The Killer

A gunplay orgy which makes the Segal pictures seem like the Muppet hour. Woo is a skilled director, though at times still falls prey to those tawdry camera tricks which so reliably marked the lesser kung-fu flicks. As drama this is OK (the two leads are compelling, and the bond they form is intriguing) but as a shoot-em-up the violence at times achieves an almost balletic grace. Wildly exaggerated bullet hits add to the sense of anarchy. One virtuoso sequence (actually not much shooting) comes when the cop and killer must play guests in the killer's girlfriend's house--all the while holding each other at point blank gunpoint. P.S. How many bullets do those 9mm magazines hold, anyway?