Watch The Killer–a classic by John Woo that influences tons of modern directors–and you’ll notice that the best parts are the quiet ones.

The tension of face-offs between the assassin and the detective, guns pointed, but no triggers pulled. The scenes with Jenny, the singer blinded by the assassin’s unintentional shot. And the moments where characters win by being clever instead of shooting things.

Because oh my precious baby Jesus, there is a lot of shooting.

Here’s the trailer with a good taste of this classic:

John Woo went on to direct a ton of other movies, including Face/Off, Broken Arrow, and Mission Impossible 2.

What stuck with me from The Killer is the big gun battles didn’t land like other scenes.

Whenever I saw a mountain of henchmen, dressed identically and holding guns, I knew they were dead. All of them. And this happened so many times in the movie (and most action films).

John Wick does a great job of making a small number of henchman menacing and real, and show the hero isn’t invincible.

There are a few main villains in The Killer, but they don’t get much screen time or development. They just live longer than the random henchmen.

There are far, far too many endings where the villain had the love interest with a gun to her head. The Killer does this, too.

Gunfights would seem to always be exciting, right? I don’t think so. When all kinds of people are shooting all kinds of bullets at the hero, you know they might get wounded, but the only deaths will be the generic extras.

Less is more. Make it one-on-one and you’ve got tension, like The Quick and the Dead, which does this so well again and again.

I can’t remember the last movie where an endless wave of henchmen made things tense or interesting. If you haven’t seen them before and don’t know their name, they are toast.

My pet theory is this: one-on-one fights are the best option for action movies, whenever possible: an even fight against an opponent with a shot at winning, whether it’s a quick-draw gunfight, a fist fight, or a sword fight. My favorite? Sword fights seem to always work, whether the duel is set long ago in a galaxy far away or in a children’s story that has no right to be so damned good.