"Though so much in The Killer came to be parodied by others or exaggerated by John Woo himself, it is a monumental achievement in camera direction, atmosphere, stylized violence, and genre storytelling. Woo is at the peak of his directorial powers, and Chow Yun-fat is at his most charismatic. Action really doesn’t get any better than this."

"My wife got a big crush on Chow Yun-Fat after seeing these two John Woo gems (and she doesn’t get starstruck very easily). A movie star is a movie star—if you’ve got it , and Chow has got it. And John Woo knows how to work it. It’s one of the great collaborative pairings between star and director, along with Eastwood/Leone and De Niro/Scorsese. I have some very jealous friends since I have these two out-of-print beauties, which I hear are now next to impossible to find."

"The ultimate existential gangster film. Hypnotic, detailed, ritualistic, it has influenced
 films like John Woo’s The Killer and the more recent Drive. Alain Delon
 gives his most memorable performance as an ice-cold assassin above such mundane
 concerns as moral conscience. Though violent in its subject matter, Jean-Pierre
 Melville’s film is also cool, meticulously lit, and classically framed. It
 operates in a kind of dream state. It’s the opposite of the fevered emotional style of
 most gangster films. The pauses and silences help make it the visual equivalent of Harold
 Pinter’s dialogue. This is my favorite Melville film, and the extras are among 
Criterion’s finest, including an interview with John Woo and one with Melville himself."