Metacritic reviews

The direction is energetic, incorporating frantic flashbacks and resourceful split-screen perspectives, and the plot adds several new twists not found in the first movie. Rest assured, this may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.

The movie works so well — and remains so light on its feet — because it eschews the life-or-death weight of Woo’s original in favor of focusing on the unbridled joys of resurrection.

The Killer is a pretty cool made-for-streaming action film with solid performances, fun set pieces, plenty of melodrama to go around, and Woo's signature wordplay that may inspire eye-rolls from some but a sensible chuckle from those of us with good taste.

It’s as if remaking a John Woo movie finally gave John Woo permission to make a true John Woo movie again.

It humbly presents the optional but delightful spectacle of watching John Woo have fun again.

A mediocre remix that, for all its familiar elements, fails to improve upon a single aspect of its trailblazing predecessor.

It’s more than just a failure of a remake — it’s disappointing on its own standalone merits, too.

It’s good to know that John Woo still thinks the only reason motorcycles were invented was to be shot and exploded in mid-air, but most of this action is merely satisfactory, and even after years of experimentation, CGI bullet hits still look faker than an old-fashioned squib

The film can’t stop splitting the difference between dissonant remnants of Woo’s baroque sentimentality (Zee lighting a candle for each life she takes) and snarky Hollywood action idiocy.

This remake is absent the far richer character development that made the original as much a melodrama as a shoot-’em-up.