The Killer

The influence of John Woo's The Killer is there, in the way they're shot, the camera's often quite high and swooping.

Director Chad Stahelski mapped Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly directly onto the climax, three combatants approaching each other in a graveyard-like space (here, Sacré-Cœur in Paris), music swelling, time dilating. Stahelski also cited the Japanese Zatoichi blind swordsman films as the blueprint for Donnie Yen's character, the sense of a master assassin navigating the world through pure technique and memory.

John Woo brought his own Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed cinema directly into this American blockbuster. The Killer and Hard Boiled, white doves before gunfights, dual-pistol balletic violence, the philosophical rivalry between cop and criminal that transcends the law, became the exact visual and thematic template. Woo didn't adapt his style for Hollywood. He transplanted it wholesale. The film is Woo's statement: when you hire John Woo, you get Hong Kong cinema.

Before the Wachowskis wrote a single line of The Matrix, they flew to Hong Kong. John Woo's Hard Boiled, its lobby shootout, its operatic slow-motion, its bodies used as instruments of pure cinematic force, became the template. Yuen Woo-ping, who choreographed every action sequence in The Matrix, had been working in Hong Kong action cinema for two decades. The bullet time isn't science fiction. It's John Woo made digital.

The Matrix in turn shaped 2 films

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John Woo brought his own Heroic Bloodshed cinema to this Hollywood sequel. The Killer (1989), white doves before gunfights, dual-wielding revolvers, slow-motion violence as ballet, becomes the template. The film is Woo's statement: Hollywood finally caught up to what Hong Kong cinema had already perfected.