We’ll be the first to admit, we haven’t really kept track of what John Woo has been up to for a while. After earning acclaim for such films as “The Killer” and “Hard Boiled,” he came to Hollywood where his talents seemed to get lost in the machinery of big budget films (although “Face/Off” remains classic Saturday afternoon viewing). He left Hollywood, and last year released the epic “Red Cliff” which seemed to put him back in the good graces of critics.
Now, a trailer has landed for another film, “Reign Of Assassins” which boasts his name as a co-director alongside Su Chao-Pin and stars Michelle Yeoh and Jung Woo-Sung (“The Good, The Bad & The Weird,” which gets a limited release starting this Friday). Like we said, we really had no idea he was working on anything, but this project at first glance seems to be your fairly standard swords and samurais flick. Here’s a synopsis from a Michelle Yeoh fan page which also has a longer, more complicated and somewhat spoiler laced version as well:
A female assassin falls in love with a man whose father was killed by her gang. Unaware that he also is a trained martial artist, their love blossoms but then tensions arise as the past comes back to haunt them.
Anyway, this all looks fairly standard until the second half of the trailer arrives with some fucking flaming swords. So yeah, that got our attention. The film also seems to make heavy use of running-up-walls-floating-in-mid-air wire fighting stuff made famous in Yeoh’s worldwide smash “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and that seemed to be in every movie for about three years. Surprisingly, here it looks kind of fresh again.
The film is still in production and will hit Eastern cinemas this fall, while a 2011 release stateside (if someone picks it up) is likely.