things should be, how human relationships should be.
Speaker 3: And it's it's interesting that John Wut not only takes
Speaker 3: that and puts it in a like a then contemporary
Speaker 3: action movie with the shootouts and chases and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: but then, like you say, the handover is coming, and
Speaker 3: so it just emphasizes and has a very specific not
Speaker 3: nostalgia but almost a nostalgic pain for something that's about
Speaker 3: to pass. That something isn't the process of passing. That
Speaker 3: isn't exactly in Chang che either, because he's making his
Speaker 3: movies in the sixties and seventies, so they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: new things are coming, but it's not maybe the end
Speaker 3: of the way things are done.
Speaker 1: And I want to say Chang Chi also set a
Speaker 1: lot of his things in older periods, whereas Lou's very contemporary.
Speaker 1: This feels nineteen eighty nine all the way through.
Speaker 2: It's so intangible, but like you just when you get
Speaker 2: that feeling in the your stomach that like the glory
Speaker 2: days are just about to pass something else, some new
Speaker 2: generation is coming through and we might not get this
Speaker 2: feeling ever again. And it very much folds through another
Speaker 2: one I was thinking, I'm mentioning Once upon a Time
Speaker 2: in the West. I also think at the Wild Bunch
Speaker 2: is another one that there's no way WU didn't see
Speaker 2: that with all the NonStop squibs, But the end of
Speaker 2: that movie is another one where just a whole generation
Speaker 2: of those old Western fellows is just wiped out and
Speaker 2: they're done, their days are over.
Speaker 1: And that coming what right at the end of the
Speaker 1: sixties as well, just felt like such a turning point,
Speaker 1: especially as New Hollywood is coming to four and heck
Speaker 1: and Paul being I mean, he's a little bit of
Speaker 1: an older fellow coming in here, but just that felt
Speaker 1: like such a turning point in his career as well.
Speaker 1: I know he made a few other good films after that,
Speaker 1: but then you get into things like, I know, some
Speaker 1: people really love The Killer Lead and some of these others,
Speaker 1: but I'm just like, yeah, Ostra Weekend, it's such weak
Speaker 1: sauce compared to what he was doing before. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of especially the editing, the editing of
Speaker 1: The Wild Bunch, the whole idea of expanding time through
Speaker 1: slow motion and constantly cutting back to an a action
Speaker 1: that is happening in slow motion, back to other action
Speaker 1: scenes that are taking place in regular motion, just showing
Speaker 1: like all of these things are happening at the same time,
Speaker 1: and just by extending out the timeline of that person
Speaker 1: that's maybe falling or getting shot. And the use of
Speaker 1: slow mo in this film as well, Oh God, is
Speaker 1: just so beautiful. The opening. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: times I can. I've watched the opening Massacre at the Club.
Speaker 1: I have seen it so many times, just studied every
Speaker 1: single shot in here. I love the things like the
Speaker 1: rack focus, or when he's out of bullets, Jeff's out
Speaker 1: of bullets and sees the gun and he kicks that
Speaker 1: table and the gun comes up again in slow motion,
Speaker 1: and the way he grabs it multiple times. I love
Speaker 1: that multiple camera angles that Wou's doing and the repeated
Speaker 1: action that happens like you were seeing, Carol. This just
Speaker 1: was such a revolution when it came to how films
Speaker 1: are being shown and processed. And it's ironic because this
Speaker 1: is so new for at least my eyes as a
Speaker 1: Western viewer, but that he is taking so many of
Speaker 1: these other little pieces, Like you said, Chung Che is
Speaker 1: definitely more homegrown. But then things like The Wild Bunch
Speaker 1: and Sergio Leone and I'd love whenever I talked about
Speaker 1: spaghetti westerns, it's how are the Italians for reflecting back
Speaker 1: American culture to us? And this feels like taking all
Speaker 1: of these things and saying, no, this is Chinese, now,
Speaker 1: this is my thing, and this is how I'm going
Speaker 1: to shoot action, which becomes such a I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it's a cliche because it's not a cliche
Speaker 1: at this point. This is such a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he took all the things that he loved from film,
Speaker 3: and you can see it in this film how much
Speaker 3: he loves film, and he processed them and then gave
Speaker 3: us this film of I don't want to use digested,
Speaker 3: but I can't think of another word like he's taken
Speaker 3: in cinema. He's digested in it and he is giving
Speaker 3: us something new and something how he wants to see
Speaker 3: this kind of story and it's still so fresh. That
Speaker 3: was the thing for me.
Speaker 2: Watching it again, that perfect combination of influences yet where
Speaker 2: you can see obviously like their contemporary local influence, but
Speaker 2: mixed with especially Western cinema Like this time going back,
Speaker 2: I was like, these are guys wearing like pinstripe suits
Speaker 2: and stuff. I can't think of a movie from that
Speaker 2: region in that era where anyone was dressed like that beforehand.
Speaker 2: That was not a popular thing, and he brought it
Speaker 2: over and made it cool in a whole different way.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that was really interesting to
Speaker 3: me even the first time I watched it, but like
Speaker 3: over the years, was how the suits indicate the moral positioning,
Speaker 3: particularly of Danny Lee and Sidney Fong, and in a
Speaker 3: slightly different way with Chilian fot because Italian Fox Jeff's
Speaker 3: suit is largely this olive green and then he has
Speaker 3: this really cool olive leopard print tie. But Sidney Fong,
Speaker 3: when he comes in as someone who is very following
Speaker 3: the procedures of the triad, he's in very rules based,
Speaker 3: very focused on the tradition, and so is honorable in
Speaker 3: that sense, like he follows the code of his triad.
Speaker 3: He wears a black suit with white pin stripes. Danny
Speaker 3: Lee comes in and he's undercover, and he's totally different.
Speaker 3: He's wearing a white suit with black pinstripes and a
Speaker 3: black shirt, which is revealing that he's not quite the
Speaker 3: good guy that he thinks he is or that people
Speaker 3: want him to be. And of course by the end,
Speaker 3: he's wearing a black suit with a white shirt. Chilian
Speaker 3: thought is wearing a white suit. That's both showing his
Speaker 3: virtue but also tying back to the old Chang ChEI
Speaker 3: films where the heroes wore white because white is also
Speaker 3: associated with deaf and you can see all their bloodstains
Speaker 3: when they have their big climactic battle. And Sidney Fung
Speaker 3: in the end is wearing a gray suit with black
Speaker 3: pin stripes. And so here's where I went pooky, because
Speaker 3: like for years, I'm like, I feel like there has
Speaker 3: to be a transitional suit between where Sidney Fung has
Speaker 3: ultimately chosen his side on Jeff and he's still a
Speaker 3: bad guy. He still has his little black stripes, but
Speaker 3: he's moved into the morally gray world of gray pin
Speaker 3: straight suits. And when I saw the extended version from Taiwan,
Speaker 3: Allen showed that I think at the Blue Theater there's
Speaker 3: an intermediary intermediate suit, and I felt so validated that yes,
Speaker 3: these suits are significant, that he is using them like
Speaker 3: they used to use cat hats in cowboys for cowboys
Speaker 3: in westerns, and Sidney Funk has his charcoal suit with
Speaker 3: his white stripes as he's begging for Jeff's money back
Speaker 3: from Shinkoi on. So that is my long tangent and
Speaker 3: thank you for your patients.
Speaker 1: No, no, I remember I was talking about the suits
Speaker 1: in the very first time I talked about this movie,
Speaker 1: and just yeah, how he changes, how they both changed
Speaker 1: throughout this entire film. So yeah, you said it much
Speaker 1: more elegant than me. And plus I really wasn't looking
Speaker 1: at Sydney. I was looking at just Jeff and Lee.
Speaker 1: So having that idea of where Sydney's loyalties lay, because
Speaker 1: Sidney is such a fascinating character to me, especially that
Speaker 1: he's damaged that the one hand doesn't work, but that
Speaker 1: he makes a point when he can't catch that beer,
Speaker 1: but then he makes the point of well it still
Speaker 1: works for the gun though. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's been saving that up and not doing it
Speaker 3: because it would be against what you do in the triad.
Speaker 3: Until everything is off for him anymore.
Speaker 1: That longer cut is really fascinating. If memory serves, this
Speaker 1: is the one that has the two attacks of Jenny,
Speaker 1: so you get that mirroring of Lee and Jeff even
Speaker 1: more as far as the repeated actions, because I know
Speaker 1: Jeff for sure in the regular version that everybody sees
Speaker 1: saves Jenny when she's coming out of the club one
Speaker 1: night after she's been blinded by his muzzle flash, and
Speaker 1: I want to say that if it's not in the
Speaker 1: hi Wan version, it's definitely in the deleted scenes. There's
Speaker 1: also an attack that happens to Jenny where Lee saves her,
Speaker 1: and that it's Jeff saving her, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that's not in the regular version, just because
Speaker 1: all right, that she always just need to be saved.
Speaker 1: This is probably a really bad betrayal of a female character,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, Sally Yev just pulls it
Speaker 1: off as Jenny so well, and I just love her
Speaker 1: as a character, even though she is pretty weak and
Speaker 1: obviously gets fooled very easily as a blind person, especially
Speaker 1: in that incredible scene with Jeff and Lee pointing the
Speaker 1: guns at each other and really meeting for the first time,
Speaker 1: and that's when they start. The whole nickname thing that
Speaker 1: goes on that scene is just so delightful for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the nickname thing in particular has always tickled me.
Speaker 2: This time I went, I watched that new four K
Speaker 2: restoration that just came out, and half of my curiosity
Speaker 2: was like, what are the names going to be? And
Speaker 2: in this one they went with the classic Mickey Mouse
Speaker 2: and Dumbo, which I've never understood because I don't associate
Speaker 2: those characters as knowing each other. But I would put
Speaker 2: like Mickey Mouse with Donald Duck. That almost makes it
Speaker 2: funnier to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember, there's butt head, there's shrimp head. Shrimp
Speaker 1: Head seems like it would definitely be more of a
Speaker 1: of a Hong Kong insult to me, But yeah, over
Speaker 1: Dumbo and Mickey Mouse. But yeah, whatever, float your boat.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's a there's a numbnuts version of what I remember.
Speaker 1: It was right around the time of Vivis and butt
Speaker 1: Head on MTV, So when they start calling each other
Speaker 1: butt head, I was like, Okay, yeah, that hits a
Speaker 1: little different now than it would have just even a
Speaker 1: few years prior.
Speaker 3: I had heard and I have no idea how true
Speaker 3: this is And it wasn't something I looked up when
Speaker 3: we were talking about doing this, but like years and
Speaker 3: years ago, I had heard that one of the names
Speaker 3: in Cantonese for Danny Lee was Danny Lee's nickname. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's true, but like you say, shrimp
Speaker 3: head sounds like a very Cantonese Hong Kong nickname, because
Speaker 3: like Shing Foyan's was like what big Ugly had.
Speaker 1: I love that his nickname in Return of the Demon
Speaker 1: was fierce or that was his character's name, And I'm
Speaker 1: just like, if anybody portrays the word fierce, it's Shingfalon
Speaker 1: just because of that that resting bitch face that he has.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't it it was him versus chill Yan
Speaker 1: Fat and tigrind Beat, the first Tigrin Beat. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had that incredible chainsaw fight man that movie wow.
Speaker 1: I mean that was the thing about The Killer was
Speaker 1: it just opened up this whole world of other Hong
Speaker 1: Kong films for me. And this was such a great introduction.
Speaker 1: Not everything looked like this, not everything felt like this.
Speaker 1: There was some that had some elements of it, but
Speaker 1: just this open up that door to this wide world
Speaker 1: of what at that point, I want to say it
Speaker 1: was the third largest cinema production area in the entire world.
Speaker 1: I want to say it was either the US and
Speaker 1: then Bollywood, or it could have been vice versa and
Speaker 1: then Hong Kong at this point in time was just
Speaker 1: cranking out product and so many amazing films.
Speaker 3: You were talking about Sally Yer, though, and I think
Speaker 3: you're right, Like she has it's almost consciously flat characterization,
Speaker 3: Like she does a really good job making Jenny a
Speaker 3: real person, but she's so clearly not plot development. She's
Speaker 3: there to be in danger, she's there for Jeff to
Speaker 3: feel guilty about. She's there for Inspector Lee to start
Speaker 3: to see Jeff as more of a person. And she
Speaker 3: still pulls it out like she doesn't have a lot
Speaker 3: to work with. She has a very thin character, and
Speaker 3: she makes you care about her and believe that she's
Speaker 3: been fooled when she's bringing them to you while they're
Speaker 3: having a showdown.
Speaker 2: She allows it to transcend the fact that, as far
Speaker 2: as the script goes, she's just a plot device. She
Speaker 2: really just exists for things to move ahead and get
Speaker 2: more complicated. But yeah, she's so convincing and a lot
Speaker 2: of her innocence that you buy into it every step
Speaker 2: of the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course she provides the song that's so
Speaker 3: important for the emotional center of the movie in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, like that's Celie herself singing.
Speaker 1: The music in this movie is so incredible, and I
Speaker 1: love tracking down where it comes from because so many
Speaker 1: Hong Kong films they will recycle things from other films,
Speaker 1: and so finally tracking down the soundtracks for No Mercy,
Speaker 1: the Richard Gear film, I think with him Passenger is
Speaker 1: in that, and then I knew about the hero and
Speaker 1: the Terror and I went back through Amazon and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I bought this all the way back
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. And then what was the other one
Speaker 1: that that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Red Heat, the Walter Hill film.
Speaker 2: I remember having the moment where I was finally getting
Speaker 2: around to watching Red Heat and that music iked and
Speaker 2: I went, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: I've heard that before. And then there's its own original
Speaker 1: music in here as well. But it all just blends
Speaker 1: so perfectly, and I just love how they will recycle
Speaker 1: things from other action films and again showing Wu's influences
Speaker 1: as far as what he's enjoying. And I know there
Speaker 1: was a policea from Oh Gosh, what is the early
Speaker 1: seventies that lends a lot of its elements, a lot
Speaker 1: of its musical elements, I should say, to A Better Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: And then of course A Better Tomorrow's got that incredible
Speaker 1: theme song as well. But I love how much music
Speaker 1: plays such a big part in WUS films.
Speaker 2: I've always had this weird feeling with Wu and he
Speaker 2: may have even said before that I felt like there
Speaker 2: was always a musical hiding within him that he's never
Speaker 2: quite brought to the surface, And even to this day,
Speaker 2: I'd still like to see because action choreography is just
Speaker 2: one step away from dance anyway, So I would love
Speaker 2: to see him go down that road because I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's such a beautiful musical quality to the way he
Speaker 2: films things that in the way he does use music
Speaker 2: that I would love to see something like that. I've
Speaker 2: always that's always been in the back of my mind
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 3: I had read an interview with him somewhere, and if
Speaker 3: I had been thinking, I would have gotten it out.
Speaker 3: But I believe he's interested in doing a musical. But
Speaker 3: of course he was making movies in the eighties and
Speaker 3: he's still making movies and he probably has a better
Speaker 3: chance of doing a musical now, but like I can
Speaker 3: see him being like, how could I do a musical
Speaker 3: action choreography.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one genre that I've never seen in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong was a musical. There of course, musical breaks and
Speaker 1: song watifsa come back very frequently, but I've never seen
Speaker 1: a full fledged musical coming out of Hong Kong, at
Speaker 1: least during this period of time, and definitely not a
Speaker 1: heroic bloodshed musical. But yeah, I'm game for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 1: And so many of the stars in Hong Kong were
Speaker 1: also musical stars as well as actors. Sallyer, I believe
Speaker 1: her primary thing was music. I know, like Chaalian Fats
Speaker 1: had albums, Jackie Chan's had albums. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if Danny Lee's out there singing away or not.
Speaker 3: But probably because there was like a time when the
Speaker 3: Hong Kong star had to sing, which is why they
Speaker 3: are Italian Fat albums, because he's not considered a very
Speaker 3: good singer. But if you're a star in Hong Kong,
Speaker 3: you got to have an album. Chang Pei Pei was
Speaker 3: in musicals in the sixties at the same time that
Speaker 3: she was like the queen of Wushia films. But you
Speaker 3: could go see a double feature with her and a
Speaker 3: musical and then go see her and come drink with
Speaker 3: me or whatever.
Speaker 1: We were talking about the whole idea of Lee and
Speaker 1: Chang having more traditional Chinese names and Sydney and Jeff
Speaker 1: with more of the Western names. And also when you
Speaker 1: think about where they work out of that Jeff and Sydney,
Speaker 1: they initially are seen in that church and you've got
Speaker 1: the Virgin Mary statue, which of course gets exploded literally
Speaker 1: in the the film. But then when you see Lee
Speaker 1: at work, it's the statue of General Kwan, so like
Speaker 1: the god of the police force kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: that's like the first time you see him before he's
Speaker 1: about to get reamed out by his boss. So this
Speaker 1: idea of the Western versus Eastern stuff as well, and
Speaker 1: I wonder that's got to be a conflict for people
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong, just because it is a at this
Speaker 1: point a protectorate of the British Empire and how western
Speaker 1: are you going to go? And of course in Hard
Speaker 1: Boiled that's a Goodbye note to Hong Kong. This whole
Speaker 1: idea of the birds flying and being turned loose, and
Speaker 1: that's the last time that Wu actually shoot something in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong for a lot of years.
Speaker 3: There's that conflict with that identity, and there's the conflict
Speaker 3: about the handover, because on one hand, people are nervous
Speaker 3: about what they're going to lose, but at the same
Speaker 3: time they've been colonized and the British are in charge
Speaker 3: of everything, including the film industry. But I also think
Speaker 3: that there's a pride in the cosmopolitanism of Hong Kong,
Speaker 3: and you see it both in the film with the
Speaker 3: characters having all these things using westernized names as well
Speaker 3: as their Chinese names, having General Khan and the Virgin Mary,
Speaker 3: having the missionary brother who's in the church helping them
Speaker 3: all out. But also you can see it with what
Speaker 3: we've been talking about, where John Wu has all these influences.
Speaker 3: He has them from Melville to Sergio Leoni, to Chiang
Speaker 3: Chi to whoever. And that for him is this is
Speaker 3: Hong Kong film. All these things also belong to us
Speaker 3: and we can participate in the world of these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, the best thing about Hong Kong being
Speaker 1: a British protectorate at this time, was the rule around
Speaker 1: having to have English subtitles on their films. That's a
Speaker 1: great thing for us as Westerners, being basically almost guaranteed
Speaker 1: that we're seeing stuff with subtitles. Obviously, it is such
Speaker 1: a hard time. We're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: later about Comhai Bemasol and just the still the lack
Speaker 1: of easily accessible English subtitles for Indian films as a
Speaker 1: real struggle. Sometimes you want to watch these movies and
Speaker 1: you just can't do it. Meanwhile, in all these Hong
Speaker 1: Kong films, they're not the best subtitles. They call them
Speaker 1: English for a reason. A lot of times it's very
Speaker 1: questionable some of these translations, and from what I understand
Speaker 1: it was the translations or the subtitles were done in
Speaker 1: the script phase, so sometimes they don't match up to
Speaker 1: what's actually happening on screen. But it's almost a fascinating
Speaker 1: look at what was at one point.
Speaker 3: It allowed Hong Kong films not only to make it
Speaker 3: into the West, but it's part of why it became
Speaker 3: such a big film industry because like you can show
Speaker 3: them in India because people in India are also English speakers.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of English speakers in India and other
Speaker 3: regional languages that don't have that requirement don't blow up
Speaker 3: like these Cantonese movies, which is hardly a huge language
Speaker 3: overall in China.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really weird watching that Taiwanese version because
Speaker 1: now after learning a little bit, like a smattering of
Speaker 1: Mandarin and hearing things like oh, how to, like when
Speaker 1: the little girls gotten shot and they're in the hospital
Speaker 1: and the nurses like how to, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I know what that means. I know what some of
Speaker 1: these phrases are. Yeah, it's weird though to hear some
Speaker 1: of the phrases that you're used to when it comes
Speaker 1: to watching the Cantonese version hundreds of times or however
Speaker 1: many times I've seen this movie. But yeah, and I
Speaker 1: was before we started recording that this movie is just
Speaker 1: such a warm blanket to me, like it has become
Speaker 1: a comfort film to me just over all of these years,
Speaker 1: and it's just such a familiar movie to me now,
Speaker 1: Like rewatching it for this podcast was such a pleasure
Speaker 1: just because I get to revisit these characters after a
Speaker 1: few years. I haven't seen this for probably a decade,
Speaker 1: probably since we did that episode on it, and going
Speaker 1: back to this after all this time, seeing these shots,
Speaker 1: seeing these images that I'm so familiar with, the whole
Speaker 1: dragon boat festival, and the way that Chow is there
Speaker 1: with his fake mustache, and I love when when he
Speaker 1: lines up the shot and he does that whole thing
Speaker 1: with the rifle like two or three times again, that
Speaker 1: repeated motion. I'm just like, oh, this is so great
Speaker 1: to see, and just it never lets up. There's no
Speaker 1: real boring parts of this movie whatsoever. And you can
Speaker 1: watch a lot of action movies and think, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we've got our action set pieces and then
Speaker 1: we relax. But during the scenes of relaxing, there's tension
Speaker 1: ratcheting up every single time, where you're getting here's the
Speaker 1: next job, here's Lee investigating Jeff. You go back and
Speaker 1: forth between these two characters, so well of them, Lee
Speaker 1: hunting Jeff, Jeff not even knowing about Lee but caring
Speaker 1: about Jenny. And then once he finds out about Lee,
Speaker 1: then it becomes a real struggle going back and forth
Speaker 1: with those guys. And God again, just to throw at
Speaker 1: another scene that I absolutely love. It's when we have
Speaker 1: Lee in that same chair that Jeff is sitting in
Speaker 1: and just sitting there, and that wonderful camera move across
Speaker 1: and cutting on those cross beams of the window just
Speaker 1: to go from one person to the next, seeing them
Speaker 1: sit in exactly the same position, and then seeing Lee
Speaker 1: reenact what Jeff had done before with the gun. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that was such a mind blowing thing of
Speaker 1: having this character just relates so much to this killer
Speaker 1: that he actually does the exact same actions. It was
Speaker 1: just such a chef's kiss of a moment for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's so beautifully like visually told entirely the movie.
Speaker 2: I let you come to the conclusion on your own.
Speaker 2: It feels like it expects you to realize, like, these
Speaker 2: two guys are are more similar than they are different.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure we'll get into later that some movies
Speaker 2: are a little less subtle with doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it expects you to know what they're feeling without
Speaker 3: you telling or without them telling you. And you do
Speaker 3: they know what they're feeling. You identify with both of them.
Speaker 3: You feel what they're feeling, You feel what poor Sidney
Speaker 3: Fung is feeling. You do your and then not as
Speaker 3: much with what Jenny is saying, but when she's singing,
Speaker 3: you know what she's feeling.
Speaker 1: There are whole swaths of this film that are completely
Speaker 1: dialogue free, like that assassination of the uncle at the
Speaker 1: dragon boat festival, just the whole thing of the boat
Speaker 1: chase that happens afterwards. When Jeff shows up on the
Speaker 1: beach and there's a little girl playing, there's no dialogue
Speaker 1: being exchanged. There's no dialogue when he sees when she
Speaker 1: looks and frowns because she sees the glint off of
Speaker 1: the gun sight and he catches on to that, and
Speaker 1: he also then sees the gun sight but through the
Speaker 1: reflection into sunglasses, and yeah, not a word is spoken
Speaker 1: for probably a good ten minutes of this, and that
Speaker 1: for me again goes back to that Leone thing where
Speaker 1: you can watch so many Search of Leone films with
Speaker 1: no dialogue whatsoever. He was such a silent filmmaker who
Speaker 1: just added in the right amount of dialogue. And I
Speaker 1: feel that Wu was doing the exact same thing here.
Speaker 2: That very much feels almost like him laying tracks for
Speaker 2: an idea he clearly had of making something universal, but
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't talk about it, but I
Speaker 2: think like the twenty twenty three he had that movie
Speaker 2: Silent Night that came out, which it was an action
Speaker 2: revenge Christmas movie, but it had no dialogue whatsoever, and
Speaker 2: his I believe his specific intent was to make a
Speaker 2: movie that no matter where you showed it, people would
Speaker 2: know what was happening. And it's not the Killer, but
Speaker 2: it is. It's a pretty strong success in making an
Speaker 2: experiment that I felt worked pretty well and it really is.
Speaker 3: So accessible one I like that movie, and one of
Speaker 3: the things I liked about it is both that it
Speaker 3: worked with that silence, but that the guy who's gone
Speaker 3: on his revenge bender has a wife. And even though
Speaker 3: like in other movies or television shows where you have
Speaker 3: a man who's anchor and getting revenge, somehow they can't
Speaker 3: help portray the wife as a nag. And we hear
Speaker 3: some of the things she said, or we see some
Speaker 3: of the things she says because she's texting it. But
Speaker 3: Jodwood does such a good job of conveying her as
Speaker 3: a person that you're like, she is far more emotionally
Speaker 3: healthy in dealing with the situation than her husband, and
Speaker 3: we barely see her. We see her less than we
Speaker 3: see Celia and the Killer, And once again, she manages
Speaker 3: to be a person, even though she's supposed to be
Speaker 3: the thing. That's. No, you shouldn't go off and do revenge.
Speaker 3: You should stay home and deal with your trauma responsibly.
Speaker 3: And I'm just I'm so impressed that he was able
Speaker 3: to do that with a character that gotten prestige. Cable
Speaker 3: is oh Skyler White such a bitch ure Rita won't
Speaker 3: leave Dexter alone, just let him go kill people.
Speaker 2: I'm clearly too worped because I've seen to many Charles
Speaker 2: Bronson movies. Because when you said the wife being a
Speaker 2: you said a nag. I was going dead. That's the
Speaker 2: other direction.
Speaker 1: Well, that's so much the Yeah, let's get rid of
Speaker 1: the wife as soon as we can, or it's the
Speaker 1: john Wick of it. All right, the wife has died,
Speaker 1: But really I think it's a dog dying that sets
Speaker 1: John Wick on his whole crusade.
Speaker 3: Totally. The dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's his last attachment to the humanity that
Speaker 2: he built up.
Speaker 3: I don't think you understand these boys killed my dog.
Speaker 1: One bridge too far, thank you very much. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just again, like going back to the metal drama of
Speaker 1: it all, and just the tragedy of this film that
Speaker 1: we are taking everything up to this new friendship between
Speaker 1: Lee and Jeff and then having to break it down
Speaker 1: and break it apart and just have this massacre at
Speaker 1: the end. There is no happy ending to this movie,
Speaker 1: and I love it for that, the tragedy of Jeff's character,
Speaker 1: the tragedy of Lee's character, the tragedy of Jenny will
Speaker 1: be going blind, if not dying from wounds. Who knows
Speaker 1: how many times she's gotten shot at the end of
Speaker 1: this thing. But my god, I just appreciate the downer ending.
Speaker 3: I appreciated it so much more after we watched the
Speaker 3: other two movies too, because while you're in it, you're like,
Speaker 3: I don't want this to be happening. Why can't they
Speaker 3: all be happy? Why can't Jenny receive his corne as
Speaker 3: if he has to die? And I see the other movies,
Speaker 3: they just make me angry about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God forbid anyone ever tried to make this movie
Speaker 2: with a happy ending. And yeah, I was definitely blindsided because,
Speaker 2: like I said, I saw this pretty much after his
Speaker 2: main run of doing film in America was over, so
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen him get even though learning in retrospect
Speaker 2: that he wanted to end most of his movies the
Speaker 2: dying and Hollywood wouldn't let him. Yeah, there was no
Speaker 2: preparation for the fact that after all this and you
Speaker 2: get so much, so many heroic moments, they get so
Speaker 2: many cool moments. The shot of them right as they're
Speaker 2: about to walk out of the church together and it
Speaker 2: slows down tearing the brief it's like the two coolest
Speaker 2: guys in the world. They're unstoppable, except for about ten
Speaker 2: minutes later when they're entirely stopped.
Speaker 1: Oh it's so good. That moment where they both freeze.
Speaker 1: You get those incredible Martin scorts as he freeze frames
Speaker 1: and just that little like how they like will nod
Speaker 1: into one or smile into the other one, and you
Speaker 1: just like, this is it.
Speaker 2: They're synchronized. Now, they are together in on this until
Speaker 2: the end. They just hope the end probably would be
Speaker 2: a little better than what it is for them.
Speaker 3: It's just it's remarkably effective if you think about it,
Speaker 3: because like I think he's also influenced by Little Caesar
Speaker 3: and stuff like the hat like older gangster movie, not
Speaker 3: just with the pinstripe suits. And I think he's not
Speaker 3: necessarily telling us that crime doesn't pay. But a recurring
Speaker 3: theme through his films, as violent as they are, is
Speaker 3: that violence is destructive and there's no good that can
Speaker 3: come of this. Not even Jeff's corneas can be translated
Speaker 3: into too Jenny to fix what he's done, because what
Speaker 3: he's done is unfixable, and what these people are all
Speaker 3: doing is just unfixable. And instead of having memoralizing ending
Speaker 3: where someone comes out and says and crime doesn't pay,
Speaker 3: we feel it. We feel the whole weight of this
Speaker 3: terrible thing that's happened, and that has been very cool
Speaker 3: and beautiful and amazing and emotional the whole time. But
Speaker 3: in the end, it's like there is no other way
Speaker 3: for it to end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right down to the choice of it all ending
Speaker 2: at the most holy of places at church, Like we
Speaker 2: mentioned the whole like the Virgin Mary statue to exploding.
Speaker 2: It literally feels like they're at a point where nothing
Speaker 2: is sacred anymore. There's no going back, truly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like it's a deconsecrated church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well we were all, oh, yeah, I see,
Speaker 2: I almost held back on that, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and he's not a believer too, like he
Speaker 3: just finds it peaceful.
Speaker 2: But and I've also always thought that was the other
Speaker 2: interesting thing about the movie is that that is probably
Speaker 2: the most Western influence there is that his continued return
Speaker 2: to a Christian church, which I don't know what kind
Speaker 2: of hold they have over over the region there compared
Speaker 2: to the rest of the world, but from what I understand,
Speaker 2: it's not nearly as strong. So it's Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: very interesting visual thing, and especially hearing about some of
Speaker 2: the scripts that didn't get made where they were going
Speaker 2: to have it in the West and him going to
Speaker 2: like Buddhist churches and stuff apparently to switch around and
Speaker 2: wouldn't feel the same.
Speaker 3: The thing is is the church is important to John Wu.
Speaker 3: He's a Christian. He was raped, and so part of
Speaker 3: the reason we feel that is he felt it. And
Speaker 3: if you just decide to switch something else in and
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean anything to you, what does the audience
Speaker 3: get from that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, again, a very Martin scor says a thing because
Speaker 1: says he was torn between the church and filmmaking, and
Speaker 1: I think we're better off for him choosing the filmmaking route.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and take a break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back after these brief messages. Looking for
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Speaker 1: Boys to do in this children?
Speaker 2: Some of the boys think you are legends.
Speaker 1: What did they say?
Speaker 2: They say the Queen of the dead.
Speaker 1: Why did you save the girl?
Speaker 2: Easy question, not so easy answer.
Speaker 4: I've been on a round town based in The contract
Speaker 4: was clear you should be dead.
Speaker 1: You just betrayed the most dangerous man in Paris dreams.
Speaker 5: So the girl the witness.
Speaker 6: I've been having a living.
Speaker 4: If you want to live, come with me.
Speaker 5: Swings.
Speaker 2: So you're a good cot, then.
Speaker 1: Then you are an assassin?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to do something good for a change?
Speaker 3: How many times to play? Don't I'm always good at
Speaker 3: what I do.
Speaker 2: Give up the group sand every killer in the city
Speaker 2: after you, We're all up on CP time. How many times?
Speaker 3: Never sa boys to do his job?
Speaker 1: As the story.
Speaker 3: I know from s.
Speaker 1: Why don't you drop it?
Speaker 2: I'm not the one out of But its all right.
Speaker 1: We're back and we're talking about the Killer, all things
Speaker 1: the Killer. And yeah we were talking right before the break,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of the church in the Killer, that
Speaker 1: kind of nice cyclical thing we started the church. We
Speaker 1: in at the church. Very odd that hom high bemicel.
Speaker 1: The Indian film also starts at a church, a Christian church.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about that. I will admit I had
Speaker 1: forgotten that I had seen this film when I went
Speaker 1: back and listened. By the way, one of the most
Speaker 1: mortifying things that you can do as a podcaster is
Speaker 1: go back seven hundred and twenty some weeks and listen
Speaker 1: to work that you did way back then. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm glad that we're back here talking about this,
Speaker 1: and I'm especially glad that I'm talking with an audience
Speaker 1: that can actually see the homo eroticism in heroic bloodshed
Speaker 1: films without having to like go crazy about that and
Speaker 1: talk about how Charlian Fat does want to fuck Danny Lee.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, no, it's calmed down, It's really okay.
Speaker 1: There is there's a lot of home eroticism inside of
Speaker 1: heroic bloodshed films. Just watch Who is the One with
Speaker 1: Simon m And and shli On Fat. Oh gosh what
Speaker 1: it's the Ringo Lamb movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Contact, Full Contact, watchful Contact if you want to
Speaker 7: real Yeah, Full Contact is Simon M's gay in that,
Speaker 7: he's just straight up gay in that.
Speaker 3: And there's homeroticism in The Killer. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that anybody wants to fuck anybody. That just means there's
Speaker 3: homoroticism in The Killer.
Speaker 1: As there is a lot of action felms and hard
Speaker 1: boiled yes.
Speaker 2: Especially hard boiled Yeah, the genre in general. When you've
Speaker 2: got two guys posturing against each other and the world
Speaker 2: at the same time, it's gonna happen. It's just gonna happen.
Speaker 3: I feel like even getting into homoroticism as only sexual desire,
Speaker 3: because I feel like they can have love feelings for
Speaker 3: each other, and they clearly love each other, and you
Speaker 3: can define it any way you want. But there's a
Speaker 3: lot of love in The Killer and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of love in.
Speaker 1: Hard Boil, and they both start with these characters not
Speaker 1: loving each other. It's very much it's a love story
Speaker 1: between Jeff and Jenny, and it's a love story with
Speaker 1: Lee and Jeff. I think there might be a little
Speaker 1: love between Lee and Jenny as well, but it's not
Speaker 1: really a love triangle.
Speaker 3: And Sydney is like the ex, like we went out
Speaker 3: a long time ago and now we're just really good
Speaker 3: friends and you know each other so well.
Speaker 2: They still get along, but obviously those days are past well.
Speaker 1: And yeah, both Chang and Sydney making these ultimate sacrifices
Speaker 1: for their tutelagees Sidney doing his best to get back
Speaker 1: that money and also get back his self respect. That's
Speaker 1: the whole thing. When he fixes his time and he says,
Speaker 1: I'm not a dog, I'm just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what a moment.
Speaker 3: I also think there's parallels between Chang and Jenny, that
Speaker 3: they're both like the wounded partners, that they're both being avenged,
Speaker 3: or like both Jeff and Lee are upset about what's
Speaker 3: happened to Jenny and Chang and blame each other. Although
Speaker 3: I guess everybody blames Jeff about Jenny, but.
Speaker 1: Though not necessarily Jenny, because I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: did she ever find out that he's the one she has.
Speaker 3: To I think she knows. I think when she finds
Speaker 3: out what he does, she and his focus on getting
Speaker 3: her from Corneas. I feel like she has to know,
Speaker 3: and in so many things in this movie, she doesn't
Speaker 3: say anything about it, because what is there to say?
Speaker 2: These poor people trying to remain hopeful despite the absolute
Speaker 2: worst things in the world coming their way one after
Speaker 2: another until literally it couldn't possibly go any worse.
Speaker 1: So, Carol, you have definitely seen way more Indian films
Speaker 1: set I have, and I'm so curious what your take
Speaker 1: on Amhi Bamasala is.
Speaker 3: If you had not told me that it was a
Speaker 3: renake of The Killer, I would think that it was
Speaker 3: a very standard nineteen nineties Hindi action movie that had
Speaker 3: references to The Killer in it, and I would only
Speaker 3: really have noticed the boat scene where he does the
Speaker 3: rifle assassination account like very like Jeff and possibly the
Speaker 3: Blinded Singer. But the rest of it seems like of
Speaker 3: all the movies we watched, these remakes seem like they're
Speaker 3: fixing the Killer for different cultural contexts to me, and
Speaker 3: I'm most forgiving of this Hindi one because I've seen
Speaker 3: so many Hindi movies where people are, well, why do
Speaker 3: they know each other? What's really going on? Well, twenty
Speaker 3: years ago, their fathers knew each other and something bad happen,
Speaker 3: and now twenty years from now, they have to resolve
Speaker 3: the situation by teaming up and discovering that they are
Speaker 3: either actually brothers or they might as well be brothers
Speaker 3: because they share the same father figure, and they will
Speaker 3: get revenge for their fathers and themselves against the real evil.
Speaker 3: And I would have watched it like that if I
Speaker 3: had not known that it was a remake, and unfortunately,
Speaker 3: knowing it was a remake made me feel much more
Speaker 3: unfairly towards it. I made sure to watch it first
Speaker 3: so that I wasn't watching any of these right after
Speaker 3: watching The Killer, because I too haven't seen it in
Speaker 3: five or ten years. But I know how I feel
Speaker 3: about it, and I could only be unfair, and I'm
Speaker 3: still not sure that I'm not being unfair.
Speaker 1: I love what you just said, because that whole idea
Speaker 1: of the thirty years ago thing. I just went to
Speaker 1: see the new Rashna Khan film coolly, and it literally
Speaker 1: does a thirty years ago right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the film, so we get to see a lot more like, oh,
Speaker 1: how do these two characters know each other? Why are
Speaker 1: they saying this thing? What is happening with this? You
Speaker 1: get that so much in these movies, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I've only seen I would consider it a handful, maybe
Speaker 1: a dozen, two dozen at the most Indian films from
Speaker 1: both North and South India. And I'm doing my best
Speaker 1: to not ever call these Bollywood movies again because they're
Speaker 1: Indian films. They're not Bollywood films. And yeah, that whole
Speaker 1: idea of the things in the past that motivate you
Speaker 1: to the future, it's funny because we're going to get
Speaker 1: a lot more of that in the remake of The
Speaker 1: Killer that we're going to talk about in a few minutes.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, it
Speaker 1: gets to be a little much. But yeah, with the
Speaker 1: hemline benasl it really isn't until about what fifty five
Speaker 1: minutes into the movie where you get the blinding of
Speaker 1: the woman, you get the bullets being removed from the
Speaker 1: back in the church. This is within the first ten
Speaker 1: minutes of The Killer, and then it's almost an hour
Speaker 1: in until you get the first glimpse of oh, there's
Speaker 1: job will influences on this.
Speaker 2: I had the same where I was watching it, and
Speaker 2: I think I clocked that it was about fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: in before the actual the Killer part of the movie started.
Speaker 2: Everything else was just backstory leading up to it, and
Speaker 2: then there was and I probably would have clocked it
Speaker 2: just because they started doing like those exact shots of
Speaker 2: him sitting in the church with the camera moving around.
Speaker 2: I'm like, now it looks familiar. And then she's blind somehow,
Speaker 2: and then and then it sprinkles in set pieces here
Speaker 2: and there. I remember they end up in a parking
Speaker 2: garage at some point they do the big hit on somebody,
Speaker 2: Like all all that stuff is there. But it feels
Speaker 2: the best way I can describe it is it almost
Speaker 2: reminds me of someone's like fan fiction. They're like, I
Speaker 2: love the movie The Killers so much, but I need
Speaker 2: to know how do all these people know each other?
Speaker 2: How far back do they go? Did someone give someone
Speaker 2: water in prison? Maybe and that's why they're still friends today?
Speaker 2: All the lore what if the villain had a parrot
Speaker 2: that made his decisions for him.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's a classic candy.
Speaker 2: That was so really yeah yeah, Like there are so
Speaker 2: many weird touches that like, I can't hate it, but
Speaker 2: I'm so baffled. But that's just that it's such a
Speaker 2: completely different culture. This is It's not the first time
Speaker 2: I've had that experience. I watched Mahakal as well the
Speaker 2: Indian Nightmare on Elm Street, and it's the same thing
Speaker 2: where I think it starts off maybe with a nightmare sequence,
Speaker 2: and then fifty minutes of the movie passes before the
Speaker 2: Nightmare on Olme Street, stuff starts happening, and it just
Speaker 2: they want to lay out their world. They want to
Speaker 2: give you their probably highly paid comedy characters who exist
Speaker 2: in scenes that are unrelated to anything else in the movie.
Speaker 2: They throw in several musical scene sequences, and then those
Speaker 2: things that you recognize also start popping up along the way.
Speaker 1: Well taught me a new word, Carol. What is the
Speaker 1: thing when you sing like a doughray me song?
Speaker 3: Oh that's not that's French, that's sofage, sofage.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I had some voice like friends who are singer friend
Speaker 3: like in classical voice training and so that is sofage
Speaker 3: And it was like, according, I've seen it myself, and
Speaker 3: Beth Watkins was telling me that it was really popular
Speaker 3: for a period in Hindi films in particular, and yet
Speaker 3: has one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I never heard that term before. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: sure does have one in space.
Speaker 3: Did not expect it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of this movie I didn't expect.
Speaker 1: And I will say that I feel compared to fourteen
Speaker 1: years ago, where I probably was making fun of this movie,
Speaker 1: I actually had a pretty good time watching this. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was the best Indian film that I've
Speaker 1: ever seen in my life, but I had some good
Speaker 1: times during it and it was just fascinating to see. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's this scene from The Killer. Twenty minutes later, here's
Speaker 1: another scene from The Killer. Twenty minutes after that, Here's
Speaker 1: another scene from The Killer. But it definitely takes a
Speaker 1: different path.
Speaker 3: I think if I had watched it on my own,
Speaker 3: I would be like, Okay, this is a very Hindi
Speaker 3: action movie. It has our Dads thirty years ago, it
Speaker 3: has oh look, it's veteran beloved actor Prawn as the
Speaker 3: secret father of the two guys it has a secret father,
Speaker 3: and then I'd be like, oh, that's a cute little
Speaker 3: reference to the Killer. Oh that's a cute little reference
Speaker 3: to the Killer. And the rest is like just set
Speaker 3: up for melodramatic scenes about like really he's a good person,
Speaker 3: and action set pieces and comedy set pieces and they're
Speaker 3: all and musical numbers and so it's like basically an
Speaker 3: action Masala film where it has a little bit of
Speaker 3: everything for everybody, but a lot of action. And if
Speaker 3: I watch it as a Killer remake, then I yeah,
Speaker 3: I would be waiting fifty five minutes for the Killer
Speaker 3: remake instead of being like, I'm watching an Indian action movie.
Speaker 3: This is what I'm doing with three hours of my tonight.
Speaker 2: The amount of verbal justification their version of Jeffrey gives himself,
Speaker 2: like the amount of open conflict he discusses morally within
Speaker 2: himself and in his irredeemability or want for redemption or
Speaker 2: whatever it might be at the moment, all the things
Speaker 2: that Shalian Fat says by looking at the camera for
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, like the censorship board in India is still
Speaker 3: very strong, and so you get a lot more of really,
Speaker 3: I'm a good guy and like a lot of bad
Speaker 3: guys can't win, and so I think it affects the
Speaker 3: form a lot too. And it's ironic because Hong Kong
Speaker 3: also had a film censorship board in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3: I don't know was the killer category three. I can't
Speaker 3: imagine it was not.
Speaker 1: I don't remember seeing that on anything. For me. Category
Speaker 1: three usually has boobs, Yeah, he usually has boobs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually that was the magic formula there. So all the
Speaker 1: Amy Yip films I remember, but then you would get
Speaker 1: some of those extreme violence things too. Wasn't like a
Speaker 1: bull of syndrome and yeah, like those fit into the
Speaker 1: category three.
Speaker 3: Stuff too, the Indian one, like you probably saw. When
Speaker 3: you watch it, there's always a certificate at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the film saying it's okay to watch. And I
Speaker 3: wonder how much that it's beyond people's really liking nice
Speaker 3: speeches and people trying to decide what the right thing
Speaker 3: to do is and justifying to other people how in
Speaker 3: this one he's I would be you if I had
Speaker 3: a different circumstance, and you would be me and the
Speaker 3: police officers. No, I wouldn't.
Speaker 5: I made you made me first.
Speaker 2: I mean I was a kid, I killed your parents.
Speaker 2: I mean I say I made you know you're going
Speaker 2: to say made me. How child is he get? I
Speaker 2: wouldn't get a guy would last. So much moralizing and
Speaker 2: so much monologuing. But yeah, it did make me think
Speaker 2: of just even like old American films from like the
Speaker 2: Hayes era, where you'll go through the whole movie, at
Speaker 2: the end of it it's going to take a sharp
Speaker 2: turn where something is going to happen that was forced
Speaker 2: on them, and you can tell it doesn't fit the
Speaker 2: rest of the movie quite the same way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there might even be someone saying, well, he
Speaker 3: was a good kid who went wrong or something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, the weirdest thing about it, I think, though, with
Speaker 2: all the visual elements that it borrows, the one thing
Speaker 2: it doesn't really try to do like The Killer is
Speaker 2: the action. There's a lot of hand to hand stuff.
Speaker 2: The scene when he saves not Jenny from being harassed
Speaker 2: is like a full on like fight in a park
Speaker 2: instead of him just beating some dudes up and throwing
Speaker 2: a trash can at him. The action it did not
Speaker 2: it specifically, the most iconic thing did not borrow, like
Speaker 2: the Kimbo pistols. It's usually one at a time, which
Speaker 2: admittedly is more accurate to use one gun at a time,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the action is entirely different. And I feel
Speaker 2: like if you're ripping off a John Woo movie, usually
Speaker 2: that's the thing people rip off the most.
Speaker 1: When I saw Demolition Man for the first time and
Speaker 1: what was that ninety three when you get that slow
Speaker 1: most shot of Sylvester Stallone with two pistols shooting at
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes, I'm just like, well, Okay, Hong Kong has arrived.
Speaker 1: We are now seeing the influence on American films.
Speaker 3: I was wondering when I was watching it, like I've
Speaker 3: seen other Hindi movies where they have a lot of
Speaker 3: faux kung fu, like better or worse fake kung fu.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, if in ninety four what they were
Speaker 3: really going for was Jackie Kan, that they had been
Speaker 3: watching a lot of Jackie Chan and they were like,
Speaker 3: you know what, we'll do this movie and we'll have
Speaker 3: the stuff. Would be really great is to p see
Speaker 3: Saniel Shatty doing hand to hand combat and doing roundhouse
Speaker 3: and stuff in some kind of warehouse area.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, Ras kicks a lot of ass and
Speaker 1: coolly like I was talking about, whenever he punches anybody,
Speaker 1: they literally fly across the room. It's amazing to see
Speaker 1: the force of his punches and just thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: where are they are they digitally removing the wires here
Speaker 1: because all of those seemed like yank shots.
Speaker 3: Did you see the Tamil Singham where he's just picking
Speaker 3: up late posts and whacken people and.
Speaker 2: They go play, Oh, that's I was going to say.
Speaker 2: Singlem is probably my favorite. Singham is a movie where
Speaker 2: that man is doing everything that we were choking about
Speaker 2: Chuck Morris doing twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: And then if you watch the Hindi Group version, that
Speaker 3: is the most homooerotic film I have real hit. Shetty
Speaker 3: is absolutely in love with his action hero Jay Devkin
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's the version I've seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the Handy one.
Speaker 2: All three main ones, and apparently there's a bunch of
Speaker 2: spin offs that I had no idea about.
Speaker 3: The original one is Tamil movie. It's a South Indian movie,
Speaker 3: so the action is even more insane and extreme and
Speaker 3: the dancing is better.
Speaker 1: I just love some of these extreme action films. And
Speaker 1: then you watch how the Americans were trying to ape it,
Speaker 1: and just so many of them were failing so hard.
Speaker 1: That little nod to Chilean Fat and King and everyone
Speaker 1: and says, low down, dirty shame.
Speaker 2: I'm chill, young fat. Do you know what that means?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you come with a egg roll and me so soup.
Speaker 1: You are not, buddy, or you get all those Chilean
Speaker 1: fat movies here in America that were just not good,
Speaker 1: not good at all. Replacement killers or bulletproof Monk.
Speaker 3: I've heard that they actually made him burn his hands
Speaker 3: on the gun and replacement killers because he fired so
Speaker 3: much the gun got hot.
Speaker 1: You've got to treat that man with some respect, these
Speaker 1: god amongst men.
Speaker 3: And what a trooper he was to do it.
Speaker 1: Anyway, The Killer obviously it opened up in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine. It would play a very fateful
Speaker 1: screening at the Toronto International Film Festival also in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. I just had to go back and double
Speaker 1: check that that was when it was playing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it had such a big influence on so many things
Speaker 1: and just became not necessarily mainstream hit, more of an
Speaker 1: underground hit for a lot of folks. But It was
Speaker 1: one of those have you seen this movie? You have
Speaker 1: to check this out. The LaserDisc that came out on
Speaker 1: Criterion was a huge release for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and that was the way to see it for a
Speaker 1: long time, and it really just made such an impact that,
Speaker 1: of course a remake was inevitable, but thank god. Back
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, Walter Hill and David Giler wrote
Speaker 1: a screenplay for tri Star. The screenplay I have is
Speaker 1: dated April sixth, nineteen ninety two, and it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I've read it, and I just remember how
Speaker 1: off base it was through the whole thing, and just
Speaker 1: how everything that felt Asian had to be switched to
Speaker 1: American and everything that was more Western had to be
Speaker 1: switched to Asian. So rather than meeting in a church,
Speaker 1: they meet at a Buddhist monastery and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck are you doing? Not good whatsoever.
Speaker 3: There's a line when he goes into that temple and
Speaker 3: they go do you believe in the Eightfold Path? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Originally supposed to be Richard Gear and Denzel Washington, and
Speaker 1: then apparently there were concerns over get this homo erotic
Speaker 1: subtext between the two characters, So Terence Chang suggested that
Speaker 1: they go with Michelle Yo instead. I think that would
Speaker 1: have been right around the time she was coming to
Speaker 1: more American screens or world screens, I should say, with
Speaker 1: things like the World is Not Enough. Was that the
Speaker 1: James Bond one that she was in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was about ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was ninety eight. Oh, this is ninety two, Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is still yeah, because this was even before
Speaker 1: super Cop, right, yeah, a super cop I think we
Speaker 1: got was it ninety five?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Wow, So that would have been
Speaker 1: really unusual to have her in that. I have to
Speaker 1: see what the source is for that, because I can't
Speaker 1: see Michelle Yo.
Speaker 3: I can see Terrence Cheng though, being like Michelle Yo
Speaker 3: is bad.
Speaker 2: You know a legend when you see one.
Speaker 1: And then in ninety three or was it ninety four,
Speaker 1: there was the Jim Cash and Jack Apps junior version,
Speaker 1: and that was a Caucasian hitman in Hong Kong. That
Speaker 1: one's a little bit better. The Hill and Giler one
Speaker 1: is just exorable. I just really if it had not
Speaker 1: been a PDF, I would have thrown it across the
Speaker 1: room when I was done with it.
Speaker 2: That's a bummer because I generally like Walter Hill. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a reason not every project makes it to film.
Speaker 1: Well, this is right around the time of Alien three,
Speaker 1: and I I know I have nothing good to say
Speaker 1: about him and how he treated Fincher in Alien three.
Speaker 1: Ironic that Fincher. Every time I look up The Killer,
Speaker 1: his movie The Killer comes up, I will.
Speaker 3: Give the Walter Like I looked at the scripts today
Speaker 3: and I will give the Walter Hill one that he
Speaker 3: mostly just copies what goes on with the original movie,
Speaker 3: and like you say, then he's oh, this needs more orientalism.
Speaker 3: And I understand why he was making things more American,
Speaker 3: because I'm sure he wanted to get this movie made
Speaker 3: and they were like, we can't have a Chinese hero
Speaker 3: and doing that thing where they're like, it's not us,
Speaker 3: it's American audiences. We're not racist. He made Jenny even
Speaker 3: more of a plot device, like Jenny is much worse
Speaker 3: a character, and everything is more explicit and as a
Speaker 3: little bit of pettiness. There's a part where in the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine one where Jeff walks her home and
Speaker 3: then he's just going to leave because he's not a
Speaker 3: creepy weirdo, even though he's a killer. And a cat
Speaker 3: knocks over her lamp and he goes into check because
Speaker 3: something has happened in her apartment to make her scared.
Speaker 3: And then there's that really charming scene where Chalian Fat
Speaker 3: where jeff'sy's a cat, and then we get to see
Speaker 3: Chalian fat mew and a cat, which I love. Walter
Speaker 3: Hill eliminated that, and he's just would you like to
Speaker 3: check me to check your apartment for you? And she's yes,
Speaker 3: I've been very scared ever since the thing happened. I'm
Speaker 3: sorry to bring it back.
Speaker 2: Oh see, I was somehow I was expecting that to
Speaker 2: just turn into a full on sex scene. So it's
Speaker 2: so not sad. Never mind, Okay, we got there eventually,
Speaker 2: but the American way, if he ain't a man, if
Speaker 2: he ain't he had a plow, you're.
Speaker 3: Doing this to Chalian fots memory, Sir, He's not even
Speaker 3: dead and you're doing it to his memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then they both have happy endings, right. I think
Speaker 1: the second one, I think that was October eighteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. I was seeing ninety three before, but the
Speaker 1: ninety four to one they don't even I think have
Speaker 1: the showdown and a monastery. I want to say it
Speaker 1: takes place at a train yard.
Speaker 3: I think it does. Yeah. And there's a Russian that
Speaker 3: the FBIBI agent who's come to Hong Kong because Tony
Speaker 3: Wang was an important politician in the United States and
Speaker 3: not just a Hong Kong big, big drug trafficker. And
Speaker 3: he shoots the Russian assassin in the face and then
Speaker 3: tells everybody that's Jeff and lets them go. And I
Speaker 3: think Jeff just leaves. He just gives the money to
Speaker 3: Jenny and takes off.
Speaker 1: You know what I really want from a killer film
Speaker 1: is a very happy ending. That's what I would like.
Speaker 1: So I'm in Luck twenty twenty four, The Killer, John
Speaker 1: Wu returning to his old stomping grounds. Should he have
Speaker 1: even called this movie the Killer? I think Hamhin Benisol
Speaker 1: has more to do with the Killer than this film does.
Speaker 2: The skeleton is there, but everything else is weird. It
Speaker 2: feels like something that went through a bunch of weird filters.
Speaker 2: And when you find out the person responsible is the
Speaker 2: person who gave you the original, all you have leftter questions.
Speaker 3: Questions were answered by It's based on his film, and
Speaker 3: he didn't write it, so he directed it instead.
Speaker 1: You've got what Brian Helgalin's name is attached to this,
Speaker 1: and Heglin's an interesting dude. I found out a lot
Speaker 1: more about him than I wanted to know when I
Speaker 1: was doing research about ninety seven six Evil Too, and
Speaker 1: just that he was a most dimension hinged when it
Speaker 1: came to that. Yeah, and so it's yeah, it's him,
Speaker 1: it's Josh Campbell and Matt's Duckin' I believe is how
Speaker 1: you pronounced his name. And then it's also Aaron Creevy,
Speaker 1: so Aaron Creevy has a writer credit, and then Helgeal
Speaker 1: and Campbell and Stuck and have a screenplay. And of
Speaker 1: course there's an and, and there's an ampersand in there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it does definitely feel like this went through
Speaker 1: a lot of hands as I was watching it, and
Speaker 1: I guess maybe it was the presence of Checki Cairo
Speaker 1: in here too. I just kept thinking of a Luke
Speaker 1: Bassan film like I was thinking too, thinking some lafem Nakita,
Speaker 1: some Colombiana, just this whole idea of this female assassin
Speaker 1: in Paris, and I was seeing so much more Bason
Speaker 1: than I was seeing Wu in a Wu film, which
Speaker 1: is just a strange thing to say because for me
Speaker 1: Basan it was a lot of his career too, John Woo.
Speaker 2: And more specifically for me, I wasn't thinking of Basan
Speaker 2: in particular, but a lot of the movies that he produced,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, especially the mid early two thousands from like
Speaker 2: that like that Transporter District thirty era, where he was
Speaker 2: producing a lot of movies that involved brants but were
Speaker 2: clearly being made for the West. But yeah, the Kids
Speaker 2: of the Dragon of Jetley was probably one of the
Speaker 2: better ones, but yeah, several. It fit more in with those,
Speaker 2: in particular with despite the fact that we're dealing with
Speaker 2: somebody who's generally considered a master filmmaker here, it doesn't
Speaker 2: quite feel right, and a lot of those movies, depending
Speaker 2: on who was directing them, never quite felt right either.
Speaker 3: If I had seen this as a response to Bisons m. Nikita,
Speaker 3: I would feel I would really like it because I
Speaker 3: would feel like it fixed a lot of things that
Speaker 3: I found personally upsetting and lafem Nikita in terms of
Speaker 3: that whole thing of she's been crapped and she's been
Speaker 3: basically forced to become a killer. This would have been
Speaker 3: the movie that I would have wanted back when Lethum
Speaker 3: Nikita came out, and not the movie that I got
Speaker 3: that felt very much like a fantasy that I did
Speaker 3: not enjoy watching. I know a lot of people love
Speaker 3: that movie, and please go ahead and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I rewatched it for this episode, and I remember liking
Speaker 1: it a lot, but I think I really only like
Speaker 1: the movie once Jean Renaud shows up, and I just
Speaker 1: love He's charming. He's very charming. He's dressed like Jeff
Speaker 1: Costello from Le Samurai again, so you have that nod
Speaker 1: in there, but him just as this unstoppable killer who
Speaker 1: has no qualms about murdering anybody. The way he's pouring
Speaker 1: acid over the body and the body starts kicking, and
Speaker 1: he's just like, oh, you fools, you didn't kill this
Speaker 1: guy properly. I love it. I thought that every single
Speaker 1: scene he's in, which is unfortunately what the last ten
Speaker 1: minutes of the movie. Maybe it's weird for me to
Speaker 1: say this, but I really like Point to New Return
Speaker 1: better than the fam Nakita.
Speaker 2: I've never seen all a point in a Return, and
Speaker 2: I keep meaning to I've got a complicated relationship with
Speaker 2: the son anyway, just because I've learned way too much
Speaker 2: about his personal life and can't can't go back to
Speaker 2: leon at all.
Speaker 1: Oh no, thank you. I couldn't even handle that the
Speaker 1: first time I saw it all the way back then,
Speaker 1: I could.
Speaker 2: Handle it only because of Jean Renau, because he made
Speaker 2: anything that felt like it could have been weird feel
Speaker 2: like it wasn't. But now, knowing who Bassan really is,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh shit, not anymore, buddy. Sorry.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I was young at the time too when
Speaker 3: I saw that, so I like, Gean Renau is always amazing.
Speaker 3: He was clearly being fatherly and I was young, so
Speaker 3: I wasn't like Now, I would watch these movies and
Speaker 3: I'm like, your sketchy feelings about women really come through
Speaker 3: in your films. And I'm glad that John Wu is
Speaker 3: here to make this movie about a female killer that
Speaker 3: I wished I had seen.
Speaker 1: Before, and this version of the killer talking about La
Speaker 1: fam Nikita. I don't know if you guys have ever
Speaker 1: seen the film Black at from I want to say
Speaker 1: ninety one. It's very to me, that's very much the
Speaker 1: Hong Kong repeating back Lafam Nikita, though not very good.
Speaker 1: I don't remember really liking that movie very much. I
Speaker 1: think The Killer twenty twenty four it's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: It's always interesting to me when a filmmaker goes back
Speaker 1: to something that they've done before. There is that select
Speaker 1: club of filmmakers who remake their own work, like Alfred
Speaker 1: Hitchcock or Panickey or I can't remember the name of
Speaker 1: the gentleman that did the Vanishing. But that's always an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to see what new things a filmmaker brings
Speaker 1: to his stuff. I don't expect Sam Worthington to be
Speaker 1: part of that new thing because as soon as Sam
Speaker 1: Worthington shows up on screen, I almost immediately check out
Speaker 1: of a movie. So this was a little difficult for
Speaker 1: me for him to be playing this kind of Sydney role.
Speaker 1: But when I talk about how noble and just Sydney is,
Speaker 1: Worthington is his character, not the man himself, is completely
Speaker 1: the opposite, especially that he ends up spoilers for The
Speaker 1: Killer twenty twenty four. I'm glad I said that at
Speaker 1: the beginning, he ends up being the big betrayer of
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and he's the villain of the piece.
Speaker 2: You spot it right out. If anybody needed a spoiler
Speaker 2: warning on that, I'm sorry. It's insanely evident from the
Speaker 2: second he opens his mouth.
Speaker 1: I don't mind the woman that plays the Jeff character.
Speaker 1: I think she's actually really charming. Natalie Manuel, who plays
Speaker 1: z Zee, I really like Omar Sai as ci or say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's easily the best part of the movie for me.
Speaker 2: He's so good.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. Every time he's on screen, I'm like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: this is good. And there are some scenes in here
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh, well, this is interesting. The whole
Speaker 1: idea of the big murder that happens at the club
Speaker 1: and that she's got a samurai sword and that it's
Speaker 1: hidden in her clothes. Though, this whole idea of the
Speaker 1: tailor that Checkie Cairo plays so reminds me of John
Speaker 1: Wick getting a suit or even Eggsy and the Kingsman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot that's I feel like is the
Speaker 2: main difference is that there's so much John Wick influence
Speaker 2: in there, and I feel like I love John Wu
Speaker 2: and I love John Wick. That's close for very different reasons,
Speaker 2: Like they're they're in a similar they're both traveling along
Speaker 2: the same path, but I don't like them for being
Speaker 2: like the other thing. So like John Wick, as fantastical
Speaker 2: as it is, feels like it takes place in something
Speaker 2: more of a heightened version of reality where John Wu
Speaker 2: at his best, like I said, is operatic. It feels
Speaker 2: fully out there. And yeah, there's there's definitely a lot
Speaker 2: of that John Wick. We've got the techno and the
Speaker 2: lights everywhere, and there's just there's so much more of
Speaker 2: that influence here. There's so much more hand the hand
Speaker 2: combat again starting with the samurai sort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it goes back to the Walter Hill because he
Speaker 3: was having like a lot of sliding between Chinese and
Speaker 3: Japanese things. What I think with this one, aside from
Speaker 3: if I watch it like I see it more yes
Speaker 3: in line with Lake French cinema, then John wos wants
Speaker 3: a thief? I say it. And I watched this movie
Speaker 3: and I'd tried to figure out how unfair I was
Speaker 3: being to it and how I would feel about it
Speaker 3: if I hadn't watched The Killer and if it wasn't
Speaker 3: The Killer. But I feel like the best things about
Speaker 3: this movie for me are the John Wu parts. It's
Speaker 3: him directing Omar Sai. It's his bringing on his team
Speaker 3: for doing the editing and everything I don't like about
Speaker 3: this movie is the screenplay. And it's hard to separate
Speaker 3: though when you're watching the movie right. I don't think
Speaker 3: he's responsible for the screenwriters loving John Wick so much,
Speaker 3: but it just makes it more apparent how well he
Speaker 3: filtered his influences to make one of his own masterpieces.
Speaker 3: And they tried to do the same thing. And we're
Speaker 3: like finding chunks of John Wick and chunks of other
Speaker 3: filmmakers and other films in it instead of being like
Speaker 3: it's a complete whole thing on its own.
Speaker 1: What's weird to me that John Wick the last one?
Speaker 1: And I said, Jean Jean Wick, Jean.
Speaker 2: Wick, thats fine?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that was the thing is that the last
Speaker 1: one the big I can't call it an action step
Speaker 1: piece because it's almost like the Sissaphian challenge that he
Speaker 1: has trying to get up those steps at Momart.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The climax, Yah, it's fantastic. I love that he's trying
Speaker 1: to get up those stairs and he has to go
Speaker 1: up multiple times, and just that it's set at montmart
Speaker 1: where that for me is bob La Flambert and is
Speaker 1: just such a iconic thing. So when she looks out
Speaker 1: of her window here in The Killer twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: and she sees the Eiffel Tower, I'm like, why is
Speaker 1: she not living in Malmar? Why is she not where
Speaker 1: Bob Laflambert was like to me, that's where John wu
Speaker 1: would set a remake of The Killer and instead, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just okay, it's a Parisian suburb kind of thing, even
Speaker 1: like the cover version of Live for Today that's going
Speaker 1: on through the movie, which ties the that kind of
Speaker 1: James Marston looking motherfucker at the beginning, or maybe more
Speaker 1: like Dave Franco at the beginning, to what happens later
Speaker 1: on at the club with said and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to try to pronounce his last name, and I love
Speaker 1: again another actor who is in John Wick. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just was so strange that john Wick four felt closer
Speaker 1: to Melville than this film did.
Speaker 3: I think the thing about john Wick, even though there's
Speaker 3: a million of them, is they have a clear vision
Speaker 3: of what they want to do with movies. They have
Speaker 3: their own rules now, but they were like ignoring a
Speaker 3: lot of the rules about filmmaking, like but the first one,
Speaker 3: especially ignoring a lot of the received wisdom about how
Speaker 3: you structuring pace a film, and this one feels like
Speaker 3: the screenwriters are very embedded in Hollywood idea, very current
Speaker 3: Hollywood ideas of how you write a film, how you
Speaker 3: reveal character down to it's she has to have several
Speaker 3: little character works and character growth art, and she has
Speaker 3: to ask if everybody deserves it, very literally, and she
Speaker 3: has to have her crossword puzzle, and then the crossword
Speaker 3: puzzle has to be where she could never do the
Speaker 3: last clue and get the last word, and so at
Speaker 3: the end showing her growth, we discovered that the last
Speaker 3: clue of the last crossword puzzle is reborn and that
Speaker 3: just made me so mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's just it's heavy handed to say the least.
Speaker 2: I mean, again, going back to what I was alluding
Speaker 2: to way earlier, the fact that they had a conversation
Speaker 2: where they where the two characters are having a conversation
Speaker 2: and one of them says, in a different world, I
Speaker 2: would be you and you would be an me. We
Speaker 2: would be doing what the other one is to if
Speaker 2: you spell it out for me. Okay, I'm stupid, that's fine,
Speaker 2: but yeah, and it really does go to give credit
Speaker 2: to especially like people don't give enough credit to that
Speaker 2: first John Wick movie and how intelligent it was in
Speaker 2: Geeze by peace letting you into that world and letting
Speaker 2: you get to know the characters and how things worked
Speaker 2: without spelling it out for you, and still giving you
Speaker 2: a hell of a ride along.
Speaker 3: The way, and even things like the length of the
Speaker 3: cuts that they were willing to do in the fight
Speaker 3: at a time when everything was choppy to be They're like, no,
Speaker 3: we're going to let you see these people who do
Speaker 3: things do their things.
Speaker 2: And that is why stuntman should direct more action movies.
Speaker 2: Though I have to say John Wick two, three four,
Speaker 2: somebody once said, I've never seen a movie franchise climb
Speaker 2: up its own ass so quickly.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do not need the laurd.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The lore is just oh fuck you
Speaker 1: and your high table.
Speaker 2: As long as they keep throwing dunes down escalators, like,
Speaker 2: I'll put up with the bullshit, It's fine.
Speaker 3: I was going to say. My version of that is,
Speaker 3: I am so happy to see all these martial artists
Speaker 3: from all over the world get to do their set pieces.
Speaker 3: And I forgave so much of was it three where
Speaker 3: he went to Algeria.
Speaker 1: I think it was Yeah, with the halle Berry and
Speaker 1: the dogs.
Speaker 3: It wasn't bad. It just felt too long for me.
Speaker 3: But I forgave that film right at the end when
Speaker 3: it gave me Laurence Fishburn as a beggar king, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, I want to see this beggar king movie.
Speaker 3: Give me the ticket to the next movie right now.
Speaker 1: Well, me seeing Donnie Yen as the Blind Swordsman that
Speaker 1: was so amazing.
Speaker 2: I was like stealing the whole movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Donnie Yen, is that Oichi? Please thank you?
Speaker 2: And not just in the action, like he gets all
Speaker 2: the best line deliveries in that movie. He steals every
Speaker 2: second he's on screen.
Speaker 3: Mark to Cascos as his fanboy.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yes, that was great. We're just gonna have
Speaker 2: to switch to the John wickcast.
Speaker 3: Well, I feel that we're at least demonstrating that we
Speaker 3: can love in perfect movie.
Speaker 1: The flashbacks in The Killer twenty twenty four start around
Speaker 1: eleven minutes in and they just carry on from there.
Speaker 1: And they have the style of these flashbacks. I'm just
Speaker 1: not a fan of these little half the screen and
Speaker 1: third of the screen cord of the screen where we
Speaker 1: get introduced to these flashbacks, the way things are sliding
Speaker 1: around and stuff. It just felt, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: they were bored or something, and I was getting bored
Speaker 1: watch some of these flashbacks.
Speaker 2: And for me, it's just what I like about the
Speaker 2: original movie that neither of those the unofficial nor official
Speaker 2: remake does, is that I like that we don't need
Speaker 2: this the entire history of our killer. We don't need
Speaker 2: the entire history of anybody. We just get to pick
Speaker 2: up and run. I don't and especially with this one,
Speaker 2: because I appreciate that it's a female lead, I'm all
Speaker 2: for that. Why does her history have to be that
Speaker 2: she was picked up by a pimp and had to
Speaker 2: kill him. Come on, just let her also work her
Speaker 2: way up the chain and be a bad ass. That
Speaker 2: can happen. Well.
Speaker 1: The way they talk about her that she's the queen
Speaker 1: of Death and she's been murdering all these people, it
Speaker 1: sounds like for so long, And I'm like, she's not
Speaker 1: very old. Yeah, she's a pretty young lady here. I
Speaker 1: didn't even recognize her as being the same woman from Megalopolis,
Speaker 1: which we're going to be talking about later on this
Speaker 1: year as well.
Speaker 2: Still still haven't taken a trip yet I think she
Speaker 2: was in I think she was in some of the
Speaker 2: Fast and Furious movies. I think that's where I first
Speaker 2: really was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's one. I think she's one of the hackers.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Crazy, because I've seen all of them, but I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I mean the reality with those movies.
Speaker 1: Talk about another franchise that went way up its own ass.
Speaker 3: If they give me the rock kicking a torpedo, I
Speaker 3: feel like The Killer twenty twenty four doesn't understand how
Speaker 3: easy I am to please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just give me something so astoundingly stupid that I
Speaker 2: can't help but love it, and we're good.
Speaker 3: I will say I was. There was a part where
Speaker 3: I literally gasped, and I'm like, it's been so long
Speaker 3: since I've seen a stunt performer set on fire.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love the guy in the motorcycles almost sliding
Speaker 1: under that red car.
Speaker 3: Give me some practical stunts, so I'm there for it.
Speaker 1: When it comes to a awful relationship between two hardened killers,
Speaker 1: give me fucking Hobson shaw Man, I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then you've got freaking Idris Elba as the
Speaker 1: Black Superman. The way that Jen not Jenny, the way
Speaker 1: that Jen loses her eyesight by just cocking herself on
Speaker 1: the back of the head in the club scene, and
Speaker 1: that she just miraculously gets her eyesight back at the
Speaker 1: end of the film, I guess because she's in the church.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is going on here?
Speaker 2: It almost felt like parody at that point that her
Speaker 2: eyesight came back at the end of the climactic action scene,
Speaker 2: like it is, oh, maybe a stretch here, but I'm
Speaker 2: remembering Bad Lieutenant Portocal, New Orleans, where the whole movie
Speaker 2: he's juggling all this horrible shit, and then the end
Speaker 2: of it just like everybody just starts washing away his
Speaker 2: troubles one after another, like hey, everything's fine, buddy, We're good.
Speaker 2: And in there it was like clear, like humorous, satirical. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can keep being a piece of shit, it's fine.
Speaker 2: But like here, it literally just felt, oh no, no,
Speaker 2: the bad stuff is over. Now she can see again.
Speaker 2: It's okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I felt like they had to fill in everything,
Speaker 3: including that. I actually felt like she was more of
Speaker 3: a cipher than Sally yan Yay was as Jenny and
Speaker 3: the original and it's more upsetting to me because they
Speaker 3: were trying so hard. They're like, Oh, we'll make her.
Speaker 3: She'll be complicated too and have a growth arc. So
Speaker 3: she was implicated in the bad stuff, but now she's
Speaker 3: been redeemed along with the killer person. But it also
Speaker 3: felt like one of those things where, well, we have
Speaker 3: one woman who's a complicated character, so we don't need
Speaker 3: to do it with the other one. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: Sally Yay is more complicated and she's not implicated in
Speaker 3: any drug running or getting herself into trouble before Jeff
Speaker 3: by having a bad boyfriend or any of that. And
Speaker 3: it's no shade on the actor who plays Jen in
Speaker 3: the movie. She just doesn't have a lot to do
Speaker 3: and John will Films or like, look at how special
Speaker 3: and wonderful she is, but the script doesn't support it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it helps that the original Jenny, like, the whole
Speaker 2: point is that she is to me at least, is
Speaker 2: that she is something pure. She's not mixed up in
Speaker 2: any of this. She was in the wrong place at
Speaker 2: the wrong time, and she didn't do anything wrong. Once
Speaker 2: you start to complicate that backstory, it complicates everything else,
Speaker 2: especially when you're also completely removing the element of a
Speaker 2: love story. From this, which I feel.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, well you have to you have to. You
Speaker 1: can't have lesbianism in this movie, god forbid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the one major thing I was hoping they'd
Speaker 2: have the balls to do, but I knew it wasn't
Speaker 2: gonna happen. And at the same time, like, it's good
Speaker 2: that they didn't set up a romance with her and
Speaker 2: the cop because that would have also that would have
Speaker 2: been way too hacky. But come on, girls can love girls.
Speaker 2: It's fine. I've seen it happen.
Speaker 3: I don't know the history of these scripts, so maybe
Speaker 3: you can lucidate, Mike, but I'm very suspicious about the
Speaker 3: gender swapping. After you were talking about Michelle Yo, they
Speaker 3: were like, maybe you can have Michelle Yo do it,
Speaker 3: and then it won't there won't be homo eroticism. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, Michelle Yo and Sally Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. For a while with this one, Lapitan
Speaker 1: Yongo was supposed to be cast in here. I know
Speaker 1: there was also talk. Sorry to go back to the
Speaker 1: original timeline that I put together, So nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: we're talking about that. Two thousand and seven, there was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a version that John H. Lee was
Speaker 1: supposed to do. That was going to be set in Koreatown,
Speaker 1: kinda town in south central and let's say Jong Wu
Speaker 1: Song was cast as the lead and they're planning on
Speaker 1: shooting in three D. Sarah Lee was cast as the
Speaker 1: blind singer, and John Wu was the producer. Then in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Wu confirmed that John Lee's verse installed. He
Speaker 1: said that after filming Manhunt in twenty seventeen, he was
Speaker 1: going to do a new American adaptation. That was twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen when he was talking about that, and then twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen the Universal stepped in and started to put this
Speaker 1: thing together. And that's when all of these writers got involved.
Speaker 1: I imagine it was probably, he said, script by Aaron
Speaker 1: Creevy based on drefts by Josh Campbell and Martin mart
Speaker 1: stuck In with contributions from Brian Helgalin. And that's when
Speaker 1: Nipeter Leongo was cast as the lead in a gender
Speaker 1: and race swapped role. Let's see twenty nineteen Wu Tel's
Speaker 1: deadline that Jongo exits due to scheduling conflicts after a
Speaker 1: script rewrite, so maybe she didn't like the script. Twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two Universal confirms that was directing and then it's
Speaker 1: going to be released on Peacock. August O Marci's cast
Speaker 1: as the cop character. Twenty twenty three March Dead League
Speaker 1: Manuel is cast as the lead, and then filming starts
Speaker 1: in Paris. That is halted mid year by the SEG
Speaker 1: after strike, and then finally in August twenty third, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, it gets dumped on Mean released to Peacock.
Speaker 3: Do you think the same people have been holding on
Speaker 3: their rights since nineteen ninety two?
Speaker 2: Thinks so, yeah, Peacock is Universal and when he even
Speaker 2: when Wu came to the US, his first movie was
Speaker 2: Hard Target with Universal, So there is very much a possibility,
Speaker 2: which also, you know, I think a lot about how
Speaker 2: like the stories about how on Hard Target Sam Raimi
Speaker 2: produced and the studio wanted Rainy on the back back
Speaker 2: burner just in case they thought this crazy Hong Kong
Speaker 2: guy couldn't control the set and let you know, Rainy
Speaker 2: take over. And I can't help but think that if
Speaker 2: anyone was going to remake this, and maybe it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be terrible, Rainy might have been a good one to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: You look at the original ending of or Sorry, the
Speaker 1: new ending of Army of Darkness, with the whole smart
Speaker 1: stuff that is so.
Speaker 2: Woo mm hmm. There's stuff in even like the way
Speaker 2: he shoots, even Western stuff and the Quick and the Dead.
Speaker 2: It's there, just a crazy action in Dark Man Like
Speaker 2: I for a guy who doesn't do like straight action
Speaker 2: movies very much, I think you do an incredible one.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people weren't into that multiverse
Speaker 1: of badness just because the script was so weak, But
Speaker 1: some of the action, some of the special effects. Gosh,
Speaker 1: when you've got all those demons making Doctor Strange's cloak
Speaker 1: and everything, I'm like, Yes, this is the Raimi that
Speaker 1: I was looking for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some fun stuff in there.
Speaker 1: You got pizza Papa Baby.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: I bet there was a lot of notes involved in
Speaker 3: the whole process.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there ever was, because we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about the gender swapping, the race swapping, the
Speaker 1: ethnicity swapping. I don't know if there ever was a
Speaker 1: because you can't have and I'm saying this as a
Speaker 1: Hollywood producer, you can't have this relationship between these two women.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we cannot allow that at all. And
Speaker 1: even it probably was fear of missagenation, probably fear of
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you can't have you can't have a
Speaker 1: white guy with an Asian woman. You can't have a
Speaker 1: black man with an Asian woman. None of this stuff
Speaker 1: is going to fly.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: It's so rare, even now in twenty twenty five, first
Speaker 1: to have mixed race couples on screen. It's fucking crazy.
Speaker 3: And there's so many mixed race couples in America. But
Speaker 3: you probably already know the pain of having these people
Speaker 3: use people in the flyover in the Midwest as like
Speaker 3: their excuse to do continue doing this even though we're
Speaker 3: right here being like we want these things.
Speaker 1: Heaven forbid, I'm just going to start clutching at my
Speaker 1: pearls if I start thinking about, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: black frenchman, this American woman, and then this white woman singer.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can never this is impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what if they all ran off together? Oh, I know,
Speaker 2: you become a thruple at the end. That would solve
Speaker 2: so many problems in so many movies. We wouldn't have
Speaker 2: wrong comblems anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, and what I like is in the first one,
Speaker 3: if you're feeling homoerotic, that solves their problem. And they
Speaker 3: seem to be okay with that. It's just that shing
Speaker 3: foy On is not okay with anything because he's an
Speaker 3: angry hot head.
Speaker 2: He has one of the great cinema faces.
Speaker 3: I just love his traumatic head injury bandage in the final.
Speaker 1: Even in the final fight that takes place at the church,
Speaker 1: which we get back to the church and everything here.
Speaker 1: But it has to be a woman that she's fighting.
Speaker 1: She can't fight them man through this, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing that?
Speaker 2: I was pissed off about that too.
Speaker 3: And this is after Atomic Blonde.
Speaker 2: And this was after, of course, as we joked earlier,
Speaker 2: they had to make sure you knew that the church
Speaker 2: was deconsecrated, so that there are any fucking stakes at all.
Speaker 3: Arted to feel really bad for the writers, like what
Speaker 3: an impossible task.
Speaker 2: The climax of the original being so iconic. I was like,
Speaker 2: I watched when I rewatched it, I watched it with
Speaker 2: a partner who had never seen it before, and she
Speaker 2: was picking up on stuff like, oh, like the ending
Speaker 2: of Cowboy Bebop, like that takes place in a church
Speaker 2: and it's a more heightened version of very similar, and
Speaker 2: that it's so iconic. But the main thing is that
Speaker 2: there are. It feels like a thousand guys pouring into
Speaker 2: that church, one after another. And this half of it
Speaker 2: takes place outside in the in the graveyard area, which
Speaker 2: kind of reminded me a hard target, which I love.
Speaker 2: And then the other half of it is them like
Speaker 2: hand to hand fighting people in the building for the
Speaker 2: most part. And it just that's not that, ain't it.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's not what I wanted.
Speaker 1: Her running across the backs of the views and I'm
Speaker 1: just like talking about wirework earlier. I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can basically see the wires here. They're painted out.
Speaker 1: You know what's not painted out are all the security
Speaker 1: cameras in the church. There are security cameras everywhere. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like, Okay, this doesn't look like it's an
Speaker 1: abandoned church. It looks like it's very still active. With
Speaker 1: all of the security stuff going on here.
Speaker 3: It looks like perhaps it's a historic church that they're like,
Speaker 3: you can't put squibs all over the church or in
Speaker 3: the historic grave yard.
Speaker 1: Oh, I guess we'll have to fight hand to hand
Speaker 1: and I'll crack this girl's neck with the white girl druads.
Speaker 2: I think for me, that's just the hardest part though,
Speaker 2: is that what I think Wu was best at visually
Speaker 2: wasn't here. I think it may just be the use
Speaker 2: of digital cameras when most of his classic work was
Speaker 2: done on film. But it just it doesn't look right.
Speaker 2: It feels weird. The slow mo even looks messy.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me how cool is it in the original
Speaker 1: when they're going up against Jinfuan at that church and
Speaker 1: he's got that gun against Jenny's head and the way
Speaker 1: he's like moving with the guns and everything, and Danny
Speaker 1: Lee says to Charlie on fat You'll always have a
Speaker 1: friend to back you up, and then you see that
Speaker 1: he's got a gun taped in the in the back
Speaker 1: of his pants and you're just like yes, Like that
Speaker 1: is one of the coolest things ever, as opposed to
Speaker 1: what size shoes do you wear?
Speaker 3: Well, and it has the friendship squishes too, your like oh.
Speaker 2: And that going going into we didn't really get it
Speaker 2: the idea that everything has to have a backstory, there
Speaker 2: has to be history, and for those who didn't watch it,
Speaker 2: like the shoe thing is referencing that there was a
Speaker 2: completely unrelated incident where our heroes met before but didn't
Speaker 2: know it, and he was. The cop was about to die,
Speaker 2: and he distracted the killer, the person who was going
Speaker 2: to kill him, not the killer, by saying asking what
Speaker 2: size shoes you wear? And then some mysterious angel killed
Speaker 2: the guy and he got away and we find out,
Speaker 2: Oh it was Natalie Z. That's her name. It was
Speaker 2: Z the whole time, and oh they go all the
Speaker 2: way back and he wouldn't be here if it wasn't
Speaker 2: for her. And now they have to love each other, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it also felt like they were making this
Speaker 3: big point where it's not that they're affectionate towards each other,
Speaker 3: it's that they're they're both like Sherlock Holmes, and they're
Speaker 3: really good at thinking like each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've come to an understanding and I enjoy.
Speaker 3: That in Cozy Mysteries, although sorry, Holmes and Watson got
Speaker 3: their home roticism too.
Speaker 1: But now you're talking about the John C. O'Reilly and
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell version.
Speaker 2: Now I had to wash my hair that day. I
Speaker 2: missed it.
Speaker 1: No, for sure, Downy and Law had that going on
Speaker 1: in spades, and then they kind of ruined it with
Speaker 1: the whole wedding in the second one. I'm like why
Speaker 1: just leave these guys bachelors.
Speaker 3: I bet it's the same damn executive confirmed bachelors.
Speaker 2: Just talking about investigative skills did what I do a
Speaker 2: lot lately and made me think of what if Colombo
Speaker 2: got involved somehow? But that's my own problem.
Speaker 3: I could see him having those little looks with any of.
Speaker 2: Them, and he'd never have to fire a show.
Speaker 1: When Colombo would respect.
Speaker 2: The Killer, they really did come to a mutual almost
Speaker 2: a friendship a lot of the time. That those are
Speaker 2: my favorite episodes. Sometimes the first Shatner episode is like that.
Speaker 2: The one with the pleasance is.
Speaker 1: Like that, them sharing a bottle of wine at the end.
Speaker 2: That is my favorite period. It's so good.
Speaker 1: I just got goosebumps.
Speaker 3: Those were so wonderful that when he actively loathed one
Speaker 3: of the killers and he revealed that, it was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, he hates Leonard Nimoy.
Speaker 2: And even then he's so pleasant of me. No, sirh
Speaker 2: I don't like you very much at all, Like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: that's the most heartbreaking thing anyone could say.
Speaker 3: They have to be like, I don't think very much
Speaker 3: of you well at all. Oh my god. He said
Speaker 3: he didn't think very much of me.
Speaker 2: Well, you should do a podcast about Colombo sometime.
Speaker 1: I could call it The Shabby Detective.
Speaker 2: Eh, that's a thought.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, let's call this tonight. I want to
Speaker 1: thank my co hosts, Carol and Jackie for joining me
Speaker 1: on this trip back to the Killer. So, Carol, what
Speaker 1: is the latest with you, ma'am?
Speaker 3: Everybody can find me at the Culturalgutter dot com, where
Speaker 3: a website dedicated to thoughtful writing about disreputable art. And
Speaker 3: we're on blue Sky and Facebook as Cultural Cutter and Jackie.
Speaker 2: How about yourself, I'm all over the place. Usually I
Speaker 2: have nothing to talk about. And this year has been
Speaker 2: the year.
Speaker 3: Of the Summer of Stargrove.
Speaker 2: That's got the alliteration too. There we go. But that
Speaker 2: summer started much earlier this year when somebody allowed me
Speaker 2: to write a piece on their website. As I recall,
Speaker 2: I feel like I may have submitted something to the
Speaker 2: Cultural Cutter that was very well received at a time
Speaker 2: when I really needed something cool to happen. But yeah,
Speaker 2: ever since then the year has been just slam packed
Speaker 2: with opportunities. I besides my usual work hawking tickets at
Speaker 2: the draft House and the local comedy Club. I've been
Speaker 2: working with a local I guess microcinema in Austin here
Speaker 2: called the Hyperreal Film Club or I've been doing copywriting
Speaker 2: for their website as well as hosting stuff. And they
Speaker 2: even let me program one of our past episodes which
Speaker 2: I plugged.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: They let me program Never Too Young to Die last week,
Speaker 2: which considering that our the local showings that night elsewhere
Speaker 2: were a screening of Caught Stealing? Is it Caught Stealings?
Speaker 2: The new one with Aeronofski? Yeah, Aeronofski was there, Austin
Speaker 2: Butler was there, and Matthew McConaughey was moderating the Q
Speaker 2: and A. So half of the audience was probably at that,
Speaker 2: and then the other half we're over at the Austin
Speaker 2: Film Society because they were showing Welcome to the Dollhouse
Speaker 2: and Crybaby, and I'm like, oh, John Waters, that would
Speaker 2: have been my crowd. So that's fine. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: just great stuff there, anyone in the Austin area, if
Speaker 2: you ever got a chance. It is just a wonderful
Speaker 2: little piece of cinema magic. I love it so much.
Speaker 2: I also have a friend of mine works for a
Speaker 2: newspaper in California the Hanford Sentinel, and he has given
Speaker 2: me a monthly column there just entertainment stuff whatever kind
Speaker 2: of wets my whistle. The first one it being right
Speaker 2: around the fourth of July, I went over a lot
Speaker 2: of the more beloved Jaws, the movies that were seen
Speaker 2: as knockoffs at the time, even though I think they're
Speaker 2: all great on their own. This past month I covered
Speaker 2: a lot of the very surprisingly famous people that started
Speaker 2: with Trouma Nobe. I think is aware that my neighbor
Speaker 2: Totoro's first American release came through Trauma because nobody else
Speaker 2: would release it without shredding it and editing it to bits.
Speaker 2: And Lloyd Coffin when all the ups and downs that
Speaker 2: he may have had professionally, like, he saw the art
Speaker 2: in that and he just let it go and I
Speaker 2: love that. But yeah, so just cool stuff that has
Speaker 2: been happening all over the place. I'm also part of
Speaker 2: a band called Air forty seven. We're going to be
Speaker 2: at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in October and doing
Speaker 2: a show of our own, sort of off site. But
Speaker 2: I should also be moderating a panel regarding old FMV games,
Speaker 2: like the old Live Action stuff from the nineties and
Speaker 2: some of the current stuff that's happening as well. So
Speaker 2: I'll be working that's the biggest thing I'll be doing
Speaker 2: that people might actually be able to see on the internet. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: if for any reason anybody wants to reach out to
Speaker 2: me at Jackie Stargrove atgmail dot com. Is wide open
Speaker 2: and I'm I'm pretty much all over whatever social media
Speaker 2: because I am poor that way, and I don't mind it.
Speaker 1: It's so nice hearing all of these updates when normally
Speaker 1: it was oh, follow me on letterbox, here's my name, yep.
Speaker 1: This is so great. I'm so happy for coming together. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much folks for being on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 1: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 1: of the other shows that I work on. They are
Speaker 1: all available at weirdingweymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 1: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
Speaker 1: helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
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