This Week At Dontmindme.com — June 24, 2001

The Killer

by Marko Peric

I almost considered doing a second week of James Bond, but there was something else that just needed attention. For those in Canada able to get Showcase (the channel that brings you constant reruns of old Canadian shows during the day, and weird esoteric films at night) this Wednesday night they are showing John Woo's The Killer, which happens to be one of the best movies I've ever seen. If stylish action is your thing, and over the top violence doesn't scare you, watch this movie. Or tape it, because it's going to be on pretty late. If I haven't convinced you to watch it, I'm going to be posting a "Reasons to Watch The Killer" feature in a day or two when I get it written.

Song of the Week: The main song from The Killer actually gets a bit tedious after a while (primarily because they do the same thing they did with "Danger Zone" in Top Gun, i.e. repeating it every few minutes), so I'm not going to feature it. Instead I'm going to feature another of my favourite 007 theme songs, Carly Simon's "Nobody Does it Better" from The Spy Who Loved Me. Apart from being a great song, it's one of the few 007 theme songs that doesn't share the name of the related movie. Go download it now.

Link of the Week: I don't have a good Killer related page at hand, so I'm going to return a link. My friend Mike (who reads this page regularly) linked me on his new homepage dedicated to a game he invented, Mafia Elimination. Editor's note: Alas, the page is no longer up.

Quote of the Week: "I thought those I killed deserved to die. Now I believe everybody has the right to live." — Jeffrey Chow in The Killer.

DVD of the Week: I think the choice is pretty obvious. I own a copy of the Fox Lorber release of The Killer, which isn't as nice as the Criterion edition (generally nothing else compares to Criterion) but since the latter is out of print, a whole lot easy to get your hands on. The Fox Lorber version does have some very cool menus, the choice of English dubbed dialogue or subtitles, and a commentary by John Woo.