Purists will tell you that CGI blood is one of the worst things to happen to R-rated action cinema, and they’re probably right. Few things are more viscerally exciting and adrenaline-pumping than a cacophony of squibs exploding at the exact right moment, and few films have ever done it better than John Woo’s masterpiece The Killer.
While your mileage may vary as to whether or not it’s even Woo’s finest contribution to the genre, the fact you’d need to debate the merits of A Better Tomorrow, Hard Boiled, and Face/Off to name but three just goes to show the seismic impact the dove-obsessed orchestrator of balletic onscreen violence has had on big screen running and gunning.
The final act of The Killer stands out among the pack, though, with Chow Yun-fat’s assassin Ah Jong and Danny Lee’s Detective Li Ying forcd to put their differences aside to battle back against a shared enemy. An extended shootout that’s comfortably one of the greatest bullet-riddled set pieces ever likely to be committed to celluloid, the camerawork and explosive pyrotechnics work perfectly in sync to deliver a heart-stopping showdown for the ages.
To that end, a Reddit thread remarking on The Killer and its strategic use of blood has opened up the floodgates for a brand new wave of praise. Even though there’s a sky-high body count and no shortage of claret being spilled, it never feels excessive, needless, or over the top, even if the climactic standoff isn’t exactly rooted in a grounded and gritty reality.
In short; The Killer still rules, and the insane volume of blood squibs is just one of many reasons why, if an often-overlooked element of its greatness.