Script review – “The Killer” by Walter Hill and David Giler (draft April 1992)

On one hand, John Woo’s action packed, star-geared bloodbaths would seem a natural for Hollywood to remake – but on the other, they also have a peculiar Catholic, homoerotic thing going on, with it’s redemptive killers and bromance involving men trying to kill each other which doesn’t necessarily translate. Which is presumably why this never got off the ground.

The plot is about an assassin, Jeff (the Killer), an American living in Hong Kong, who blinds a girl during a shootout. He feels guilty and they fall in love with each other. An FBI agent (Lee) turns up to arrest Jeff and gets involved in people trying to kill Jeff.

Too much of this didn’t feel real: that the British police would use a visiting American FBI agent to go undercover to help them on his first day in town – and the American agent would go blasting around shooting people willy-nilly; that the agent would then be allowed to stay on as an adviser even after the Killer was wanted for murder; that the Tai Pan, the big baddy, was an English Tai Pan (running a Chinese gang); the FBI agent “sensing” the moves of the Killer; the Killer and the Agent taking a break to go chase down the assassin of the Agent’s Hong Kong contact who the Agent hardly knows; the notion that no one in the Killer’s building would know what he looked like even though he was an American living in Hong Kong.

Also everyone seems to love the killer, Jeff: the singer he renders blind; the FBI agent chasing him; his old contact and mentor who basically dies to keep his promise to him. Why not I suppose when you’re the sort of assassin who only kills corrupt politicians and crooks? The FBI agent, Lee, loves both Jeff and Chan, his Hong Kong contact. Oh, he comes across as an obnoxious American abroad too.

I did like the lean, tight form this was written in – old school Hill – and there’s plenty of action, but it doesn't hang together. I think they should have relocated this to milieu Hill knew (or could fake knowing) better, like Mexico or South America, or the old West.