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October 11, 2011

Episode 32: The Killer (1989)

Special Guest: Kenneth Hall

One podcast. Two men. Ten Thousand Bullets.

We're looking at John Woo's landmark action film The Killer; examining its origin and impact. Our special guest, Kenneth Hall, has written the book on Woo -- John Woo: The Films.

We also look at the influences on The Killer from Frank Tuttle's This Gun For Hire to Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai as well as the films that took inspiration from Woo's work such as the two Pang Brothers versions of Bangkok Dangerous.

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5 comments:

  1. [...] The Projection Booth targets John Woo’s The Killer and its legacy, including an interview with Kenneth Hall, writer of John Woo: The Films. Category: NotesTags: 1980s, 2010s, action, assassins, audio, China, Chow Yun-Fat, crime, Danny Lee, detectives, guns, Hong Kong, John Woo, Mike White, movies, podcasts, police, Sally Yeh, Tsui Hark [...]

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  2. Another great episode guys, the Killer is one of my all-time favorite films.

    I noticed that you were knocking the Big Hit for stealing its style from Hong Kong cinema. You do realize that the Big Hit was directed by Kirk Wong, a Hong Kong filmmaker?

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  3. What's so wrong with homoeroticism? If you have a guy and girl coupling on screen people would talk about their romantic chemistry. Not sure why Mike's co-host gets so angry about it. Just let dudes love dudes, consciously or not.

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  4. A great episode on John Woo's monumental action flick, The Killer. Mike White offers some worthy insights into the film's legacy and there's an enjoyable chat with Kenneth Hall, the author of John Woo: The Films.

    And then there's Mondo Justin....

    He seems inconsolably irritated by some Detroit film critic who presumably babbled on about the homo-erotic subtext in Woo's film. Justin brashly declares there's to be no such thing in The Killer because when has John Woo ever mentioned there was?!

    It's almost painful listening to Mike White politely explain to him that other interpretations of movies are possible beyond what the director either intended or has gone on record to state publicly!

    In other words, it's called Film Criticism 101.

    Attitude and vitriol has its place - but you gotta have the goods to back it up.

    For the record, John Woo's films are sooooooo Gay! (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

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