The Killer 1989

Zee is a professional hit woman based in Paris, regularly hired by Finn, an Irishman working for crime lord Jules Gobert, to eliminate rivals in the drug trade. Her violent lifestyle has left her with few pleasures, save for the friendship of an old high-class tailor named Tessier, who provides disguises, keeps a goldfish, and stokes her love of crossword puzzles. In the underworld, she has earned a fearsome reputation as the Queen of the Dead.

Finn contracts Zee to strike at the members of a Marseille drug gang partying in a local nightclub, where a young American singer performing is Jenn Clark. At approximately the same moment, Inspector Sey and his partner Jax attempt to arrest Jenn’s drug-dealing boyfriend, Coco; Coco escapes, injures Jax, and takes a hostage, forcing Sey to kill him. The carnage at the club leads to the gang’s deaths, but Jenn is injured in the melee and goes blind from the chaos. Despite the orders to kill everyone present, Zee spares Jenn as an uninvolved civilian. Finn then sends her to the hospital to finish the job.

Posing as a vice-consul from the US embassy, Zee gains access to Jenn’s hospital room but again spares her. When Sey arrives to take Jenn’s statement about the nightclub murders, Jenn’s trauma makes recollection difficult, and Sey grows suspicious of Zee.

Sey links Gobert to a recent heroin theft from Arabian prince Majeb Bin Faheem and to a network of dirty cops aligned with Gobert. The theft, however, is part of Finn’s larger plan to corner Paris’s heroin market.

Before Finn’s thugs can assassinate Jenn at the hospital, Zee intervenes, triggering a hospital shootout that leaves staff and patients casualties. Zee and Sey briefly confront one another before Zee escapes with Jenn to her apartment. Jenn identifies Zee as the nightclub killer and reveals that she and Coco had stolen Bin Faheem’s heroin shipment, triggering the chain of murders. Zee reports to Finn that she has eliminated Jenn, but Finn soon learns the truth. Sey traces Zee, and after being framed, goes into hiding; Zee is ordered to eliminate him, but she realizes the setup and allies with Sey to bring Finn down instead.

They recover the heroin and arrange an exchange of drugs for Jenn at an abandoned church. The final confrontation pits Zee, Sey, and Finn against Finn’s assassins, and an explosive charge destroys the drugs while Jenn regains her sight. As Finn prepares to kill Zee, she distracts him with a lighthearted question, giving Sey the chance to pass her a gun to shoot Finn. In the end, Zee watches Jenn reunite with her mother, and, choosing a new path, she tells Sey she’s planning to change her life, sharing a warm, bittersweet farewell.