The Assassin with Omar Sy: Did you know this is a remake of one of the best action movies of the 90s?

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While fulfilling his last contract, the killer blinds the young singer. In order to find the money needed for a young woman’s surgery, he takes on a new contract.

We are making a movie

Alfred Hitchcock. Michael Haneke. Leo McCurry. Takashi Shimizu. Francis Weber. Lisa Azuelos. And now John Woo. The director of Volte/Face, Mission: Impossible II or À toutproof joins the list of directors who have signed on to remake their own film. A very special exercise, especially for the Hong Kong director, who returns to French theaters for the first time since March 25, 2009, as he tackles one of his greatest opus.

So the killer. Set in France in 1995 (five years after the country of origin), this thriller casts Chow Yun-fat, the filmmaker’s favorite actor, in the role of a hit man who takes one last contract to pay off the young singer he caused to go blind. for his surgery. Famous for its violence and lyricism, the Martin Scorsese feature film quickly became a reference in terms of action and contains all the elements of the John Woo style, slow motion, doves and major religious symbols.

With a bullet in the head and a senseless killer put a stamp in the director’s Hollywood passport. Thirty-five years later, he returned and set up his cameras in France. In Paris, more precisely, the scene of this remake for many years in the project, in which its main character becomes a woman: Zee, played by Natalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, The Fast and the Furious).

This is the biggest change from this new killer, as the plot remains largely the same. Always with this policeman who tries to arrest the heroine before she meets, and who is played by our national Omar Sy, another main character of the group in which Sam Worthington (and his most beautiful Irish accent!), Eric Cantona or Said. Taghmaui.

Tribute to Alain Delon

So many actors and actresses, thanks to whom John Woo revisits one of his main works, pay homage to one of his favorite films: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï with his silent Alain Delon, and of which he almost made several remakes. years ago The project didn’t materialize, but we find traces of it very clearly in the clothes Nathalie Emmanuel wears on screen, whether it’s her big raincoat or the hat she wears on stage, which moves the narrative towards a story of redemption. , and where he fights… with a sword.

Obviously, fans of the original will play the comparison game with this film, but it’s an exercise that can prove fascinating. Especially in the case of a self-remake, and with a director of such a recognizable style, all the elements of which we quickly find, in one of the first scenes, calling pigeons in a church and in slow motion. Or during the ballet-like finale, where this musical lover lets the horses go.

It’s become rare enough to see a John Woo movie in theaters without wanting to discover this one. And we note this funny coincidence because the feature film came out a year after David Fincher’s last feature of the same title, which featured a hitman who confronted his employers on the streets of Paris (at least at first). It was, of course, an adaptation of an Alexis Nolent graphic novel, but it was already hard not to think of the Volte/Face author, even before he looked at his own work.