Trivia / The Killer (1989)

• Cast the Expert: Danny Lee actually trained to be a cop.
• The Cast Showoff: Sally Yeh was a popular Hong Kong pop star — Jennie's ballads in the film are in her own voice. She was so popular at the time of the film's shooting that she could not totally fulfill her schedule due to conflicts with her concerts.
• Completely Different Title: The film's native title was Die Xue Shuang Xiong ("Bloodshed of Two Heroes").
• Creator-Chosen Casting:
  • John Woo always had Danny Lee in mind for Li.
  • Sally Yeh was a friend of Woo. He asked her to play Jenny and she was currently contracted with Tsui Hark.
• Deleted Scene: Scenes cut from the film:
  • Li rescuing Jennie from some muggers in the same manner that Ah Jong does. It also includes a nice little reveal where we see that Ah Jong has seen the whole thing. The scene continues with Li taking Jennie back to her apartment, and Li seeing Ah Jong watching from outside.
  • Li arriving at Ah Jong's apartment after the shoot-out just as the former is leaving.
  • Ah Jong and Jennie driving from the airport and arriving at Fung Sei's safe house.
  • Ah Jong and Jennie having breakfast at the house. Then Fung Sei arrives.
  • Paul arrives by the creek and finds Ah Jong's bandages.
• Development Hell: The American remake has been on the cards for years:
  • In 1992, Walter Hill and David Giler wrote a screenplay for Tri-Star Pictures that was to star Richard Gere and Denzel Washington. In June of that year, it was announced that Hill and Giler were writing a script titled Hong Kong that was based on the film, with Hill directing. The producers had difficulty with the relationship between the two main characters, as they felt that American audiences would interpret it as a homoerotic one. Producer Terence Chang, who worked with John Woo on several productions, suggested to the American producers to have Michelle Yeoh play the role of the police officer to resolve any homoerotic reading of the film. A year later, screenwriters Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. were hired by producers Charles Roven and Robert Cavallo to write a screenplay based on the film for Tristar, in which they wrote a third draft dated on 23 August 1993 that featured a story of a Caucasian hitman living in Hong Kong. This screenplay moved the focus from the pairing the hitman and the police detective characters to the characters of the blinded night club singer and the hit man.
  • In October 2007, The Hollywood Reporter announced that the remake was announced with Korean-American director John H. Lee directing that would take place in Los Angeles's Koreatown, Chinatown, and South Central. The film was to be produced by Woo, star Jung Woo-sung and shot in 3D. Seven Stars Film Studios was slated to finance the production with a screenplay by Josh Campbell. Sarah Li was initially cast to play the role of the blind singer. Woo spoke about the remake in October 2015, stating that it was in development for some time and Lee eventually took on other projects.
  • Woo said that he planned to make the American version after his film Manhunt. Universal Studios is set to develop a script written by Eran Creevy based on drafts by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken. Brian Helgeland has been hired for additional writing and Lupita Nyong'o has been cast in the lead role. Woo said that filming would begin in January 2019. In November of that year, Woo told Deadline that Nyong'o had left the film due to another project and they have have re-written the script and it took so much time.
• Executive Meddling: Tsui Hark, the film's producer, attempted this multiple times on John Woo as an extension of their disagreements over A Better Tomorrow II. Tsui Hark originally wanted nothing to do with the film, saying "nobody wants to see a film about a killer", and forced Woo to change his intended jazz song opening to a pop song, claiming that Hong Kong people didn't understand jazz. He also attempted to have the film recut to focus on Li, but Woo refused. Since he demanded this so late into post-production, Hark was not able to recut the film himself. When the film was greeted with high praise in its Taiwan premier, Hark was supposedly so livid that he trashed his own office.
• No Stunt Double: Danny Lee did most of his own stunts, as he has a black belt and karate and is a karate instructor.
• On-Set Injury: Chow Yun-fat was injured during the filming of the church shootout when a piece of plaster cut his face, missing his eye by an inch. You can see the cut during the part where Jeff and Li talk before leaving the church.
• Orphaned Reference: When Ah Jong and Li leave the church, you can see smoke in the background. This is the result of a deleted scene where Frank throws a smoke grenade into the church.
• Produced By Castmember:
  • The movie was not able to be filmed until Chow Yun-fat stepped in and enlisted the company he was contracted with, Golden Princess Film, to fund part of the project.
  • Danny Lee was under an exclusive contract with Cinema City and was only able to work on the film if his production company, Magnum, was involved.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • There is actually a 1972 Shaw Brothers movie, also titled The Killer. Both movies had plenty of gunplay and shootouts, but the similarities end there.
  • There's also David Fincher's The Killer (2023).
• Surprisingly Lenient Censor: The film passed British censors unscathed except for a single scene — a brief shot amid a bloody gunfight where Ah Jong stabs a bad guy in the back with a knife — because unlike guns, "people actually have knives in their kitchen".
• Throw It In!:
  • During the assassination at the boat race, Ah Jong wraps a bandana around his left hand. At the time that this scene was filmed, Chow Yun-fat was simultaneously working on Tiger on Beat. On the set of that film, he cut his finger on the front sight of a Sterling MKIV during a stunt. Afterwards, he went straight to the set of this film to shoot the assassination scene, with his hand still injured and the bandana wrapped around it. John Woo decided to include this in the film.
  • The bloody injury below Chow Yun-Fat's left eye is real and was caused by a piece of plaster during the climactic shootout (see On-Set Injury above). Rather than go to the hospital, he suggested they keep filming and use it as part of the illusion.
  • The film's subversion of Died in Your Arms Tonight during the ending was originally meant to be played straight, but John Woo was forced to improvise due to scheduling conflicts.
• What Could Have Been: The original ending of the film involved Jennie waiting at an airport for Li to give her the money and for them to travel to the United States. Due to Sally Yeh's tight filming schedule, the scene was not filmed and replaced with Ah Jong playing the harmonica.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: John Woo went into filming with only a short treatment for the film and wrote the details of the script while filming.

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